Libra 21

Marc Edmund Jones assembled this degree, along with the other 359, from a 1925 sitting with the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler in Balboa Park, San Diego, drawing all the cards at random so nothing could be anticipated. His 1953 book set the images down for the first time. The interpretive language read today, however, belongs to Dane Rudhyar's 1973 An Astrological Mandala, still in copyright, and it is not quoted on this page.

Counting from Libra's start, this is the twenty first degree, placing it in the sign's third decan. Its decan is ruled by Jupiter rather than Venus, which colors the degree with something Libra does not supply on its own. The term ruler here is also Jupiter, so the finer division agrees with the decan rather than adding a separate voice.

A separate nineteenth century source gives this degree its own picture. Charubel's 1898 sequence, unconnected to the later Sabian material, records a cross formed of darts, that is, having a barbed termination to each arm. As a cardinal air sign, Libra initiates through relationship, weighing one position against another before committing. Taken together, the position, the decan, and the old image give this degree a specific character within Libra rather than a generic one.

Charubel's image for this degree is an emblem with teeth: a cross formed of darts, each arm ending in a barb. The cross is the oldest figure of meeting, two lines intersecting, four directions joined at a centre, and in Libra's territory it naturally reads as relationship itself, paths crossing. But these arms are missiles, and barbed, and a barb has one function: it makes withdrawal more damaging than entry. Assembled, the emblem describes a meeting point built out of things said or done that cannot be cleanly taken back, the argument whose four winds are all armed, the household or negotiation where every axis of contact carries a point that will tear on retraction.

Read against the twenty first degree of Libra this is the sign shown its own war form, conflict conducted not with honest blades but with lodged remarks, grievances designed, consciously or not, to stay in. The image's wisdom is anatomical: barbs hurt most when pulled straight out, and surgeons know the answer is care, angle and sometimes pushing through rather than yanking back, which is decent counsel for extracting oneself from weaponised entanglements. The degree can also be read outward, as sacrifice militarised, a cross made of weapons standing where a cross of mercy might have stood, devotion turned combative. On a natal Mercury or Mars this degree tends to mark sharp tongues in fair mouths, and its advice follows the emblem: fletch fewer words, blunt the barbs before speaking, and when one is lodged, remove it the careful way.