The image
A woman out of doors in winter, a fox fur round her shoulders, soft and russet against her coat. She is warm and well turned out. The picture is of elegance and protection at once.
The fur is read as an image of comfort and display, warmth worn so that it is also seen, as Elsie Wheeler described the picture to Marc Edmund Jones in 1925.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Luxurious protection" and our keynote: comfort and status are worn against the cold.
A fox fur keeps out the cold, and it also announces something about the wearer. We read the degree as the way people protect themselves with things that also say who they are: clothes, manners, a style that keeps the world at a comfortable distance. One way to see it is in a person who takes care to be well presented, and for whom presentation is a kind of shelter. The fox, a clever wild animal, now worn, can also be read as wildness tamed into ornament, or cunning turned into elegance. The image raises its own questions about comfort and its costs, and the tradition reads the picture as descriptive, leaving those questions to the reader.
Read in the light of Lynda Hill's rule, the earlier neighbour is where the image comes from and the later one where it goes. The degree before is Pisces 13, a sword kept behind museum glass, power retired; here protection is soft and worn close. The degree after is Pisces 15, an officer getting ready to put his troops through drill, where personal protection gives way to the discipline of a group.
The opposite degree, Virgo 14, a chart of a family's ancestry, serves as a reading aid. Both images carry standing; the family tree records it through lineage, the fur displays it through appearance, and the pair sets inherited place beside chosen presentation.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 13°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 14°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 13°19′ reads Pisces 14, and so does one at Pisces 13°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 15 after Pisces 13°59′, or back into Pisces 13 before Pisces 13°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 14 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 13, Pisces 15 and Virgo 14 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 13 and Pisces 15, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 14, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 13°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 14; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 13. 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: Comfort and status are worn against the cold.
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.
