The image
A man stands with his face uncovered: a mask that hid it has just been pulled away, by someone else or by circumstance, and he is seen as he is. The picture holds the moment of uncovering, the face exposed, the mask in another's hand or fallen.
The face is the subject: until now it was covered, and the picture keeps the bare surprise of its uncovering.
As with each of the 360, Jones said he wrote the picture down as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described it.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Exposure" and our keynote: what was concealed behind a role is shown to everyone.
A mask can be a disguise or a costume; either way it lets a person be someone other than themselves. We read the degree as the moment when the role falls away and the person behind it is seen. That can be an embarrassment, a relief or a liberation. One way to see it is in a truth coming out, a pretence that could not last, or simply the end of a part that was played too long. The image can also be read as a picture of honesty demanded by others rather than chosen. The tradition reads such images as descriptions and does not say what follows the unmasking; this page reads it only as a picture of being seen.
Lynda Hill would read this picture with the one that leads into it and the one it leads into. The degree before is Aquarius 17, a guard dog keeping watch, vigilance that notices; here the watchfulness uncovers someone. The degree after is Aquarius 19, a forest fire put out, where exposure is followed by the end of something that had been burning out of control.
The opposite degree, Leo 18, someone who teaches chemistry, works as a reading aid. The chemistry teacher shows how substances change and what they are made of; the unmasking shows what a person is made of, and the pair sets knowledge of change beside exposure.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 17°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 17°17′ reads Aquarius 18, and so does one at Aquarius 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 19 after Aquarius 17°59′, or back into Aquarius 17 before Aquarius 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 17, Aquarius 19 and Leo 18 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 17 and Aquarius 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 17°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 17. 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: What was concealed behind a role is shown to everyone.
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 17: Loyal vigilance the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 19: Fire put out the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 18: Transmitting knowledge of change the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
