The image
The picture is a book of great size and age, the kind kept in old libraries: heavy covers, thick pages, perhaps hand-lettered. It is not described as being read, only as being there, old and large. A book like this holds the work of many lives and outlasts all of them. Elsie Wheeler described the picture in 1925, and Marc Edmund Jones pencilled it on the card for Gemini 19.
Meaning
The tradition reads the great book as preserved knowledge. What was written long ago waits, and anyone who opens it can still hear it speak. Our keyword is Preserved knowledge, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: what was written down long ago still speaks to those who open it. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where a person is drawn to history, scholarship, records and inheritances of knowledge, or keeps something worth knowing for others. The book's size suggests the patience it asks of a reader; nothing in it comes quickly.
Lynda Hill names the degree before its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 19 is Gemini 18, two men chatting in Chinese; after it is Gemini 20, a self-service cafeteria. Read so, a living conversation gives way to a voice kept in writing, and the old book looks ahead to a place where many things are laid out at once to choose from. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 19, shows pelicans moving to a new home; as a reading aid it sets creatures leaving an old place beside knowledge that stays in one.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 18°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 19°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 18°54′ reads Gemini 19, and so does one at Gemini 18°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 20 after Gemini 18°59′, or back into Gemini 18 before Gemini 18°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 19 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 18, Gemini 20 and Sagittarius 19 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 18 and Gemini 20, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 19, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 18°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 19; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 18. 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: What was written down long ago still speaks to those who open it.
Claims about it
-
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.
-
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.
-
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 18: Common language the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 20: Plentiful choice the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 19: Changing ground the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
