A vast tent pitched to hold a crowd

The image

A huge tent, the kind raised for a revival meeting, a circus or a fair, its canvas spread over poles and ropes, big enough for hundreds. Inside it is dim and crowded; outside, people are still arriving. The structure is temporary but vast. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Pisces 18.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Gathering under one roof" and our keynote: a whole community gathers under one tent.

A great tent creates a shared space wherever it is pitched. We read the degree as the power of a gathering to make a temporary home for many people: a meeting, a festival, a cause that brings a crowd together for a while. One way to see it is in a person who draws people in and gives them a sense of belonging, or in the experience of being part of something large and warm. A tent can be struck and moved, so the image can also be read as community that travels, held together by purpose rather than by walls. The tradition reads the picture as descriptive.

For Lynda Hill, a degree's neighbours are its past and its pursuit. The degree before is Pisces 17, strollers in their Easter finery, a crowd moving through a town; here the crowd comes in under canvas. The degree after is Pisces 19, a pupil taught by a master, where the great gathering narrows to two people and what passes between them.

The opposite degree, Virgo 18, a talking board on the table, serves as a reading aid. Both images are about seeking something together; around the talking board a few people look for hidden guidance, while under the tent many gather openly, and the pair holds the private séance beside the public assembly.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 17°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 17°47′ reads Pisces 18, and so does one at Pisces 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 19 after Pisces 17°59′, or back into Pisces 17 before Pisces 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 17, Pisces 19 and Virgo 18 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 17 and Pisces 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Virgo 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Pisces 17°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 17. 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 whole community gathers under one tent.

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 17: Renewal displayed the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Pisces 19: Transmission the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Virgo 18: Reaching for hidden guidance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to