The image
A slender glass float with a scale marked on its stem sits in a jar of liquid. How deep it sinks shows how dense the liquid is; the same kind of instrument is used to check a battery's charge or a brew's strength. The picture is of measurement by floating, a reading taken without opening anything up. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Aquarius 26.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Measuring the charge" and our keynote: hidden energy is checked by a precise instrument.
What a hydrometer measures cannot be seen: the strength of a solution, the charge stored in it. We read the degree as the ability to gauge what lies beneath the surface, in people, in situations, in oneself. One way to see it is in a person who senses how much energy a group has left, or who checks their own reserves before taking on more. The instrument is simple and does not interfere with what it measures, so the image can also be read as tactful observation, learning the truth of a thing without disturbing it. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive, a quality of attention.
Hill's practice takes in the neighbouring images, the one preceding as source and the one following as goal. The degree before is Aquarius 25, a butterfly with unequal wings, development out of balance; here balance is measured. The degree after is Aquarius 27, violets heaped in a bowl of very old pottery, where the precise instrument gives way to living flowers in a vessel of great age.
The opposite degree, Leo 26, a rainbow arching overhead, works as a reading aid. Both pictures turn something hidden into something visible; the rainbow shows the colours hidden in light, the hydrometer shows the density hidden in a liquid.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aquarius 25°00′ up to, but not including, Aquarius 26°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aquarius 25°13′ reads Aquarius 26, and so does one at Aquarius 25°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aquarius 27 after Aquarius 25°59′, or back into Aquarius 25 before Aquarius 25°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 26 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aquarius 25, Aquarius 27 and Leo 26 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 25 and Aquarius 27, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Leo 26, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aquarius 25°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aquarius 26; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aquarius 25. 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: Hidden energy is checked by a precise instrument.
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 25: Uneven development the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aquarius 27: Old vessel, living flowers the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Leo 26: Bridge of colour the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aquarius in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
