A Crown and Sceptre

It falls in the first decan of Aquarius (degrees 1 to 10), and is Aquarius's seventh degree. Its decan is ruled by Venus rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Aquarius does not supply on its own. The narrower term division belongs to Mercury, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. Aquarius is fixed air, a stubborn commitment to an idea or a group rather than to a single feeling. This degree also carries an image from a different and earlier tradition. Charubel, writing in 1898, described a crown and sceptre. This degree is part of the set Marc Edmund Jones recorded in 1925 with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler, in Balboa Park, San Diego, all 360 cards drawn blind and in random order. Jones published the images in 1953.

The interpretation now in wide circulation, though, is Dane Rudhyar's from 1973, not Jones's own text, and Rudhyar's wording stays under copyright and off this page. The value of a degree like this is less in prediction than in placement, a way of locating a moment precisely inside Aquarius's broader arc. Element and quality carry through every degree of Aquarius: it is a fixed air sign, and this degree inherits that basic temperament even as the decan and term add their own note.