A sailor who has left his ship and gone his own way

The image

A sailor, no longer with his ship, is ashore and on his own. He has left his post and the crew he belonged to; the picture does not say why, or what becomes of him. What it shows is the break, a man who has stepped out of the uniform order of a ship's company.

The image is read on this page as a picture of independence and its cost.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Breaking rank", and our keynote: one leaves the collective discipline, rightly or wrongly, to go his own way. Both are ours.

A ship depends on everyone keeping their place, and a sailor who leaves breaks that bond. We read the degree as the moment when an individual's conscience or need outweighs loyalty to a group. Our keynote keeps the judgement open on purpose: leaving can come from courage or from flight, and the image does not say which. One way to see it is in a person who walks away from an institution, a career or a set of expectations that no longer fits. The image can also be read for the loneliness of the choice. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive and does not praise or condemn.

A practice of Lynda Hill's adds the images on either side, earlier as context and later as intent. Before it comes Aquarius 2, a thunderstorm nobody saw coming, sudden change in the air; here the change is a person's own decision. After it comes Aquarius 4, a practitioner from India's Hindu tradition, where breaking away is followed by a picture of long, chosen discipline.

As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 3, a woman whose long hair is cut into a short bob. Both pictures are of breaking with convention; the sailor leaves a whole way of life, the woman changes how she presents herself, and the two can be read as departure and self-fashioning.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 2°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 3°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 2°02′ reads Aquarius 3, and so does one at Aquarius 2°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 4 after Aquarius 2°59′, or back into Aquarius 2 before Aquarius 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 Aquarius 3 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 2, Aquarius 4 and Leo 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

Aquarius 2 and Aquarius 4, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

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

A position at Aquarius 2°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 3; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 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: One leaves the collective discipline, rightly or wrongly, to go his own way.

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

• Aquarius 2: Sudden clearing the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 4: A healer's discipline the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 3: Self-fashioning the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to