The image
A butterfly at rest, wings open, and the two wings do not match. The right is finely formed, its pattern complete; the left is less perfect, smaller or less clearly marked. The difference is the subject of the picture.
The butterfly is read here as a symbol of uneven development, not as anything about a body. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Aquarius 25.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Uneven development", and our keynote: one side of a nature outgrows the other. Both are ours.
A butterfly needs both wings, and the image asks what happens when they grow unequally. We read the degree as the familiar experience of having developed one part of oneself further than another: a gift cultivated while another capacity lags, a skill polished while a feeling is left untended. One way to see it is as an invitation to notice the less developed side without discarding the strong one. The image can also be read as a picture of specialisation, a creature that has put its energy where it counts most. Readers of the Sabian symbols take the picture as a description.
Lynda Hill gives the image a before and an after, reading the first as origin and the second as aim. Before it comes Aquarius 24, a man who teaches from what life has shown him, a mind matured by experience; here maturity is uneven. After it comes Aquarius 26, a hydrometer that gauges a liquid's density, where unevenness is followed by an instrument made to measure.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Leo 25, a big camel making its way across the sands. The camel is built for one hard task, endurance in the desert, and does it well; the butterfly's mismatched wings can be read beside it as development that has not yet found its balance.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 24°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 24°36′ reads Aquarius 25, and so does one at Aquarius 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 26 after Aquarius 24°59′, or back into Aquarius 24 before Aquarius 24°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 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 24, Aquarius 26 and Leo 25 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 24 and Aquarius 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 24°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 24. 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: One side of a nature outgrows the other.
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 24: Teaching from experience the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 26: Measuring the charge the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 25: Endurance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
