The image
Two people in love walk together down a lane that is out of sight, screened by hedges or trees, with no destination named. The picture is quiet: no one watches them, and they are not going anywhere in particular. What makes it is the withdrawal itself, the turning aside from a busy road onto a path meant for two. Jones took the picture down in San Diego in 1925 from Elsie Wheeler's description of the card for Aries 4.
Meaning
As a symbol the hidden lane is about privacy chosen, not imposed. After the public scenes that open Aries, a pair step out of view so that they can attend only to each other, and the image suggests that some things grow only where no one is looking. Our keyword is Private intimacy, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: two people withdraw from the world to find each other. In a chart the tradition would take a placement here as a place where closeness, trust and a shared inner life count for more than display. It shows the moment of stepping aside.
Read with Lynda Hill's two neighbours, the lane follows the cameo portrait of Aries 3, a man whose face is the shape of his land, and it leads to Aries 5, a winged triangle. Hill calls the first the Karmic Condition, the ground the image grows from, and the second the Quest Degree, where it is heading: from a public identity, through a private bond, toward an idea that rises. Opposite, Libra 4 shows people gathered round a campfire, an open circle where this degree has a closed path for two; the two can be read side by side as a reading aid.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 3°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 4°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 3°39′ reads Aries 4, and so does one at Aries 3°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 5 after Aries 3°59′, or back into Aries 3 before Aries 3°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 Aries 4 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 3, Aries 5 and Libra 4 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
- Aries 3 and Aries 5, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 4, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 3°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 4; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 3. 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: Two people withdraw from the world to find each other.
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
- Aries 3: Identity and homeland the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 5: Uplifted mind the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 4: Shared inner warmth the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
