The image
The image is the familiar night-time figure of the Christmas story, filling hung-up stockings while the household sleeps. The point of the picture is that he is not caught: the gifts appear in the morning and the giver is gone. No children or presents are described in detail. The picture comes from a single day's sitting in San Diego in 1925, the day Wheeler and Jones recorded Gemini 2.
Meaning
The tradition reads the image as giving without wanting credit. The pleasure is in the gift arriving, not in being thanked for it, and the giver arranges things so that no one sees the giving. Our keyword is Unseen generosity, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: gifts arrive by a kindness that prefers not to be caught giving. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person helps quietly, makes others' happy surprises possible from behind the scenes, or enjoys delight that is not tied to recognition. The figure comes from a playful custom, and the image keeps that lightness.
By Lynda Hill's rule the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Gemini 1, before it, is the boat with a glass floor on calm water; Gemini 3, after it, is a walk through the Tuileries, the great Paris garden. So the quiet looking of the glass-bottomed boat gives way to quiet giving, and the giving to a public stroll through a formal garden. Opposite lies Sagittarius 2, a sea flecked everywhere with white foam; as a reading aid it sets a restless surface on show beside a gift that comes without a sound.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 1°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 2°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 1°25′ reads Gemini 2, and so does one at Gemini 1°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 3 after Gemini 1°59′, or back into Gemini 1 before Gemini 1°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 2 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 1, Gemini 3 and Sagittarius 2 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
- Gemini 1 and Gemini 3, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 2, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 1°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 2; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 1. 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: Gifts arrive by a kindness that prefers not to be caught giving.
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
- Gemini 1: Seeing beneath the surface the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 3: Formal elegance the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 2: Rough water the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
