A naturalist giving a talk to an audience

The image

A naturalist, someone who has spent long hours watching plants, birds or insects, is speaking before listeners. Perhaps there are specimens on a table, drawings or notes; the image itself gives only the speaker and the work of explaining. What was seen alone in the field is now being told aloud in a room.

The image is one of 360 that Marc Edmund Jones said were recorded in a single day in San Diego.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Knowledge made visible", and our keynote: close study of nature is shared aloud with others.

The naturalist's authority comes from attention rather than rank. We read the degree as a picture of what happens when patient observation is brought into the open: it becomes teaching, and it changes the listeners' way of seeing the familiar world. One way to see the image is in anyone who explains what they know with enthusiasm and care, so that others start to notice what they had overlooked. It can also be read as the discipline behind the talk, the years of looking that come before a single hour of speaking. As with every degree, the tradition takes the picture as a description to recognise.

Lynda Hill's habit is to read a degree with its two neighbours, what lies behind it and what it leans toward. The degree before is Capricorn 11, many pheasants gathered together, living abundance seen; this degree turns that sight into knowledge. The degree after is Capricorn 13, a person who worships fire, where study of the visible gives way to devotion to what lies behind it.

The opposite degree, Cancer 12, shows a Chinese woman nursing an infant, and the child brings a message. It can be read beside this one as a reading aid: there a message arrives through intimate care and new life; here knowledge is passed on in public, through speech.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 11°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 12°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 11°05′ reads Capricorn 12, and so does one at Capricorn 11°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 13 after Capricorn 11°59′, or back into Capricorn 11 before Capricorn 11°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 12 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 11, Capricorn 13 and Cancer 12 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 11 and Capricorn 13, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Cancer 12, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Capricorn 11°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 12; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 11. 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: Close study of nature is shared aloud with others.

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

• Capricorn 11: Protected abundance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Capricorn 13: Devotion to the source the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Cancer 12: Carrying a message the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to