The image
A parade ground in the morning, troops assembling, and an officer checking his notes or straightening his tunic before calling them to order. The drill has not begun; the picture is of preparation for practice, the officer readying himself to teach movements that must become second nature.
The drill is read here as an image of training, and nothing on this page concerns battle.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Drill", and our keynote: order is practised before it is needed. Both are ours.
Drill is repetition with a purpose: movements practised until they no longer need thought, so that they can be relied on under pressure. We read the degree as the value of rehearsal and routine, and the responsibility of the one who leads it. One way to see it is in a teacher preparing a lesson, a coach planning practice, or a person who builds habits so that, when a hard moment comes, the right response is already there. The image can also be read for the officer's own discipline, since he must be ready before he can make others ready. Readers of the Sabian symbols take it as a description of a quality.
Lynda Hill reads a degree's two neighbours as its background and its quest. Before it comes Pisces 14, a woman wearing a fox fur, comfort and display; here comfort gives way to discipline. After it comes Pisces 16, inspiration streaming in, where practised order is followed by ideas that arrive unbidden.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 15, a handkerchief made for show. Both pictures involve care over detail; the handkerchief is fine work made for display and kept, the drill is plain work done over and over until it can be trusted.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 14°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 14°56′ reads Pisces 15, and so does one at Pisces 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 16 after Pisces 14°59′, or back into Pisces 14 before Pisces 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 14, Pisces 16 and Virgo 15 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 14 and Pisces 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 14°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 14. 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: Order is practised before it is needed.
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
- Pisces 14: Luxurious protection the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 16: Inspiration the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 15: Refined heirloom the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
