A head of industry seated behind a broad desk

The image

A large desk, papers and telephones, and behind it a man who runs a great enterprise: the person through whom decisions about factories, workers and plans must pass. The picture shows him at the centre, still, while the activity he directs goes on elsewhere.

The figure is read here as an image of organisation and command, and the page says nothing about trade, earnings or their results.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Command of affairs" and our keynote: many threads are gathered and directed from one seat.

The captain of industry is a figure of the early twentieth century, but the image works without the period. We read the degree as the ability to hold a complex undertaking in mind and steer it: to know what every part is doing and how the parts fit. One way to see it is in a person who naturally takes the central chair in a project, or who is good at turning scattered efforts into one direction. The image can also be read for the isolation of that chair, and for the question of how much one person should direct. The Sabian tradition reads such pictures as descriptions to recognise and leaves the judgement to the reader.

Lynda Hill's practice of reading neighbours puts a past on one side of this degree and a purpose on the other. The degree before is Aquarius 15, two lovebirds sitting quietly on a fence; here quiet company becomes an office full of responsibility. The degree after is Aquarius 17, a guard dog keeping watch, where command gives way to loyalty and vigilance.

The opposite degree, Leo 16, the sun coming out as soon as a storm has passed, serves as a reading aid. Both pictures are about conditions; the man at the desk tries to manage them, while the sun after the storm shows them clearing of their own accord.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 15°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 16°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 15°03′ reads Aquarius 16, and so does one at Aquarius 15°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 17 after Aquarius 15°59′, or back into Aquarius 15 before Aquarius 15°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 16 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 15, Aquarius 17 and Leo 16 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 15 and Aquarius 17, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 16, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 15°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 16; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 15. 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: Many threads are gathered and directed from one seat.

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 15: Quiet companionship the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 17: Loyal vigilance the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 16: Clearing the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to