A man past his passions who teaches from experience

The image

An older man speaks to listeners. He is calm, and something in his manner suggests that the strong desires and ambitions of earlier years no longer drive him. What he teaches is not from books but from what he has lived through; his authority comes from that distance. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Aquarius 24.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Teaching from experience" and our keynote: what has been lived through and set aside becomes something to pass on.

The image joins two things: the letting go of strong attachments and the teaching that follows. We read the degree as the kind of understanding that comes after involvement, when a person can look back on what once consumed them and see it clearly enough to help someone else. One way to see it is in mentors whose advice is grounded in their own mistakes, or in anyone who turns a hard period into a lesson for others. The image can also be read as a question about distance, since teaching from detachment can become cold if the memory of feeling is lost. The tradition takes the picture as a description and attaches no promise to it.

After Lynda Hill, the degree that comes before can be read as background and the degree that comes after as the road on. The degree before is Aquarius 23, a large bear waving its paws, strength at play; here strength has become composure. The degree after is Aquarius 25, a butterfly whose right wing is better made than the left, where wisdom is followed by an image of uneven growth, a reminder that development is rarely even.

The opposite degree, Leo 24, a dishevelled, scruffy man, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. The scruffy man gives no thought to how he looks; the teacher has set aside his passions, and the two images can be read as neglect and deliberate letting go.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 23°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 24°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 23°59′ reads Aquarius 24, and so does one at Aquarius 23°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 25 after Aquarius 23°59′, or back into Aquarius 23 before Aquarius 23°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 24 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 23, Aquarius 25 and Leo 24 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 23 and Aquarius 25, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Leo 24, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Aquarius 23°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 24; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 23. 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 has been lived through and set aside becomes something to pass on.

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 23: Clumsy play the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aquarius 25: Uneven development the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Leo 24: Careless appearance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to