The image
The picture is a master of music at a keyboard instrument, a piano or an organ, about to play or playing. No hall or audience is described, though the word master implies both. Behind the ease of the moment lie years of practice, which the image does not show but takes for granted. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Gemini 13.
Meaning
The tradition reads the musician as discipline made generous. Long, private hours of work turn into a performance that others enjoy without seeing the labour that made it. Our keyword is Mastery performed, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: years of discipline become a public gift. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person develops a skill to a high level and then shares it, or where the joy of mastery lies in its being heard. The keyboard brings many notes under two hands; the image is also about coordination of many parts into one sound.
Lynda Hill calls the degree before the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. The one before is Gemini 12, the spirited girl who talks back; the one after is Gemini 14, thoughts exchanged by telepathy with no words spoken. Read so, a raw young voice becomes trained expression, and expression looks ahead to communication that needs no words at all. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 13, is the history of a widow coming out; as a reading aid it sets a private story told at last beside a public art that has long been prepared.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 12°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 13°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 12°12′ reads Gemini 13, and so does one at Gemini 12°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 14 after Gemini 12°59′, or back into Gemini 12 before Gemini 12°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 13 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 12, Gemini 14 and Sagittarius 13 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 12 and Gemini 14, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 13, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 12°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 13; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 12. 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: Years of discipline become a public gift.
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 12: Self-assertion the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 14: Direct communion the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 13: Hidden history revealed the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
