A train disappearing into the mouth of a tunnel

The image

A train runs along its track and enters a tunnel; the front cars vanish into the dark while the rest follow. From outside, the train seems to be swallowed by the hill. Inside, it keeps moving, on rails laid in advance, toward the light at the other end.

The picture is described as an image of passage, and nothing in it is read as harm or danger.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Through the dark" and our keynote: progress continues through a passage where nothing can be seen.

A tunnel is a way through an obstacle too large to go around. We read the degree as the experience of continuing when the way ahead cannot be seen, trusting the track that others have laid. One way to see it is in a stretch of life or work where there is no view, only the knowledge that one is still moving. The image can also be read as concentration, since inside a tunnel there is nothing to look at but the way forward. A tunnel ends, and the picture carries that too. Readers of the Sabian symbols take the image as a description of a quality and do not read it as an account of hard times.

Lynda Hill reads the image beside its two neighbours, as if the earlier set the stage and the later named the goal. The degree before is Aquarius 13, a barometer reading the air, attention to conditions; here conditions cannot be read at all, only passed through. The degree after is Aquarius 15, two lovebirds perched on a fence, where the train comes out of the dark into a quiet, open picture of companionship.

The opposite degree, Leo 14, the human soul waiting for a chance to express itself, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. Both images are about something not yet visible; the soul waits, while the train goes on moving through the dark.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 13°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 13°49′ reads Aquarius 14, and so does one at Aquarius 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 15 after Aquarius 13°59′, or back into Aquarius 13 before Aquarius 13°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 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 13, Aquarius 15 and Leo 14 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 13 and Aquarius 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 13°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 13. 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: Progress continues through a passage where nothing can be seen.

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 13: Reading the pressure the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 15: Quiet companionship the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 14: Waiting to be expressed the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to