The image
The line is one of the shortest in the set: moonlight, and two fairies. It gives no wood, no garden and no watcher, and it does not say what the fairies are doing. What it gives is a light and a pair. Moonlight is the light of the hours when people sleep, and fairies are figures of folk tale who belong to those hours, small, quick and never quite seen in daylight.
Meaning
The tradition treats a degree image as a symbol to be read, the way one reads a picture in a dream, and that suits an image made of moonlight. Our keyword is Enchanted feeling, and our keynote says that delicate, imaginative life stirs when the ordinary world is asleep. The fairies are not explained; they are simply there in the light, two of them, so that whatever they stand for is shared rather than solitary. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a sensitivity that comes alive in quiet hours and among a very few people, a fancy that is real to whoever feels it and hard to bring into the day.
Lynda Hill's rule sets every degree between its neighbours, the one before as background and the one after as aim. Behind this degree lies Cancer 6, birds lining their nests with feathers, the careful work done by day; ahead lies Cancer 8, a parade of rabbits wearing clothes, where the small creatures of the night come out in costume. By her rule the nest made ready opens onto a dream, and the dream onto a play in which the animals dress up as people. The opposite degree, Capricorn 7, can be read beside it as a reading aid: a prophet of power whose face is veiled. Both images hide something, but where the fairies are delicate and nearly invisible, the prophet's hidden face carries weight and authority.
In a chart
A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 6°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 7°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 6°00′ reads Cancer 7, and so does one at Cancer 6°58′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 8 after Cancer 6°59′, or back into Cancer 6 before Cancer 6°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 7 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 6, Cancer 8 and Capricorn 7 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 6 and Cancer 8, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced
- Degree opposite
- Capricorn 7, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction
- A position at Cancer 6°00′00″
- Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 7; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 6. 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: Delicate, imaginative life stirs when the ordinary world is asleep.
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
- Cancer 6: Preparing for the young the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
- Cancer 8: Playing at dignity the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
- Capricorn 7: Veiled authority the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
- Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to
