The image
A girl has found a hidden place, a pool or a stream, and is bathing without clothes, alone. No one watches; the privacy is part of the picture. The water, the open air and the absence of observers make it an image of freedom rather than display.
The picture is read here as a symbol of privacy and ease. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Capricorn 17.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Private freedom", and our keynote: away from eyes, the natural self is enjoyed without shame. Both are ours.
In a sign often read in terms of public life, this degree turns to what is kept for oneself. We read the image as the need for a space where no role has to be played, where a person can be simply as they are. One way to see it is in the quiet hours someone protects from work and duty, or in a part of a life that is never shown and does not need to be. The image can also be read as a tension between that freedom and the world's expectations, since the bather has to hide in order to be free. Sabian readers take the picture as a description.
The degrees around this one can be read after Lynda Hill, the first as its past and the second as its quest. The degree before is Capricorn 16, children dressed for gym class, the body trained in public; here the body is unobserved and at ease. The degree after is Capricorn 18, the Union Jack, where the private self gives way to the most public of emblems.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Cancer 17, a tiny germ that develops into an understanding of life. Both images concern something unseen; the bather keeps her life out of view, and the germ grows quietly toward a meaning not yet visible.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 16°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 17°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 16°10′ reads Capricorn 17, and so does one at Capricorn 16°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 18 after Capricorn 16°59′, or back into Capricorn 16 before Capricorn 16°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 17 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 16, Capricorn 18 and Cancer 17 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 16 and Capricorn 18, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 17, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 16°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 17; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 16. 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: Away from eyes, the natural self is enjoyed without shame.
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 16: Training the body the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 18: Protected order the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 17: Growth from a germ the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
