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 Capricorn's start, this is the twenty first degree, placing it in the sign's third decan. Its decan is ruled by Sun rather than Saturn, which colors the degree with something Capricorn 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. This degree also carries an image from a different and earlier tradition. Charubel, writing in 1898, described a ferry boat in the act of taking people across a wide deep stream. As a cardinal earth sign, Capricorn begins by setting a standard it then expects itself to meet. Taken together, the position, the decan, and the old image give this degree a specific character within Capricorn rather than a generic one. Element and quality carry through every degree of Capricorn: it is a cardinal earth sign, and this degree inherits that basic temperament even as the decan and term add their own note.