A man alone, deep in talk with his own inspiration

The image

A man sits or walks alone, absorbed, as if talking with someone no one else can see. His companion is his inspiration, the idea or impulse that moves him, given the presence of a second person in the picture. The mood is intimate and still, a conversation held entirely in private.

Inspiration is pictured here as a companion in the image, and nothing on this page claims it as a voice from outside the person.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Quiet revelation", and our keynote: in private, a person meets the idea that leads them on. Both are ours.

After the noise of passing popularity in the degree before, this image turns inward. We read the degree as the experience of being addressed by one's own best idea, the sense that a thought has its own life and is asking to be followed. One way to see it is in writers, inventors and anyone who works out their direction in solitude, testing a notion by talking it through with themselves. The image can also be read for its isolation, since a conversation no one else can hear is hard to share. The tradition takes the picture as a description of a quality, and it attaches no outcome to the inspiration.

By Lynda Hill's practice, the degree before tells of a starting place and the degree after of an aim. Before it is Aquarius 10, popularity that does not last, the crowd's attention moving on; here the attention is the man's own. After it comes Aquarius 12, people on a flight of stairs, each a step above the last, where private inspiration finds its place among many stages of growth.

As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 11, children swinging back and forth under a giant oak. The children play, sheltered and carefree, under something old and strong; the man meets his inspiration alone, and the two can be read as supported play and solitary discovery.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 10°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 11°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 10°58′ reads Aquarius 11, and so does one at Aquarius 10°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 12 after Aquarius 10°59′, or back into Aquarius 10 before Aquarius 10°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 11 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 10, Aquarius 12 and Leo 11 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 10 and Aquarius 12, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 11, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 10°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 11; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 10. 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: In private, a person meets the idea that leads them on.

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 10: Fleeting acclaim the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 12: Levels of development the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 11: Supported play the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to