Face

Meaning

Each sign of 30° can be split into three equal parts of 10°. Each part is a face (also called a decan or decanate) and has a planetary ruler. A planet in one of the faces it rules is in its own face, the fifth and smallest of the essential dignities.

Face is a slight dignity. Lilly gives it one point and compares a planet with little dignity other than its face to a person on the point of being turned out of doors, struggling to keep up credit and reputation [3]. It is enough, however, to stop a planet being called peregrine [3].

Decan comes from Greek dekanos, from deka, "ten". The Greek prosōpon, "face" or "mask", gives the other name; the Arabic is wajh, "face", and the Latin facies.

Origin and history

The decans began in Egypt, long before horoscopic astrology, as 36 groups of stars rising in succession through the year and used to mark the hours of the night [5]. In the Hellenistic period each decan was given 10° of the zodiac, and the decans were associated with gods, figures and parts of the body. Al-Biruni records that the Greeks, Indians and Babylonians each pictured a figure rising with each face, but he declines to describe them, saying it would be useless because the astrological books available to him gave no instructions for using them [2].

The planetary rulers used as the dignity follow the Chaldean order of the planets, the order of their apparent speeds from slowest to fastest: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. The sequence starts with Mars at 0° Aries and runs on without a break through all 36 faces, ending with Mars again in the last face of Pisces. Al-Biruni gives exactly this arrangement as agreed by the Persians and Greeks [2].

Ptolemy does not use these faces. In his chapter on faces he uses the word for a different idea: a planet is in its "proper face" when it stands in the same angular relationship to the Sun and Moon as its domicile has to theirs, for example Venus sextile to the lights, western of the Sun and eastern of the Moon [1]. That usage did not become standard; the decan faces did.

Indian astrology has its own three-part division, the drekkāṇa. Al-Biruni notes that its rulers differ: the first third belongs to the ruler of the sign itself, the second to the ruler of the fifth sign from it, the third to the ruler of the ninth [2]. Some modern Western astrologers use a version of this "triplicity decan" scheme, which should not be confused with the Chaldean faces.

How it is used

The faces in the Chaldean order [2]

A curious feature: the rulers of the first face of each sign from Aries to Libra (Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Sun, Moon) follow the order of the days of the week, from Tuesday to Monday. This is the same Chaldean sequence that generates the planetary hours and the names of the days [4].

Mars rules six faces and the other planets five each, because the sequence of 36 starts and ends with Mars.

Scoring. Lilly gives one point for a planet in its own face [3]; this site does the same (+1). Al-Biruni also gives face one point, the lowest of his scale, and adds that the astrologers of his day often disregarded it altogether [2]. Some modern traditional practitioners likewise give the face little weight, while others value it as a sign of a planet that is weak but still has some standing of its own.

Face and debility. Because it is small, face can combine with a debility. A planet in detriment or fall may still hold its face, and so is not strictly peregrine, though its overall standing remains poor.

The face ruler as a degree ruler. Whatever planet stands in a face, the face's ruler is one of its degree rulers.

Examples

• Mars at 5° Aries. Domicile (+5), and the first face of Aries belongs to Mars (+1). Lilly uses Mars in the first ten degrees of Aries as his example of a planet in its own face [3].
• The Sun at 15° Scorpio. The Sun has no domicile, exaltation or triplicity in Scorpio and no terms at all, but 10°–20° Scorpio is its face (+1), so it is not peregrine.
• Venus at 25° Aries. Venus is in detriment in Aries (−5) but holds the third face (+1): weakened but not wholly without standing.
• Saturn at 5° Leo. Saturn is in detriment in Leo, yet the first face of Leo belongs to Saturn.