A large crowd left disappointed

The image

The image is of many people who came to see something and did not get what they hoped for. The picture does not say what they expected, a performance, a speech, a spectacle, or why it fell short. What it shows is the mood of the crowd: anticipation turned to anticlimax. Jones took the picture down in San Diego in 1925 from Elsie Wheeler's description of the card for Aries 28.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the disappointed crowd shows the gap between what many people hope for and what actually takes place. Expectations built up together can be larger than any event, and when the event falls short the disappointment is shared. Our keyword is Expectation unmet, and our keynote reads it in one line: many hoped for something and did not receive it. One way to see it in a chart is a placement where public hopes, promises made to many or the weight of others' expectations play a part, and where adjusting those hopes is part of the work. The picture is of a mood.

Lynda Hill reads the degree before and after as the Karmic Condition and the Quest Degree. Aries 27, before it, is the missed chance lived again in the mind; Aries 29, after it, is a choir of heavenly voices. By her rule a private loss is followed by a public disappointment, and the disappointment by a sound from beyond the everyday, as if what the crowd missed were given in another key. As a reading aid, the degree opposite, Libra 28, shows a man among influences that keep growing brighter: support dawning on one person beside expectations failing for many.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 27°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 28°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 27°27′ reads Aries 28, and so does one at Aries 27°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 29 after Aries 27°59′, or back into Aries 27 before Aries 27°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Aries 28 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 27, Aries 29 and Libra 28 beside it.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Where the image comes from

Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced

Degree before and after

Aries 27 and Aries 29, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Libra 28, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aries 27°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 28; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 27. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed

How the schools read it

Marc Edmund Jones (1953)

Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.

Dane Rudhyar (1973)

Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.

Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)

Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.

The Sabian Assembly

Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.

EsoTerrier

Our keynote: Many hoped for something and did not receive it.

Claims about it

• The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.

  false

  What the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.

• Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.

  false

  What the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.

• Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.

  false

  What the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Aries 27: Won back in the mind the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aries 29: Heavenly singing the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Libra 28: Dawning support the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to