A rug laid on the floor for children to play on

The image

A room, a rug spread across the floor, and children on it with their toys, building, sorting, rolling about. Someone has thought ahead and put the rug down so that the floor is warm and soft and the play has a place of its own. The adult who laid it is not in the picture; the care shows in the result.

Meaning

Our keyword is "A place to play" and our keynote: someone thinks ahead and lays down a soft place for children's games.

The gift in this image is modest and practical: not toys, not a lesson, just a surface that makes play easier. We read the degree as the kind of care that prepares conditions rather than directing what happens in them. One way to see it is in teachers, parents, organisers and hosts who arrange a space and then step back so that others can enjoy it freely. The rug also marks out a territory, so the image can be read as the value of boundaries that make freedom possible: within the rug, anything can be a game. Readers in the tradition take the picture as a description of a quality and attach no outcome to it.

Hill reads the earlier neighbour as the ground a placement rises from and the later as where it climbs. The degree before is Aquarius 21, a woman let down, her illusions gone; here comfort is offered again in the simplest form. The degree after is Aquarius 23, a large bear sitting and waving all four paws, where the children's play is echoed by the clumsy play of something huge and strong.

The opposite degree, Leo 22, a homing pigeon carrying a message, serves as a reading aid. Both pictures are about reliable service; the pigeon delivers faithfully over a distance, while the rug is a small kindness at home, laid down and left for others to use.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 21°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 22°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 21°45′ reads Aquarius 22, and so does one at Aquarius 21°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 23 after Aquarius 21°59′, or back into Aquarius 21 before Aquarius 21°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 22 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 21, Aquarius 23 and Leo 22 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 21 and Aquarius 23, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 22, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 21°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 22; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 21. 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: Someone thinks ahead and lays down a soft place for children's games.

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 21: Courage after loss the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 23: Clumsy play the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 22: Faithful delivery the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to