The image
The image is an object and a direction: a broad hat trimmed with ribbons that stream in the wind, placed or worn so that it faces east. No wearer is described, though the hat suggests one; it is the kind of hat chosen to be noticed. The wind gives it movement, and the east gives it a time of day, the hour when light first comes up.
Meaning
Read symbolically, the hat is how a person presents themselves, the part that others see first, and turning it east sets that presentation toward beginnings. The ribbons show the wind, the force of the moment, catching what is worn and making it move. Our keyword is Facing the dawn, and our keynote says that something worn for show is turned toward where the day begins. In a chart the tradition would take a placement here as a place where style and self-display carry a sense of direction, where how one appears is tied to what one is setting out toward. The picture holds both together and judges neither.
By Lynda Hill's rule the degree before is the Karmic Condition and the degree after the Quest Degree. Aries 7, before it, is the man who speaks for himself in two worlds at once; Aries 9, after it, is someone gazing into a crystal ball. Read that way, competence in two settings becomes an outward show turned to the morning, and then a turning inward to look for images. Opposite, Libra 8 can be read beside it as a reading aid: a fire roaring in the hearth of an empty house, warmth kept up for no one, where this degree is all display toward an open horizon.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 7°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 8°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 7°07′ reads Aries 8, and so does one at Aries 7°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 9 after Aries 7°59′, or back into Aries 7 before Aries 7°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 Aries 8 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 7, Aries 9 and Libra 8 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
- Aries 7 and Aries 9, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 8, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 7°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 8; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 7. 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: Something worn for show is turned toward where the day begins.
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
- Aries 7: Dual competence the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 9: Focused inner vision the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 8: Warmth kept for no one the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
