A small child hauling a huge bag of shopping

The image

A very young child, about five years old, struggles along with a shopping bag almost as big as itself. The bag is full and heavy; the child keeps going. The picture is half comic and half touching, an ordinary errand that has become a small feat. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Capricorn 19.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Early responsibility", and our keynote: the young take on more than their size suggests. Both are ours.

The gap between the child and the bag is what the image is about. We read the degree as eagerness to carry a share before one is quite ready, and as the pride that comes with it. One way to see it is in people who took on duties early, or in the first attempt at anything that is clearly too big and is managed anyway. The image can also be read for the question of who handed the child the bag, and whether the load is fair. Readers in the tradition treat the picture as a description; it offers a shape that may or may not be recognised.

Lynda Hill reads a placement against the picture that precedes it and the picture that follows. Before it comes Capricorn 18, the Union Jack, a large and lasting order; here the order is a household and the load is on a small child. After it comes Capricorn 20, a choir singing from out of sight, where carrying a weight alone gives way to voices joined together.

As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Cancer 19, a wedding conducted by a priest. The wedding is a responsibility taken on formally, by adults, with witnesses; the child's is taken on informally and early, and the two can be read as two ways of accepting a load.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 18°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 18°24′ reads Capricorn 19, and so does one at Capricorn 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 20 after Capricorn 18°59′, or back into Capricorn 18 before Capricorn 18°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 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 18, Capricorn 20 and Cancer 19 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 18 and Capricorn 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Cancer 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Capricorn 18°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 18. 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: The young take on more than their size suggests.

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 18: Protected order the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Capricorn 20: Unseen voices the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Cancer 19: Sanctioned union the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to