A Star Surrounded with Many Rings

It falls in the second decan of Leo (degrees 11 to 20), and is Leo's nineteenth degree. Its decan is ruled by Jupiter rather than the Sun, which colors the degree with something Leo 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. As the middle fire sign, Leo turns the raw start of Aries into something performed, sustained, and given a name. This degree also carries an image from a different and earlier tradition. Charubel, writing in 1898, described a star surrounded with many rings. This is one of the 360 degree images that Marc Edmund Jones obtained in 1925 by drawing blank cards, shuffled at random, while the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described her impressions in Balboa Park, San Diego.

Jones's own account followed in 1953, but the version generally read today is Dane Rudhyar's, published in 1973 as An Astrological Mandala; that later text is under copyright until 2069 and is withheld from this page rather than quoted. The value of a degree like this is less in prediction than in placement, a way of locating a moment precisely inside Leo's broader arc. Element and quality carry through every degree of Leo: it is a fixed fire sign, and this degree inherits that basic temperament even as the decan and term add their own note.