Desultory...
The first time I heard the word 'desultory' used was at about age 11. The live version of "Tom Dooley" by the Kingston Trio injected the phrase "It was a desultory day".
I loved the sound of the word... it seemed so descriptively apt, yet i did not really know what it meant. Since Tom Dooley was riding away from a crime he had committed, i imagined a man on horse in arid landscape imbued with a weather condition that affected the mind.
'Desultory' means 'marked by an absence of plan; disconnected; jumping from one thing to another. Or, 'digressing from the main subject' in a random way.
Leo 23 "A bareback rider", is a 'desultory' degree-symbol.
Not only is the word image for Leo 23 a direct reference to horseback riding, 'desultory' derives from the Latin, 'desultorius' meaning 'leaping in special reference to circus performers who jump from horse to horse.
'Desilire', to jump down, and 'salire', to jump also lie at the heart of desultory. The family of words commonly used today that spring from these roots include 'somersault' , 'sally', 'salient'.
If you have a placement in leo 23, you may well exhibit a manner of leaping from topic to topic (Mercury especially) or a knack for wandering aimlessly, or appearing to do so. Giving a public presentation, for example, may be more a matter of just 'winging it' without much of a plan. The tendency would be to be rather successful doing so... although sometimes even circus acrobats fall.
Recent Comments