The image
A large white dove flies in, carrying a message, as carrier pigeons once did. The bird is bigger than doves usually are, and its whiteness stands out. The picture is of arrival, a message brought from far off and delivered.
The image is read here in the familiar sense of the dove as a sign of peace, as a symbol rather than as a sign that any message is on its way.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Message of peace" and our keynote: good news arrives by a carrier that itself means peace.
In this picture the messenger and the message are of a piece. We read the degree as communication that mends a rift, or the kind of word that settles a matter and lets people breathe again. One way to see it is in a person who brings reconciliation, who carries kindness between people or groups who have stopped speaking. The bird's size can be read as the weight of the message, something important brought gently. The image can also be read as hope, the waiting for word that matters. The tradition reads it as a description of a quality to recognise.
Lynda Hill keeps the neighbours in view, the earlier as the condition a placement meets and the later as its quest. The degree before is Aquarius 19, a forest fire put out, the end of a destructive force; here the peace after it is announced. The degree after is Aquarius 21, a woman let down, her illusions gone, where good news is followed by disappointment borne with dignity.
The opposite degree, Leo 20, the Zuni honouring the Sun, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. Both pictures turn toward the sky; the Zuni offer reverence to the Sun, while the dove brings a message down from above, and between them devotion goes up and good news comes down.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 19°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 20°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 19°31′ reads Aquarius 20, and so does one at Aquarius 19°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 21 after Aquarius 19°59′, or back into Aquarius 19 before Aquarius 19°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 20 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 19, Aquarius 21 and Leo 20 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 19 and Aquarius 21, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 20, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 19°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 20; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 19. 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: Good news arrives by a carrier that itself means peace.
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 19: Fire put out the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 21: Courage after loss the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 20: Reverence for the Sun the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
