The image
Two decorations rest side by side, each a public mark that someone held firm under fire. Whether they belong to one person or to two, the picture is of courage that has been seen and named by others, and named twice over. The image shows the honour, not the fighting behind it. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Capricorn 23.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Recognised courage", and our keynote: valour is honoured, and honoured again. Both are ours.
A medal is a public statement that something done in a moment of danger mattered. We read the degree as the meeting of personal courage and collective acknowledgement, and the doubling as courage that shows itself more than once, or that is recognised in more than one way. One way to see the image is in people whose steadiness under pressure has been noticed and relied upon, or in the dignity of having been tested and found equal to it. The image can also be read for the question of what a medal can and cannot say, since the experience behind it is often heavier than its ribbon. The tradition reads the picture as a description of a quality, not of anything that has happened or is to come.
Lynda Hill treats the image before as a condition already given and the image after as the quest it opens. Before it comes Capricorn 22, the general who loses with good grace, so honour follows a picture of defeat borne well. After it comes Capricorn 24, a woman taking the veil in a convent, where outward honours give way to a life given over to an inner calling.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Cancer 23, writers and readers meeting as a literary circle. The medals honour courage in the field; the circle honours talk, books and ideas, and the two can be read as public valour and private culture.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 22°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 22°52′ reads Capricorn 23, and so does one at Capricorn 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Capricorn 24 after Capricorn 22°59′, or back into Capricorn 22 before Capricorn 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 22, Capricorn 24 and Cancer 23 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 22 and Capricorn 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 22°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 22. 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: Valour is honoured, and honoured again.
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 22: Grace in defeat the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Capricorn 24: Dedication the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 23: Cultured exchange the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
