A New Moon, but Only the Smallest Portion of It to Be Seen

This degree also carries an image from a different and earlier tradition. Charubel, writing in 1898, described a new Moon, but only the smallest portion of it to be seen in the western sky. It falls in the second decan of Leo (degrees 11 to 20), and is Leo's eleventh 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 Venus, a still finer layer of rulership laid across the sign and decan.

The 1925 origin of this degree is well documented: Marc Edmund Jones, working with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler in Balboa Park, San Diego, drew all 360 blank cards at random and recorded her impressions as they came. Jones published the set in 1953. The wording generally read today, however, belongs to Dane Rudhyar, who reworked it in 1973 for An Astrological Mandala, a book still under copyright and not quoted here. Leo is fixed fire, a sign that wants its warmth to be visible and its identity to be recognized rather than merely felt. The point of tracking a degree this closely is not to predict an event but to place it exactly within Leo's span. 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.