Face

fays

Definition

Face is the weakest of the five essential dignities — the small strength a planet can draw from its sign — worth +1 point in Lilly’s scoring. Each sign splits into three 10° "faces," also called Chaldean decans. Their rulers run in the Chaldean order of the planets — Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, then repeating — starting with Mars on the first face of Aries. The Greek term is prosōpon ("face") and the Latin is facies; the related Greek dekanos names the underlying 10° slice inherited from the Egyptian decans.

In Tradition

For Hellenistic, Arabic, and traditional Western astrologers, face is the weakest essential dignity, and dignity by face alone was held to count for very little. In horary, the question-answering branch, face adds just enough dignity to tip a close judgment. In a birth chart, Lehman recasts face as a register of anxiety rather than strength — "an area you are concerned about. Concerned can easily become anxious about, and worried about. It can even become fearful of."

In Practice

Astrologers find the face of a degree by counting 10° bands within each sign from 0° and looking up the ruler in the Chaldean sequence — Aries 0-10° Mars, 10-20° Sun, 20-30° Venus; Taurus 0-10° Mercury, 10-20° Moon, 20-30° Saturn; and so on. A planet in its own face takes +1 in the Lilly tally. In practice, when working out the almuten — the weighted dignity total — at a key degree, face hands one point to its ruler. Face was used by Ramesey for face-by-face delineation, by Lilly in his eclipse work, and by Wing in weather forecasting, while modern non-traditional Western practice mostly leaves it out. The Egyptian decans underneath the system — each face a 10° star-group that served as a time-marker before degrees were measured — are its historical root.

Historical Origin

Face goes back ultimately to the Egyptian decanal system (the Pyramid Texts and the decan lists at Senenmut, Seti I, and Dendera), where 10° star-groups served as star-clock markers. The Chaldean-order assignment of rulers is attested in Hellenistic sources (Hephaistio, Paulus, Valens) and consolidated in the Arabic transmission. Lilly fixes face as the weakest essential dignity (+1) in Christian Astrology (1647), and Lehman keeps the doctrine in the modern traditional revival.

Further Reading