The image
A square is shown with bright light striking one side and the other three left darker. The figure is as plain as the winged triangle before it, but heavier: four equal sides, a shape that stands firmly where it is. The interest of the picture is the light, which is strong and one-sided, so that one face is sharply visible and the others have to be guessed.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, the lit square is about seeing part of something solid clearly and mistaking it for the whole. The square can stand for any settled situation, a body of facts or a fixed arrangement, and the strong light for attention, which shows one side in full and leaves the rest in shade. Our keyword is Partial illumination, and our keynote reads it in a sentence: only one face of a solid situation is lit; the rest waits to be understood. In a chart the tradition would look at a placement here as a place of sharp but narrow insight, strong where it shines and incomplete elsewhere. Turning the square, or moving the lamp, is the obvious next step the image suggests.
After Lynda Hill, the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Before Aries 6 comes Aries 5, the winged triangle, an idea in flight; after it comes Aries 7, a man who speaks for himself in two worlds at once. So a rising idea lands on something solid, half lit, and the following image asks for the competence to work on both sides of it. The degree opposite, Libra 6, a man's ideals set into crystal, can be read beside it as a reading aid: a light that shows one face here, a clarity hardened into many facets there.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 5°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 6°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 5°53′ reads Aries 6, and so does one at Aries 5°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 7 after Aries 5°59′, or back into Aries 5 before Aries 5°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 6 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 5, Aries 7 and Libra 6 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 5 and Aries 7, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 6, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 5°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 6; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 5. 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: Only one face of a solid situation is lit; the rest waits to be understood.
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 5: Uplifted mind the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 7: Dual competence the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 6: Crystallised ideals the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
