Cat against mouse: an argument between unequal sides

The image

The image is close to a fable or a cartoon. A cat and a mouse face each other, and instead of chase and capture there is a dispute, with each side apparently making its case. The line does not say what they disagree about, nor who is winning the argument. What everyone knows about the two animals stands behind the picture: one hunts and the other is hunted, so the debate takes place under a shadow neither of them mentions.

Meaning

The Sabian tradition reads its images as symbols, and this one is almost a moral tale in a single line. Our keyword is Unequal dispute, and our keynote says that opposed natures contend as if the argument could be fair. The comedy lies in the pretence. Words are being exchanged as between equals, but the cat's teeth and the mouse's size are facts that no argument changes. One way to read a placement here is as a gift for debate together with a blind spot about power: the hope that reason alone can balance two sides that are not balanced. Another is the mouse's view, where speaking up to something larger is a kind of courage, however the talk ends.

Read after Lynda Hill, the degrees on either side are its background and its direction. Before it comes Cancer 3, the man in furs patiently leading a shaggy deer, a picture of strength used gently; after it comes Cancer 5, a train smashing into a motor car, a picture of a larger force that does not argue at all. By her rule this degree stands between care and collision, the point where the difference in weight begins to show. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Capricorn 4, shows a group climbing into a big canoe together: people of different strengths getting ready for a shared voyage, where the cat and the mouse are still deciding whether they can share anything at all.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 3°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 4°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 3°09′ reads Cancer 4, and so does one at Cancer 3°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 5 after Cancer 3°59′, or back into Cancer 3 before Cancer 3°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 Cancer 4 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 3, Cancer 5 and Capricorn 4 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

Cancer 3 and Cancer 5, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 4, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 3°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 4; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 3. 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: Opposed natures contend as if the argument could be fair.

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

• Cancer 3: Guiding the half-wild the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 5: Collision with the larger force the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 4: Preparation for a shared voyage the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to