Gemini 23 Sabian symbol: Sheltered growth

The Sabian symbol for Gemini 23 is a picture in which three fledglings sit in a nest at the top of a tree. The twenty-third image of Gemini is a picture of protected growth, and the tradition reads it as a symbol of new life developing in safety until it is ready to fly.

The image

The picture is a nest built high in a tree, and in it three young birds, not yet able to fly, waiting for food. The parents are not shown. The height keeps the nest out of reach of most dangers, and the fledglings have nothing to do but grow. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Gemini 23.

Meaning

The tradition reads the nest as a time of safe development. The young birds are fed, warm and out of harm's way, and their only task is to grow strong enough to leave. Our keyword is Sheltered growth, and our keynote reads it in one line: new life develops safely, high above the ground, until it can fly. In a chart a placement here can be read as a place where a person needs, or gives, a protected setting in which something new can mature: a skill, an idea, a family. The image holds the time before flight; the leaving is implied but not shown. Three young birds rather than one also suggest growth that is shared.

Lynda Hill reads the degree before as the Karmic Condition and the degree after as the Quest Degree. Before Gemini 23 comes Gemini 22, the dance held in a barn; after it comes Gemini 24, children skating on the ice. By her rule a community's celebration gives way to a quiet, protected nest, and the nest looks ahead to young ones moving freely and joyfully over a hard surface. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 23, is people arriving from abroad to make a new home; as a reading aid it sets newcomers building a place to belong beside young ones still sheltered in the place they were born.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 22°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 23°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 22°22′ reads Gemini 23, and so does one at Gemini 22°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 24 after Gemini 22°59′, or back into Gemini 22 before Gemini 22°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 23 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 22, Gemini 24 and Sagittarius 23 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 22 and Gemini 24, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
Degree opposite: Sagittarius 23, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
A position at Gemini 22°00′00″: Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 23; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 22. 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: New life develops safely, high above the ground, until it can fly.

Claims about it

The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.
false

What 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.
false

What 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.
false

What 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

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Three young birds in their nest high up in a tree

Facts