The image
The image is a choir, but not an earthly one: the voices are heavenly, sounding from somewhere above or beyond. No singers are seen and no words are given; the picture is the sound itself, many voices joined in one. It is one of the images in the set that is heard rather than seen. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Aries 29.
Meaning
The tradition reads a heavenly choir as harmony that lifts the listener out of the ordinary. Many voices become one sound, and the sound seems to come from a level of life that the everyday does not reach. Our keyword is Heavenly singing, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: voices beyond the everyday join in one sound. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where a person is moved by music, by shared devotion, or by a sense of belonging to something larger, whatever form that takes. The image describes an experience of harmony.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Aries 29 stands Aries 28, the crowd of spectators let down; after it stands Aries 30, a duck and her ducklings on a pond. Read so, a shared disappointment is answered by a shared harmony, and the harmony comes down at the end of Aries to a small, contented family on still water. The degree opposite, Libra 29, shows people reaching across the gulf of what is known, and can be read beside it as a reading aid: understanding built by effort there, harmony received here.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 28°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 29°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 28°04′ reads Aries 29, and so does one at Aries 28°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 30 after Aries 28°59′, or back into Aries 28 before Aries 28°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 Aries 29 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 28, Aries 30 and Libra 29 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
- Aries 28 and Aries 30, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 29, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 28°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 29; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 28. 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: Voices beyond the everyday join in one sound.
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
- Aries 28: Expectation unmet the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 30: Contentment in small bounds the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 29: Spanning what is known the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
