A Square Patch of Ground, Resembling What Might Be Set Apart

It falls in the first decan of Virgo (degrees 1 to 10), and is Virgo's fourth degree. Its decan is ruled by Sun rather than Mercury, which colors the degree with something Virgo 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. Virgo is mutable earth, occupied with the fine adjustment of material that fixed Taurus would rather leave alone. Before Jones and Wheeler ever met, the Welsh astrologer Charubel had already published a complete set of 360 degree images in 1898.

For this degree, his book pictures a square patch of ground, resembling what might be set apart for lawn tennis; covered with red cloth, or what resembles such. 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. None of this is meant as prophecy; it is a way of describing where, precisely, this degree sits inside Virgo's larger pattern.