The image
A room with the door shut. Inside, a handful of men in business clothes sit together, talking over something that is not meant for anyone outside. The picture shows only the meeting and the closed door; what is decided is not part of it. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Capricorn 30.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Closed doors" and our keynote: plans are made in private, among a few.
Capricorn closes with an image of organisation out of public view. We read the degree as the work of deciding before announcing: the small group that sets a course, the conversation that shapes what others later see. One way to see it is in a person who works best in confidence, who thinks things through with trusted colleagues before speaking. The image can also be read for its exclusion, since a closed door keeps people out as well as discussions in, and the question of whose interests the meeting serves is part of the picture. Readers of the Sabian symbols take it as a description and do not read it as a judgement.
Hill pairs each degree with the ones beside it, the one before as its background and the one after as its quest. Before it comes Capricorn 29, a woman reading the leaves in her teacup, private reflection on small signs; here the reflection is shared among a few and turned into plans. After it comes Aquarius 1, a mission church of sun-baked mud brick from long ago, where the closed room gives way to a simple building made for a whole community.
The opposite degree, Cancer 30, a member of a society of descendants of the American Revolution, serves as a reading aid. Both pictures are about belonging to a select group; the society is joined by lineage, the meeting by position and purpose.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Capricorn 29°00′ up to, but not including, Capricorn 30°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Capricorn 29°11′ reads Capricorn 30, and so does one at Capricorn 29°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 1 after Capricorn 29°59′, or back into Capricorn 29 before Capricorn 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 Capricorn 30 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Capricorn 29, Aquarius 1 and Cancer 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
- Capricorn 29 and Aquarius 1, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Cancer 30, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Capricorn 29°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Capricorn 30; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Capricorn 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: Plans are made in private, among a few.
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 29: Reading small signs the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 1: Enduring foundation the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Cancer 30: Pride of lineage the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Capricorn in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
