Children skating on the ice

The image

The image is children on skates, out on a frozen pond or rink, gliding, falling and laughing. The surface that would be water in summer has become hard enough to carry them, and the children use it for speed and play. No adults or dangers are part of the picture; it is pure winter fun. Marc Edmund Jones wrote the picture down in San Diego in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described Gemini 24.

Meaning

As a symbol, skating is freedom on a firm surface. The cold has turned something fluid into something solid, and what might seem a hardship becomes a playground for anyone light and quick enough. Our keyword is Play on a hard surface, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: delight is found in moving freely over what has set firm. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person turns difficult or rigid conditions into occasions for skill and enjoyment, or finds lightness where others see only cold. The image belongs to childhood and keeps its high spirits.

Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 24 stands Gemini 23, the three young birds in their nest high up in a tree; after it stands Gemini 25, someone cutting back palm fronds. Read by her rule, life sheltered in a nest comes out to play in the open, and play looks ahead to the steady work of pruning what grows. Opposite lies Sagittarius 24, a bluebird on the doorstep of a house; as a reading aid it sets a small, bright visitor arriving at home beside children out on the ice.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 23°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 24°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 23°59′ reads Gemini 24, and so does one at Gemini 23°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 25 after Gemini 23°59′, or back into Gemini 23 before Gemini 23°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 24 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 23, Gemini 25 and Sagittarius 24 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 23 and Gemini 25, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Sagittarius 24, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Gemini 23°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 24; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 23. 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: Delight is found in moving freely over what has set firm.

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

• Gemini 23: Sheltered growth the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Gemini 25: Tending growth the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Sagittarius 24: Happiness at the threshold the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to