The image
The picture is a boat whose bottom is a sheet of glass, resting on calm, clear water so that the people in it can look straight down at what lies below: fish, weed, stones, perhaps a reef. The water must be still for the view to work. Nobody dives; everyone looks. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Gemini 1.
Meaning
As a symbol, the glass floor is a way of studying a hidden world from a secure place. The depths are seen clearly, but the observer stays dry, held up by the boat. Our keyword is Seeing beneath the surface, and our keynote reads it in one line: a safe vantage lets one observe depths without being submerged. The tradition would read a placement here as a place of curiosity and observation, where a person looks into what is usually out of view, in others, in nature or in themselves, from a steady footing. The calm water matters: in rough weather the glass shows nothing.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 1 stands Taurus 30, a peacock showing off on a lawn of great age, the last image of Taurus; after it stands Gemini 2, Santa Claus filling the stockings unseen. Read by her rule, a display meant to be looked at gives way to a looking beneath display, and the looking leads toward a kindness that hides itself. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 1, is a gathering of old Union army soldiers round a campfire; as a reading aid it sets shared memory of the past beside this degree's quiet view into the present depths.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 0°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 1°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 0°48′ reads Gemini 1, and so does one at Gemini 0°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 2 after Gemini 0°59′, or back into Taurus 30 before Gemini 0°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 Gemini 1 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Taurus 30, Gemini 2 and Sagittarius 1 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
- Taurus 30 and Gemini 2, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 1, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 0°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 1; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Taurus 30. 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 safe vantage lets one observe depths without being submerged.
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
- Taurus 30: Display on old ground the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 2: Unseen generosity the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 1: Old comrades the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
