The image
A circle of figures, the forebears of a people or a family, sits together as a council. They are elders of every generation that came before, gathered in one place to deliberate. The picture is of the past present and attentive, as if those who came before still had something to say.
The council is read here as an image of inheritance and memory.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Backed by the past", and our keynote: the accumulated wisdom of a lineage sits in counsel. Both are ours.
Many cultures honour the idea that those who have gone before remain part of the community, and that their experience can still guide those who come after. We read the degree as the strength of drawing on what has been learned before, in a family, a profession or a tradition, when facing something new. One way to see the image is in a person who consults history, elders or old stories before deciding, and who feels supported by them. The image can also be read for the weight of the past, the sense of being watched by expectations one did not choose. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive and leaves its tone to the reader.
Lynda Hill reads this kind of image together with its neighbours, the one behind as source and the one ahead as course. The degree before is Aquarius 4, a practitioner from India's Hindu tradition, one person's long practice; here the practice becomes a whole lineage. The degree after is Aquarius 6, a player in one of the old mystery dramas, where the wisdom of the ancestors is carried forward through ritual and performance.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 5, rocks shaped by nature at the edge of a cliff. Both images are about what lasts; the rocks were shaped by wind and water over ages, the council by the experience of generations, and the two can be read as natural and human endurance.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 4°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 5°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 4°16′ reads Aquarius 5, and so does one at Aquarius 4°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 6 after Aquarius 4°59′, or back into Aquarius 4 before Aquarius 4°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 5 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 4, Aquarius 6 and Leo 5 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 4 and Aquarius 6, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 5, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 4°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 5; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 4. 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: The accumulated wisdom of a lineage sits in counsel.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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
- Aquarius 4: A healer's discipline the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 6: Ritual role the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 5: Enduring structure the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
