The image
A figure descends a rocky mountainside, carrying what he has received at the top: the new law, given on Sinai. The picture recalls the biblical account of the tablets brought down to the waiting people, and it shows the descent, the moment between the summit and the camp.
The scripture is part of the picture, and this page reads the image as a symbol of revelation, with respect for the traditions that hold the story and without speaking for them.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Revelation carried down" and our keynote: revelation is carried from the heights into the life of the people.
What matters in the image is the carrying. Insight gained alone at the top of a mountain has to be brought down and made part of ordinary life, and that is a different task from receiving it. We read the degree as the work of translating a vision of how things should be into rules, habits and shared commitments. One way to see it is in a person who returns from a retreat, a course of study or a turning point with something to share, and finds that sharing it is the harder part. The image can also be read for the weight of what is carried and the responsibility of the carrier. The tradition reads it as a description of a quality.
As Lynda Hill reads the neighbours of a degree, the one below it is where it starts and the one above it where it is going. It starts from Pisces 21, a child holding a lamb with an attendant close by, innocence protected; here protection becomes a law for many. It goes toward Pisces 23, spirit phenomena of the kind spiritists report, where the revelation from the mountain is followed by a picture of contact with the unseen in a darkened room.
The opposite degree, Virgo 22, the heraldic arms of a royal house, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. Both are emblems of authority; the coat of arms is inherited through a family, while the new law is received and carried down for a whole people.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 21°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 22°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 21°15′ reads Pisces 22, and so does one at Pisces 21°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 23 after Pisces 21°59′, or back into Pisces 21 before Pisces 21°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 22 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 21, Pisces 23 and Virgo 22 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 21 and Pisces 23, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 22, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 21°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 22; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 21. 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: Revelation is carried from the heights into the life of the people.
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 21: Tender company the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 23: Contact with the unseen the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 22: Inherited status the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
