The image
The image is a quiver, the archer's case, filled with arrows. No archer, bow or target is shown; the picture is of the store itself, the shafts lined up and ready to be drawn. Each arrow has been made with care, straightened, fletched and tipped, and the quiver keeps them together until they are needed. In 1925 the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler saw this picture for an unseen card, the one marked Gemini 9.
Meaning
Read as a symbol, a full quiver is preparation. A purpose is only as good as the means to carry it out, and here the means are made and gathered, waiting for an aim. Our keyword is Ready means, and our keynote reads it in one line: purpose is stocked with the tools to reach its target. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person gathers skills, arguments or resources in advance, and where readiness matters as much as action. The image stops before the shot; which arrow is drawn, and at what, is not part of it.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before as the Karmic Condition and the degree after as the Quest Degree. Before Gemini 9 comes Gemini 8, industrial workers out on strike; after it comes Gemini 10, an aeroplane coming down out of the sky. Read by her rule, a halt in work gives way to tools stored for use, and stored readiness looks ahead to a bold, controlled descent. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 9, shows a woman on the stairs with her children; as a reading aid it sets care for those who are growing beside the gathering of means for an aim.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 8°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 9°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 8°44′ reads Gemini 9, and so does one at Gemini 8°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 10 after Gemini 8°59′, or back into Gemini 8 before Gemini 8°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 9 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 8, Gemini 10 and Sagittarius 9 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 8 and Gemini 10, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 9, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 8°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 9; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 8. 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: Purpose is stocked with the tools to reach its target.
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 8: Collective protest the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 10: Daring descent the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 9: Between levels the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
