A jockey urging a racehorse on

The image

A racehorse at full gallop, and on its back a jockey, crouched low, hands forward, the whole body balanced over the horse's neck. The picture is of speed and partnership, a small rider and a large animal moving as one toward the finish.

The race is read as an image of effort and skill, and nothing here concerns wagers or their results.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Driving for the goal", and our keynote: skill urges a living power to its utmost. Both are ours.

A jockey does not supply the power; the horse does. What the rider brings is judgement, balance and the timing of the push. We read the degree as the art of drawing the most out of a force one does not wholly control, one's own energy, a team's, an animal's. One way to see it is in a person who is good at sustaining effort over a short, intense stretch, or at knowing when to ask for more and when to hold back. The image can also be read as single-mindedness, everything narrowed to the line ahead. Readers of the Sabian symbols take it as a description of a quality and attach no promise to the race.

After Hill, the degree that precedes this one can be read as the ground and the degree that follows as the aim. Before it comes Pisces 8, a girl sounding a bugle call, a summons; here the summons is answered at speed. After it comes Pisces 10, a pilot up among the clouds, where speed on the ground gives way to flight above it.

As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 9, futurist art taking shape under a man's pencil. Both pictures move toward what has not yet arrived; the artist draws a future on paper, the jockey rides toward a finishing line, and the two can be read as imagination and drive.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 8°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 9°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 8°14′ reads Pisces 9, and so does one at Pisces 8°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 10 after Pisces 8°59′, or back into Pisces 8 before Pisces 8°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 9 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 8, Pisces 10 and Virgo 9 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 8 and Pisces 10, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Virgo 9, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Pisces 8°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 9; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 8. 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: Skill urges a living power to its utmost.

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 8: Call to attention the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Pisces 10: Above the everyday the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Virgo 9: Drawing the future the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to