The image
The picture is two children of the Netherlands, perhaps in the clogs and caps of old postcards, talking to each other. Nothing else is happening; they are absorbed in their talk. The image has the charm of a nursery print, and its subject is conversation at its simplest: two voices, one language, no hurry. In 1925 the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler saw this picture for an unseen card, the one marked Gemini 15.
Meaning
The tradition reads the children as communication without complication. They are equals; neither is teaching or persuading, and the talk is its own reward. Our keyword is Simple exchange, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: two children talk together as equals. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person values plain conversation, friendship among peers, or the ease of speaking with someone who shares one's world. After the image of words not needed, this one returns to words, and finds them easy.
Lynda Hill reads the degree before and after a placement as its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree. Gemini 14, before it, is thoughts exchanged by telepathy with no words spoken; Gemini 16, after it, is a suffragist addressing a crowd. By her rule silent rapport becomes ordinary talk between two, and talk between two grows into one voice addressing many. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 15, shows a groundhog coming out to see whether it casts a shadow; as a reading aid it sets a creature consulting the weather alone beside two children consulting each other.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 14°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 15°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 14°26′ reads Gemini 15, and so does one at Gemini 14°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 16 after Gemini 14°59′, or back into Gemini 14 before Gemini 14°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 15 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 14, Gemini 16 and Sagittarius 15 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 14 and Gemini 16, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 15, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 14°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 15; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 14. 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: Two children talk together as equals.
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 14: Direct communion the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 16: Speaking out the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 15: Reading the signs the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
