The image
Music fills a space, a church or a hall, but the singers cannot be seen. They may be in a gallery, behind a screen or in another room; the listener hears many voices and no faces. The picture is of sound without visible source, carrying the ceremony from behind. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Capricorn 20.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Unseen voices" and our keynote: beauty supports the rite from where it cannot be seen.
A hidden choir changes how music is heard. Without singers to watch, the listener attends only to the sound, and the many voices become one. We read the degree as the value of contributions that are not credited by name: the people behind a performance, the work that holds an occasion together. One way to see it is in a person content to serve the whole without needing to be seen, or in the sense that one is supported by something larger and unnamed. The image can also be read as a question of recognition, since unseen work is easily forgotten. The Sabian tradition reads the picture as descriptive, a quality to recognise rather than an event.
After Lynda Hill's method, the earlier neighbour is the setting and the later neighbour the aim. The degree before is Capricorn 19, a small child hauling a heavy bag alone; here effort is shared among many voices. The degree after is Capricorn 21, runners passing the baton in a relay, where the shared effort becomes a chain in which each depends on the next.
The opposite degree, Cancer 20, a serenade sung from the gondolas, works as a reading aid. Both images are music; the serenade is sung openly to one person, the choir sings unseen to a gathering, and the pair sets personal song beside communal song.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 19°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 19°01′ reads Capricorn 20, and so does one at Capricorn 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 21 after Capricorn 19°59′, or back into Capricorn 19 before Capricorn 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 19, Capricorn 21 and Cancer 20 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 19 and Capricorn 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 19. 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: Beauty supports the rite from where it cannot be seen.
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 19: Early responsibility the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 21: Passing the baton the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 20: Romance as service the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
