The image
Two small bright parrots, lovebirds, sit close together on the top rail of a fence. They are not doing anything in particular; they are simply together, in the open, at ease. The fence divides the land behind them, but the birds sit on it as a perch. In 1925 the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler saw this picture for an unseen card, the one marked Aquarius 15.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Quiet companionship", and our keynote: two who belong together are content to sit side by side. Both are ours.
Lovebirds are known for the closeness of their pairs. The image is not of courtship or drama but of settled company. We read the degree as the value of presence: being with someone without needing to say or do anything. One way to see it is in long friendships and partnerships where ease has replaced effort, or in a person who prizes calm companionship over excitement. The fence can be read as a boundary that has become a resting place, a line between two fields where two can sit together. The image can also be read for its stillness, a contentment that might resist change. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive and attaches no promise to it.
For a reader following Lynda Hill, the image before is the background and the image after the way forward. Before it comes Aquarius 14, a train swallowed by a tunnel, progress in the dark; here everything is light and still. After it comes Aquarius 16, a captain of industry behind his desk, where the quiet pair gives way to one person directing many affairs.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 15, a pageant in costume. The pageant is many people on show for a crowd; the lovebirds are two, unwatched and at ease, and the two pictures can be read as spectacle and intimacy.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 14°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 14°26′ reads Aquarius 15, and so does one at Aquarius 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 16 after Aquarius 14°59′, or back into Aquarius 14 before Aquarius 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 14, Aquarius 16 and Leo 15 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 14 and Aquarius 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 14°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 14. 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: Two who belong together are content to sit side by side.
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 14: Through the dark the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 16: Command of affairs the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 15: Collective spectacle the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
