The image
A barometer hangs on a wall or stands on a desk: a dial or a column of mercury that rises and falls with the weight of the air. Someone glances at it before going out. The picture is of a small, precise instrument that makes something invisible readable.
The barometer is an image here, and the degree is read as a symbol of attentiveness.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Reading the pressure", and our keynote: an instrument shows what the atmosphere is about to do. Both are ours.
The pressure of the air cannot be seen, only measured. We read the degree as sensitivity to conditions that others do not notice: the mood of a room, the tension in a group, the change that is starting before anyone names it. One way to see it is in a person whom others rely on to sense how things stand, or in the habit of checking the atmosphere before acting. A barometer reads but does not decide, and the image can also be read as the limit of measurement: knowing the pressure is not the same as knowing what to do. The tradition reads a degree's picture as a description, and this one describes a way of attending, not anything about what is to come.
Hill's neighbours give this degree its frame: the earlier one what it stands on, the later one what it reaches toward. Before it comes Aquarius 12, people on a flight of stairs at different heights; here the levels are of air pressure rather than development. After it comes Aquarius 14, a train swallowed by a tunnel, where reading the atmosphere gives way to going on through a passage in the dark.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 13, an elderly ship's captain in his rocking chair. The old captain once read the weather for a living and has now earned his rest; the barometer goes on reading it, and the two can be read as experience and instrument.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 12°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 12°12′ reads Aquarius 13, and so does one at Aquarius 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 14 after Aquarius 12°59′, or back into Aquarius 12 before Aquarius 12°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 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 12, Aquarius 14 and Leo 13 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 12 and Aquarius 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 12°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 12. 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: An instrument shows what the atmosphere is about to do.
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 12: Levels of development the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 14: Through the dark the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 13: Earned rest the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
