The image
A group of children in their gym clothes, ready for a lesson: standing in lines, perhaps, or waiting for a teacher's whistle. The image holds the moment before the exercise begins, when everyone has been made to look alike for a while and the energy of a crowd of children is about to be directed into the same movements. Jones took the picture down in San Diego in 1925 from Elsie Wheeler's description of the card for Capricorn 16.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Training the body" and our keynote: young energy is disciplined together.
A gym class is a small society with its own rules: everyone in the same clothes, the same drills, the same time. We read the degree as the moment when raw energy meets a form that shapes it, and as the pleasure some people find in moving as part of a group. One way to see it is in any training that asks for repetition before freedom: an orchestra's scales, a team's practice, an apprentice's first months. The image can also be read for what uniformity costs, the child who would rather move in another way. Readers of the Sabian symbols take a picture like this as a description and do not attach any promise or warning to it.
Hill's way of reading adds the two flanking degrees, the earlier as background and the later as aspiration. The degree before is Capricorn 15, a children's ward full of toys, where the children are kept still and comforted; here they are up and in motion. The degree after is Capricorn 17, a girl bathing alone and unclothed, where the shared, regulated body becomes the private, unobserved one.
The opposite degree, Cancer 16, a man facing a square with a manuscript roll open before him, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. There the discipline is of the mind, study of a pattern; here it is of the body, practice in a group.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 15°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 16°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 15°33′ reads Capricorn 16, and so does one at Capricorn 15°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 17 after Capricorn 15°59′, or back into Capricorn 15 before Capricorn 15°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 16 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 15, Capricorn 17 and Cancer 16 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 15 and Capricorn 17, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 16, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 15°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 16; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 15. 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: Young energy is disciplined together.
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 15: Comfort in the ward the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 17: Private freedom the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 16: Study of pattern the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
