A squirrel staying out of sight of the hunters

The image

Hunters move through the woods, and a squirrel, high in a tree, keeps the trunk between itself and them, sliding round as they pass so that it is never in view. It is quick, still when it needs to be, and entirely alert. The picture is of avoidance as a skill.

The picture is read here as a symbol of self-protection, and the hunt is not read as harm.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Self-protection" and our keynote: small life survives by knowing when to disappear.

The squirrel cannot fight the hunters; it can only stay out of their way, and it does that well. We read the degree as the intelligence of retreat: recognising when visibility is a danger and quietly removing oneself. One way to see it is in a person who knows when to keep their head down, to let a storm of attention pass, or to protect what is fragile by keeping it unseen. The image can also be read for its cost, a life spent watching for threat. In a sign associated with sensitivity, the picture describes a defensive alertness that may be needed or may have outlived its use. The tradition leaves that to the reader.

Lynda Hill adds the degree on each side, the one behind as the ground and the one ahead as the goal. The degree before is Pisces 1, the stalls of an open market, public life and exchange; here a small creature chooses not to be seen. The degree after is Pisces 3, trees long since turned to stone, where the quick, hiding life gives way to life fixed and preserved.

The opposite degree, Virgo 2, a great white cross lifted high, serves as a reading aid. The cross is raised to be seen by everyone; the squirrel survives by not being seen at all, and between them is the difference between public witness and private safety.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 1°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 1°55′ reads Pisces 2, and so does one at Pisces 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 3 after Pisces 1°59′, or back into Pisces 1 before Pisces 1°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 Pisces 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 1, Pisces 3 and Virgo 2 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

Pisces 1 and Pisces 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Virgo 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Pisces 1°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 1. 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: Small life survives by knowing when to disappear.

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

• Pisces 1: Exchange the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Pisces 3: Fossilised past the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Virgo 2: Dominant faith the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to