Low-relief carving cut into old granite

The image

A face of granite, weathered by age, carries a shallow carving: figures or patterns raised only a little from the surface, as on a temple wall or a monument. Low relief needs a steady hand, because stone forgives nothing and every cut is final.

The image is plain and the line on this page keeps it plain. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Capricorn 14.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Carved in stone", and our keynote: a picture made to last is cut into the hardest rock.

Granite is chosen when something is meant to endure. We read the degree as the urge to give an experience, a belief or a record a form that time cannot easily erase. One way to see it is in the slow work of building a reputation, a body of work or a family history that later people can still read. The relief is shallow, though, which can be read as a reminder that permanence is achieved by restraint: the carver removes only what must go. The image can also be read for its rigidity, the risk of setting something in stone that might later need to change. Readers in the Sabian tradition take it as a description of a quality, and the chart and the person decide how it shows.

Taking the neighbours as Lynda Hill does, the degree before is the soil and the degree after the direction of growth. The degree before is Capricorn 13, a person who worships fire, transforming energy; here that energy has cooled into stone. The degree after is Capricorn 15, a children's ward full of toys, where the hard and permanent gives way to comfort and play.

The opposite degree, Cancer 14, an aged man looking out over a great dark emptiness to the north-east, serves as a reading aid. The carving makes a mark that lasts; the old man faces what has not yet been given any form, and between them is the known and the unknown.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 13°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 13°19′ reads Capricorn 14, and so does one at Capricorn 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 15 after Capricorn 13°59′, or back into Capricorn 13 before Capricorn 13°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 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 13, Capricorn 15 and Cancer 14 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 13 and Capricorn 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Cancer 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Capricorn 13°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 13. 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: A picture made to last is cut into the hardest rock.

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 13: Devotion to the source the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Capricorn 15: Comfort in the ward the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Cancer 14: Facing the unknown the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to