The image
Inside a religious order, a cleansing: certain priests are being removed by their own brethren. The picture does not name the order or the reason; it shows a body turning on its own members to restore what it holds to be its integrity.
The image is read here as a symbol of reform from within. Some writers have claimed that a famous scientist's birth chart confirms this degree; such fits are chosen after the fact, and this page does not use them.
Meaning
Our keyword is "Cleansing the priesthood", and our keynote: a religious order clears out what does not belong in it. Both are ours.
A purge is a hard picture. We read the degree as the effort of any community, or any person, to remove from itself what has betrayed its purpose: corruption, habits or loyalties that no longer serve what it is for. One way to see it is in reform movements, in an institution facing its own failures, or in a person who sets out to clear their life of what contradicts their values. The image can also be read for its danger, since purges can be unjust and the zeal to purify can itself become a fault. The Sabian tradition leaves both sides open and reads the picture as a description of a quality.
Lynda Hill's custom is to read an image with the one beside it on each side, as its background and as its aim. The background is Pisces 24, an island where people live, a community bounded by the sea; here a community draws its own boundary. The aim is Pisces 26, the new Moon's influence split in two directions, where a cleared order faces a fresh beginning that pulls more than one way.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 25, a flag lowered halfway down its pole in public mourning. Both images belong to institutions marking a loss; the flag mourns openly, while the purge removes members in order to renew the whole.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 24°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 25°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 24°06′ reads Pisces 25, and so does one at Pisces 24°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 26 after Pisces 24°59′, or back into Pisces 24 before Pisces 24°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 25 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 24, Pisces 26 and Virgo 25 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 24 and Pisces 26, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 25, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 24°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 25; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 24. 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 religious order clears out what does not belong in it.
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.
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A famous birth chart with a placement in this degree confirms the image.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: An anecdote picked after the fact, and one telling of it rests on Rudhyar's wording. Not used as evidence.
Elsewhere on EsoTerrier
- Pisces 24: Bounded community the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 26: Divided beginning the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 25: Public mourning the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
