A failure admitted in public, and the matter closed

The image

The image is a public announcement that a man cannot meet what he owes: a notice, a hearing or a newspaper column that makes the failure known to everyone. The picture is about the moment of disclosure, not its causes or what follows. It is one of the images in the set that touches the hard facts of ordinary life, and we describe it as a picture and nothing more.

Meaning

The tradition reads the image as a reckoning made public. Something that was hidden, perhaps for a long time, is acknowledged, and the acknowledgement, painful as it is, ends the pretending and allows a fresh start. Our keyword is Public failure, and our keynote reads it in one sentence: a failure is admitted in the open, and the matter is closed. In a chart one way to read a placement here is as a place where a person faces up to a mistake or a shortfall in front of others, and finds that honesty clears the ground. The image is a symbol of ending and owning up.

Lynda Hill calls the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Gemini 27, before it, is the Romani woman walking out from the trees; Gemini 29, after it, is the year's first mockingbird, singing. Read by her rule, a stepping out of cover gives way to a failure brought into the light, and the closing of one account looks ahead to a single voice announcing a new season. Opposite lies Sagittarius 28, a pretty stream crossed by an old bridge; as a reading aid it sets a way across that has held for years beside one that has given way.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 27°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 28°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 27°27′ reads Gemini 28, and so does one at Gemini 27°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 29 after Gemini 27°59′, or back into Gemini 27 before Gemini 27°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 28 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 27, Gemini 29 and Sagittarius 28 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 27 and Gemini 29, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Sagittarius 28, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Gemini 27°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 28; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 27. 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: A failure is admitted in the open, and the matter is closed.

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 27: Out of the wild the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Gemini 29: Herald of renewal the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Sagittarius 28: An old crossing the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to