The image
A flag, the Union Jack, with its crosses laid one over another. The image gives nothing else: no ship, no building, no ceremony, only the emblem itself. It is a picture of a symbol, a design that stands for a whole state and its history.
The flag is read on this page as an image of order and belonging. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Capricorn 18.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Protected order" and our keynote: a nation's authority is declared in its colours.
The Union Jack is itself a joining: crosses of separate nations laid over one another to make one emblem. We read the degree as the power of shared symbols to hold people together and to say, publicly, who is under whose protection. One way to see it is in institutions and traditions that give a person a place, a uniform, a set of loyalties. The image can also be read for the weight such symbols carry, since a flag can shelter some people and exclude others. The tradition reads the picture as a description and leaves the reader to weigh which side of it is nearer.
In Lynda Hill's terms, what comes before a placement is its Karmic Condition and what comes after is its Quest Degree. The degree before is Capricorn 17, a girl bathing alone where no one sees, a private freedom; here everything is public and declared. The degree after is Capricorn 19, a child of five or so hauling an enormous bag of shopping, where the large structure of a nation is set beside the small shoulders that carry everyday loads.
The opposite degree, Cancer 18, is a mother hen scratching for food for her brood, and it serves as a reading aid. Both pictures are about protection; the flag protects through authority and emblem, the hen through closeness and constant work.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 17°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 17°47′ reads Capricorn 18, and so does one at Capricorn 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 19 after Capricorn 17°59′, or back into Capricorn 17 before Capricorn 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 17, Capricorn 19 and Cancer 18 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 17 and Capricorn 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 17°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 17. 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 nation's authority is declared in its colours.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 17: Private freedom the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 19: Early responsibility the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 18: Providing the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
