The image
A performer in costume takes part in a sacred drama of the old kind, a play in which the story is religious or mythic and the actors stand for figures greater than themselves. The picture centres on one player, absorbed in the part, while the drama carries on around them.
The mystery play is read here as an image of ritual performance in general, not of any one tradition's rites.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Ritual role" and our keynote: a person takes a part in order to show something larger than themselves.
In a sacred drama the player's own personality steps back so that the story can come through. We read the degree as the value of roles that serve a meaning bigger than the self: the teacher in the classroom, the officiant at a ceremony, anyone who plays a part so that something shared can be seen. One way to see it is in a person who is most fully themselves when serving a form, and who finds freedom in the discipline of the role. The image can also be read for the risk of losing oneself in it. The tradition takes the picture as a description of a quality and does not tie it to any outcome.
Seen as Lynda Hill sees the neighbours, the earlier degree is the inheritance and the later degree the errand. The degree before is Aquarius 5, the ancestors gathered in council, the wisdom of a lineage; here that wisdom is enacted. The degree after is Aquarius 7, an infant breaking out of an eggshell, where the ritual drama of rebirth becomes a literal picture of something new emerging.
The opposite degree, Leo 6, a woman of the old school next to a modern young flapper, can be read beside it as a reading aid. Both pictures are about roles; the mystery player wears a role handed down for a sacred purpose, while the two women stand for two generations' ideas of how to be a woman.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 5°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 6°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 5°53′ reads Aquarius 6, and so does one at Aquarius 5°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 7 after Aquarius 5°59′, or back into Aquarius 5 before Aquarius 5°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 6 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 5, Aquarius 7 and Leo 6 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 5 and Aquarius 7, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 6, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 5°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 6; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 5. 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 takes a part in order to show something larger than themselves.
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
- Aquarius 5: Backed by the past the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 7: New kind of birth the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 6: Clash of generations the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
