Like the other 359 degrees in this set, this one goes back to 1925 and a session in Balboa Park, San Diego, where Marc Edmund Jones drew blank cards at random while the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described what she perceived. Jones's book reached print in 1953. The phrasing most people know, though, is Dane Rudhyar's 1973 version, An Astrological Mandala, still protected by copyright and not reproduced on this page.
Counting from Aquarius's start, this is the twenty seventh degree, placing it in the sign's third decan. Its decan is ruled by Moon rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Aquarius does not supply on its own. The narrower term division belongs to Saturn, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan. A picture for this degree also survives from 1898, from Charubel's own independent series, published a generation before Jones's. He recorded a Standard-bearer. As the sign that closes the social season, Aquarius fixes its attention on the collective and on what should be true for everyone. Taken together, the position, the decan, and the old image give this degree a specific character within Aquarius rather than a generic one. 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.