The image
The picture is of someone bent over a clear sphere, gazing into it intently. Crystal gazing is an old practice in which a person stares at a bright, polished surface until images seem to form; the image shows only the gaze, not what is seen. There is no client and no prophecy, just the attention and the glass. In 1925 the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler saw this picture for an unseen card, the one marked Aries 9.
Meaning
As a symbol, the crystal ball stands for focus. A clear, empty sphere gives the eye nothing to hold, so whatever appears comes from the one who looks, and the tradition reads the picture as a statement about attention held on a single point until something forms. Our keyword is Focused inner vision, and our keynote puts it in one sentence: concentration on a single clear point brings images from beyond ordinary sight. One way to see it in a chart is a placement where imagination, intuition or a long look inward plays a large part. The image is read as a picture of looking, never as evidence that looking reveals what is to come.
Lynda Hill calls the degree before a placement its Karmic Condition and the degree after its Quest Degree. Before Aries 9 is Aries 8, the ribboned hat set toward the east; after it is Aries 10, a teacher who gives very old symbols fresh shapes. By that reading the gaze grows from an outward turn to the dawn and leads toward giving old images a fresh shape. The degree opposite, Libra 9, can be read beside it as a reading aid: three paintings by old masters hung together, images already made and treasured, where this degree waits for an image to appear.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Aries 8°00′ up to, but not including, Aries 9°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Aries 8°44′ reads Aries 9, and so does one at Aries 8°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 10 after Aries 8°59′, or back into Aries 8 before Aries 8°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 9 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Aries 8, Aries 10 and Libra 9 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 8 and Aries 10, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Libra 9, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Aries 8°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Aries 9; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Aries 8. 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: Concentration on a single clear point brings images from beyond ordinary sight.
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 8: Facing the dawn the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Aries 10: Renewing tradition the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Libra 9: Treasured achievement the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Aries in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
