The image
Bare rocks, rough and unshaped, and lying across them a cross, perhaps of wood, set down rather than raised. It is not on a church or a hill; it rests where it was placed, among stones. The picture is spare and quiet.
The cross is read here as a religious symbol in a picture, with respect and without speaking for any church.
Meaning
Our keyword is "The cross at rest", and our keynote: the sign of sacrifice lies among hard, plain things. Both are ours.
A cross raised high is a public declaration; a cross laid on rocks is something else, nearer to rest or to burial or to an offering left in a wild place. We read the degree as meaning found in hardship that has been accepted rather than fought: the burden set down, the effort that has become part of the ground one stands on. One way to see it is in a person whose faith or values are lived quietly, in difficult circumstances, without display. The image can also be read as a question about what has been laid down, and whether it is meant to be taken up again. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive.
Some writers have pointed to famous birth charts with a planet in this degree as confirmation of the image; such fits are chosen after the fact, and this page does not use them.
Hill joins each image to its neighbours, letting the earlier say where it starts and the later say where it heads. Before it comes Pisces 6, officers on parade in dress uniforms, display and rank; here everything is bare. After it comes Pisces 8, a girl sounding a bugle call, where the quiet cross is followed by a clear voice summoning others.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 7, the women's quarters of a harem. Both pictures concern lives given over to something beyond themselves, by choice in the one and by arrangement in the other.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 6°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 7°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 6°00′ reads Pisces 7, and so does one at Pisces 6°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 8 after Pisces 6°59′, or back into Pisces 6 before Pisces 6°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 7 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 6, Pisces 8 and Virgo 7 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 6 and Pisces 8, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 7, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 6°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 7; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 6. 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: The sign of sacrifice lies among hard, plain things.
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.
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A famous birth chart with a placement in this degree confirms the image.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: An anecdote picked after the fact, and one telling of it rests on Rudhyar's wording. Not used as evidence.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Pisces 6: Disciplined display the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 8: Call to attention the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 7: Many bound to one the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
