A Black, or Very Dark, Curtain, Like a Pall, Which Seems

The wording that circulates for this cycle of 360 degree symbols traces to a 1925 session in Balboa Park, San Diego, where Marc Edmund Jones worked with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler, drawing 360 blank cards in random order while she described what came to her for each one. Jones published the results in 1953. The phrasing now most widely read is not his; it is Dane Rudhyar's, who reworked the material into his own interpretive language for An Astrological Mandala in 1973, and that 1973 text remains under copyright, so it is not reproduced here.

Counting from Aries's start, this is the fifteenth degree, placing it in the sign's second decan. Its decan is ruled by Sun rather than Mars, which colors the degree with something Aries 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. A picture for this degree also survives from 1898, from Charubel's own independent series, published a generation before Jones's. He recorded a black, or very dark, curtain, like a pall, which seems to defy my vision. As the first fire sign, Aries favors the direct move over the considered one, a readiness to act that has not yet learned patience. Taken together, the position, the decan, and the old image give this degree a specific character within Aries rather than a generic one.