The image
A small prism of cut glass sits in a beam of light, and on the wall beyond it the light spreads into a band of colours. The prism adds nothing; it only separates what the white light already held, so that each colour can be seen on its own. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Pisces 29.
Meaning
Our keyword is "A clear instrument", and our keynote speaks of a simple, precise tool that lets one part of reality be seen as it is. Both are ours.
The prism is the opposite of the dissolving, merging quality often linked with the last sign: it takes something whole and sorts it into its parts. We read the degree as clarity of analysis, the ability to see what a mixed experience is made of. One way to see it is in a person who can take a confused situation and name its elements, or who uses a method, a discipline or a plain question to make the hidden structure of things visible. The image can also be read as a reminder that the colours were in the light all along. The Sabian tradition takes the picture as a description of a quality.
With Lynda Hill's rule, this image is read between its forerunner and its follower. The forerunner is Pisces 28, a garden in full growth with the moon full above it, ripeness seen whole; here the whole is sorted into colours. The follower is Pisces 30, a great face in the stone of a mountain, the last image of the zodiac, where clear sight gives way to an ideal carved into the land.
As a reading aid, the opposite degree is Virgo 29, a man who learns hidden things by reading a paper. Both pictures are about seeing what is not obvious; the reader finds hidden knowledge in a text, the prism finds hidden colours in light.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 28°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 29°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 28°34′ reads Pisces 29, and so does one at Pisces 28°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Pisces 30 after Pisces 28°59′, or back into Pisces 28 before Pisces 28°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 29 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 28, Pisces 30 and Virgo 29 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 28 and Pisces 30, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Virgo 29, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Pisces 28°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 29; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 28. 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 simple, careful tool lets one part of reality be seen clearly.
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 28: Ripeness the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Pisces 30: Shaped by an ideal the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Virgo 29: Hidden knowledge the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
