A very small child reaches into the water for a fish

The image

The picture is a moment at the water's edge. A very small girl, with no clothes on, as small children at the shore often are, leans toward the water and tries to grab a fish. The line does not say whether she catches it, and that is part of the image: fish are quick, slippery and hard to hold, and her hands are small. Nothing frightens her; she reaches because it moves.

Meaning

The tradition reads its images as symbols, and this one is a picture of curiosity before it has learned caution. Our keyword is Innocent reaching, and our keynote says that unguarded curiosity goes after what moves in the depths. The girl has no tools, no net and no plan, and she does not need them to want the fish. One way to read a placement in this degree is as a direct, unprotected interest in what lies below the surface, in feelings, in other people, in things half seen, together with the likelihood that the first grab comes up empty. Water in this image is not a threat; it is simply the place where the interesting things are.

In Lynda Hill's practice the previous degree is the ground a placement grows from and the next is the direction it takes. The ground here is Cancer 8, rabbits parading in clothes, a world of costume and copied manners; the direction is Cancer 10, a big diamond whose cutting is not finished. By her rule the child who has dropped every costume reaches for something living, and the next degree turns to something of great worth that still has to be shaped. As a reading aid, the opposite degree, Capricorn 9, is an angel holding a harp: harmony offered from above, against a small person reaching down into the water for something she cannot yet hold.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Cancer 8°00′ up to, but not including, Cancer 9°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Cancer 8°14′ reads Cancer 9, and so does one at Cancer 8°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Cancer 10 after Cancer 8°59′, or back into Cancer 8 before Cancer 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 Cancer 9 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Cancer 8, Cancer 10 and Capricorn 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

Cancer 8 and Cancer 10, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Capricorn 9, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Cancer 8°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Cancer 9; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Cancer 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: Unguarded curiosity goes after what moves in the depths.

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 8: Playing at dignity the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Cancer 10: Rough value the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Capricorn 9: Harmony from above the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Cancer in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to