The image
The picture is a mockingbird singing in early spring, the first one heard that year. The mockingbird is known for its long, varied song, borrowing phrases from other birds and sounds around it. The image is not of a flock or a chorus but of a single singer whose voice tells everyone that winter is over. Of the 360 pictures Elsie Wheeler described in 1925 as Marc Edmund Jones wrote them down, this is Gemini 29.
Meaning
As a symbol, the first song of spring is a herald. One voice notices the change before others do and announces it, and its song is made of many borrowed phrases turned into something its own. Our keyword is Herald of renewal, and our keynote reads it in one line: one voice announces that the season has changed. The tradition would read a placement here as a place where a person senses a turn early and puts it into words, or gathers many influences into a single, cheerful expression. Coming near the end of Gemini, a sign of voices and exchange, the image is fitting: a song that is itself a conversation.
Lynda Hill names the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Gemini 29 comes Gemini 28, a man's insolvency made public; after it comes Gemini 30, beauties in their bathing costumes. Read by her rule, a failure admitted and closed makes way for a new season's first song, and the song looks ahead to a public show of form. The degree opposite, Sagittarius 29, shows a heavy-set boy pushing a lawnmower; as a reading aid it sets a summer chore done with effort beside a spring song given with ease.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Gemini 28°00′ up to, but not including, Gemini 29°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Gemini 28°04′ reads Gemini 29, and so does one at Gemini 28°57′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Gemini 30 after Gemini 28°59′, or back into Gemini 28 before Gemini 28°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 29 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Gemini 28, Gemini 30 and Sagittarius 29 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 28 and Gemini 30, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Sagittarius 29, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Gemini 28°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Gemini 29; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Gemini 28. 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: One voice announces that the season has changed.
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
- Gemini 28: Public failure the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Gemini 30: Display and appraisal the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Sagittarius 29: Effort for appearance the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Gemini in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
