The image
The image is two men speaking together in Chinese, at ease with each other. To someone who does not speak the language the talk is closed; to the two of them it is the most natural thing in the world. The picture does not say where they are or what they discuss; the language itself is the subject. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Gemini 18.
Meaning
As a symbol, a shared language is a bond. It holds memories, humour and assumptions that outsiders cannot reach, and speaking it with someone is a kind of homecoming. Our keyword is Common language, and our keynote reads it in one line: two people speak together in the language they share. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person finds understanding with those who share their background, profession or way of speaking, and where belonging is felt through words. The image describes two men talking; it reads nothing into them beyond that.
Lynda Hill reads a degree beside its Karmic Condition, the degree before, and its Quest Degree, the degree after. Before Gemini 18 stands Gemini 17, a head of health fading into a head of the mind; after it stands Gemini 19, a huge book from long ago. Read by her rule, energy turned to thought finds its way into speech, and living speech looks ahead to an old book in which language has been kept. Opposite lies Sagittarius 18, little ones wearing bonnets against the sun; as a reading aid it sets children protected by their elders beside adults at home in their own tongue.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 17°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 18°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 17°17′ reads Gemini 18, and so does one at Gemini 17°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 19 after Gemini 17°59′, or back into Gemini 17 before Gemini 17°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 18 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 17, Gemini 19 and Sagittarius 18 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 17 and Gemini 19, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 18, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 17°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 18; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 17. 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 people speak together in the language they share.
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 17: From vigour to thought the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 19: Preserved knowledge the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 18: Little ones outdoors the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
