The image
This image has no figure or setting. It describes a turn in outlook: a fresh approach to life that deals with things as they are, not as one would like them to be. Whether the change comes from experience, disappointment or simple growing up is left open. The picture belongs among the abstract images of the set, like the winged triangle and the double promise of Aries.
Meaning
The tradition reads the image as realism chosen as a starting point. It is not cynicism; it is the decision to begin from what is actually there, with its limits and its openings, and to build from that. Our keyword is Realism, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: experience opens a way that sees things as they are and starts from there. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person learns to set illusions aside and work with facts, or where a plain, practical attitude helps where enthusiasm alone would not. The image values clarity over comfort.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 11 stands Gemini 10, an aeroplane coming down out of the sky; after it stands Gemini 12, a spirited young girl who talks back, sure of herself. Read by her rule, a plunge from a height lands in a sober view of things, and that sober view leads to a young voice that insists on being heard. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 11, shows a lamp giving light to the body beside the left temple; as a reading aid it sets an inner illumination beside this degree's plain daylight view.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 10°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 11°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 10°58′ reads Gemini 11, and so does one at Gemini 10°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 12 after Gemini 10°59′, or back into Gemini 10 before Gemini 10°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 11 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 10, Gemini 12 and Sagittarius 11 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 10 and Gemini 12, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 11, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 10°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 11; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 10. 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: Experience opens a way that sees things as they are and starts from there.
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 10: Daring descent the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 12: Self-assertion the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 11: Light in the body the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
