A cameo of a man whose face follows the outline of his country

The image

The image is a small carved portrait of the kind worn as a brooch or set in a ring: a man's head seen from the side, raised in relief. Looked at again, the line of his brow, nose and chin is also the outline of a country, so that face and map are one shape. A cameo is made to last and to be carried, and this one carries a landscape inside a likeness.

Meaning

The tradition reads the picture as a statement about belonging. A person is formed by the place they come from, its language, history and shape, and in turn the person gives that place a face others can recognise. Our keyword is Identity and homeland, and our keynote puts it plainly: a person's character is shaped by, and shapes, the place they come from. One way to see it in a chart is a placement that draws on roots, a region or a community, and that carries them outward as part of how the person is known. The cameo also hints at representation: a small fixed image standing for something much larger than itself.

Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree, and reads the three together. Here the one before is Aries 2, a comedian holding a laughing crowd, and the one after is Aries 4, two lovers walking a hidden lane. By that rule the cameo stands between a public, collective scene and a private, intimate one, a fixed portrait between two moving moments. The degree opposite, Libra 3, offers a reading aid of its own: a day dawns and everything has changed overnight, where this image fixes a likeness so it can last.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 2°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 3°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 2°02′ reads Aries 3, and so does one at Aries 2°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 4 after Aries 2°59′, or back into Aries 2 before Aries 2°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 3 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 2, Aries 4 and Libra 3 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 2 and Aries 4, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Libra 3, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aries 2°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 3; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 2. 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 person's character is shaped by, and shapes, the place they come from.

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

• Aries 2: Shared laughter the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aries 4: Private intimacy the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Libra 3: Transformation overnight the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to