The image
The albatross belongs to the open ocean and rarely comes near people. Here it has, and it is taking food from an outstretched hand. The picture holds that moment: the bird close enough to touch, the person still enough not to frighten it.
The picture is quiet and close: a single bird, a single hand, and no sign of a ship or a shore.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Trust across worlds" and our keynote: the wild and the human meet in a moment of confidence. Both are our own.
What makes the image striking is the distance crossed. A bird that lives most of its life over open water, rarely touching land, accepts food from a hand. We read the degree as the kind of trust that cannot be forced, only offered and waited for: between people of very different worlds, between a person and something in themselves that is usually out of reach. One way to see it is as patience rewarded by closeness. The image can also be read as the responsibility that comes with such trust, since a creature that eats from a hand has made itself vulnerable. Readers in the Sabian tradition treat the picture as a description to recognise, not as a sign of what is to come.
The neighbours can be read as Lynda Hill reads them, the earlier as roots and the later as the road ahead. The degree before is Capricorn 9, an angel holding its harp, a messenger from above; here the messenger is a seabird, and the meeting is physical. The degree after is Capricorn 11, many pheasants gathered together, where one wild bird becomes a whole flock in a protected place.
The opposite degree, Cancer 10, is a large diamond whose cutting is not finished, and it serves as a reading aid. The diamond is value still rough and unshaped; the albatross is a bond already made, and between them the page sets potential beside relationship.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 9°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 9°51′ reads Capricorn 10, and so does one at Capricorn 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 11 after Capricorn 9°59′, or back into Capricorn 9 before Capricorn 9°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 Capricorn 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 9, Capricorn 11 and Cancer 10 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
- Capricorn 9 and Capricorn 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 9°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 9. 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: The wild and the human meet in a moment of confidence.
Claims about it
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The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.
falseWhat 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.
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Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.
falseWhat the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.
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Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.
falseWhat 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
- Capricorn 9: Harmony from above the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 11: Protected abundance the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 10: Rough value the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
