Applause that arrives quickly and fades as fast

The image

The picture is less an object than a situation: a person, or a work, briefly in favour, surrounded by attention and praise, and then the crowd's interest moving elsewhere. One may imagine applause fading in a hall, or a name that everyone knew for a season.

It is read here as a picture of passing attention, and nothing on this page says that anyone's standing rises or falls.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Fleeting acclaim" and our keynote: approval comes quickly and goes as quickly.

Popularity depends on other people's moods, and moods change. We read the degree as an image of what it means to be seen by a crowd, with all the pleasure and the instability of that. One way to see it is in the lesson some people learn early, that attention is not the same as value, and that what lasts is what one does when no one is watching. The image can also be read as freedom, since a person whose popularity fades is released from the crowd's expectations. The Sabian tradition reads its pictures as descriptions, and this one describes a pattern familiar to anyone who has been briefly admired.

The adjoining degrees, as Lynda Hill reads them, give the image a beginning behind it and a destination in front. The degree before is Aquarius 9, a flag that changes into a living eagle, a symbol that gathers living force; here the force of public feeling ebbs away. The degree after is Aquarius 11, a man in private conversation with his own inspiration, where the noise of the crowd gives way to a quiet, inward voice.

The opposite degree, Leo 10, dew on the ground at dawn, works as a reading aid. Both images are of something brief; dew lasts only until the sun is high, and yet it renews the ground each morning, so the pair can be read as passing acclaim beside freshness that returns.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 9°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 10°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 9°21′ reads Aquarius 10, and so does one at Aquarius 9°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 11 after Aquarius 9°59′, or back into Aquarius 9 before Aquarius 9°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 10 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 9, Aquarius 11 and Leo 10 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 9 and Aquarius 11, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 10, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 9°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 10; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 9. 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: Approval comes quickly and goes as quickly.

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 9: Symbol becomes power the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 11: Quiet revelation the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 10: Freshness revealed the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to