The image
Pheasants, many of them, are gathered in one spot: bright, long-tailed birds moving among one another, the sort usually seen on an estate or in a protected park rather than in the open wild. The picture is about numbers and colour, the sheer presence of so many handsome creatures at once. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Capricorn 11.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Protected abundance", and our keynote: beauty and plenty gather in one place. Both are ours.
Pheasants are showy birds, and a gathering of them suggests a place where they are looked after: fed, sheltered, left to multiply. We read the degree as a picture of plenty that depends on care, and of display that is possible because the ground is safe. One way to see it is in a household, a community or a working life where good things have been allowed to accumulate. The image can also be read for its question about why the birds are kept and what they are kept for, since a flock in a protected park is not wholly free. Readers in the tradition hold such questions open; the image describes a condition and leaves its meaning to the reader.
Hill looks at the degrees on either side of a placement, the one behind for its origins and the one in front for its purpose. Before it comes Capricorn 10, the albatross that eats from a person's hand, a single wild bird trusting a person; here that trust has become a whole flock in a guarded place. After it comes Capricorn 12, a naturalist giving a talk, where the living display becomes knowledge shared with others.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Cancer 11, a clown pulling funny faces. The pheasants show themselves simply by being what they are; the clown puts on a face to be seen, and the pair sets natural display beside performed display.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 10°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 11°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 10°28′ reads Capricorn 11, and so does one at Capricorn 10°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 12 after Capricorn 10°59′, or back into Capricorn 10 before Capricorn 10°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 11 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 10, Capricorn 12 and Cancer 11 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 10 and Capricorn 12, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 11, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 10°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 11; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 10. 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: Beauty and plenty gather in one place.
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 10: Trust across worlds the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 12: Knowledge made visible the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 11: The comic mask the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
