A garden at its height under a full moon

The image

A garden at night, every bed and border grown to its height: leaves broad, flowers open, vegetables heavy on the stem. Above it the moon is full, and its light silvers the whole growth. Nothing is still to come; the garden is as full as it gets this year. Jones took the picture down in San Diego in 1925 from Elsie Wheeler's description of the card for Pisces 28.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Ripeness" and our keynote: everything that was planted has come to its size.

Where the harvest moon of the degree before lights the gathering, this image dwells on the fullness itself. We read the degree as a picture of maturity, a moment when growth is complete and the garden can simply be seen. One way to see it is in a person or a project that has come into its own, or in the pause between finishing and moving on. A garden in full growth is also close to its turning, so the image can be read as an invitation to enjoy what has come before the season changes. The tradition reads a degree's picture as a description and does not say what follows the ripeness.

As Lynda Hill would read it, this image stands between a picture that opens the way to it and a picture it opens the way to. The way in is Pisces 27, the full moon of harvest time over the fields; the way on is Pisces 29, a prism of cut glass, where the moonlit garden gives way to light divided and examined with care.

The opposite degree, Virgo 28, a man with no hair on his head, serves as a reading aid. The bald man is a picture of bareness and determination stripped to essentials; the garden is a picture of fullness and growth, and between them is the bare and the abundant.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 27°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 28°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 27°57′ reads Pisces 28, and so does one at Pisces 27°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 29 after Pisces 27°59′, or back into Pisces 27 before Pisces 27°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 28 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 27, Pisces 29 and Virgo 28 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 27 and Pisces 29, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Virgo 28, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Pisces 27°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 28; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 27. 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: Everything that was planted has come to its size.

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 27: Fulfilment the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Pisces 29: A clear instrument the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Virgo 28: Bare determination the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to