A duck and her ducklings on a small pond

The image

The picture is a pond and on it a duck followed by her ducklings, in a line or a cluster on the water. The world of the image is small and complete: water, reeds perhaps, a mother and her brood, nothing beyond. The ducklings keep close to the one who leads them, and the pond is enough for all of them.

Meaning

Read as a symbol, the pond is a life lived within its means and its bounds. Nothing in the scene strains toward anything larger; the duck has what she needs where she is, and the young are safe under her eye. Our keyword is Contentment in small bounds, and our keynote reads it in one line: a modest world, fully inhabited, is enough for the life it holds. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person finds satisfaction in the near and the familiar, in care for those close by, or in a small sphere well tended. Coming at the end of Aries, after all its beginnings, the image is a quiet place to rest.

By Lynda Hill's rule the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. The one before is Aries 29, a choir of heavenly voices; the one after is Taurus 1, clean water running down from the mountains, the first image of the next sign. Read that way, the harmony from above settles into a small pond, and the pond in turn looks toward the pure source that feeds all water. Across the circle lies Libra 30, a philosopher's head with three bumps of knowledge; as a reading aid it sets accumulated learning beside this degree's simple, lived contentment.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aries 29°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 30°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 29°41′ reads Aries 30, and so does one at Aries 29°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Taurus 1 after Aries 29°59′, or back into Aries 29 before Aries 29°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 30 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 29, Taurus 1 and Libra 30 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 29 and Taurus 1, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Libra 30, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aries 29°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 30; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 29. 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 modest world, fully inhabited, is enough for the life it holds.

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 29: Heavenly singing the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Taurus 1: Pure source the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Libra 30: Accumulated wisdom the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to