The image
A street or a park on Easter morning, and people walking slowly in their best: new hats, spring colours, children dressed up, families arm in arm. The custom of the Easter parade is part of the picture, a public stroll to see and be seen.
The festival is read here as an image of renewal shown in public, with respect for its religious meaning and without speaking for any church.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Renewal displayed", and our keynote: a community shows itself renewed, in its best. Both are ours.
Easter falls in spring and celebrates new life, and the parade turns that meaning into something everyone can join. We read the degree as the pleasure of a shared fresh start, shown outwardly: new clothes, a clean house, a community that dresses up together. One way to see it is in people who like to mark renewal with ritual and appearance, or in moments when a group's change of heart becomes visible. The image can also be read for the gap between display and inner change, since new clothes are easier than a new life. The tradition takes the picture as a description and leaves its tone to the reader.
Lynda Hill would set this image beside its predecessor, as background, and its successor, as aim. Before it comes Pisces 16, inspiration streaming in, renewal felt from within; here it is worn on the street. After it comes Pisces 18, an enormous tent, where the walking crowd gathers under one roof.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 17, a volcano blowing out fire and ash. Both pictures are of release after a long season; the volcano bursts out at once, while the Easter crowd shows its renewal calmly and in good order.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 16°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 17°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 16°10′ reads Pisces 17, and so does one at Pisces 16°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 18 after Pisces 16°59′, or back into Pisces 16 before Pisces 16°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 17 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 16, Pisces 18 and Virgo 17 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 16 and Pisces 18, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 17, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 16°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 17; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 16. 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: A community shows itself renewed, in its best.
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 16: Inspiration the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 18: Gathering under one roof the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 17: Explosive release the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
