A great face formed in the rock of a mountain

The image

A mountain, and in its rock face a great human face, whether carved by people or shaped by weather until it looks carved. It gazes out over the land, huge, calm and permanent. The picture is of a person's likeness made part of the landscape itself.

It is last only in the order of the zodiac: by Jones's account the cards were shuffled, so the order in which Wheeler saw them was not the order of the degrees.

Meaning

Our keyword is "Shaped by an ideal" and our keynote: what one reveres long enough, one becomes.

A face in a mountain joins the human and the enduring. We read the degree as the power of an ideal held over a long time: the values, models and hopes a person looks up to slowly shape who they are, as weather shapes rock. One way to see it is in a life that has become an expression of what it admired, or in a community that recognises itself in a figure it honours. The image can also be read as a caution about what one chooses to revere, since the shaping works either way. As the close of the zodiac, the great face looks out over everything that came before. The tradition reads the picture as a description, and it promises nothing.

In Lynda Hill's practice the degree before is a placement's starting ground and the degree after its next step, and here the next step crosses from the end of the zodiac back to its start. The starting ground is Pisces 29, a prism of cut glass, light made clear; here the clarity becomes a permanent likeness. The next step is Aries 1, a woman fresh from the waves who is hugged by a seal, where the circle begins again with something new surfacing from the sea.

The opposite degree, Virgo 30, a man too absorbed in his task to notice a call that was never real, can be read beside this one as a reading aid. The busy man is absorbed in the task at hand; the great face looks across ages, and the pair holds close focus beside the long view.

In a chart

A planet or point anywhere from Pisces 29°00′ up to, but not including, Pisces 30°00′ takes this degree. The rule is to count the degree a position is in from one, so a Moon at Pisces 29°11′ reads Pisces 30, and so does one at Pisces 29°59′. Close to either edge, a small change in the birth time or the ephemeris moves a placement into the next image: into Aries 1 after Pisces 29°59′, or back into Pisces 29 before Pisces 29°00′. That is why the chart shows the minute beside the degree. In EsoTerrier's Sabian chart the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant are read first, then the Midheaven and the planets; each placement in Pisces 30 carries the image, keyword and keynote above, with Pisces 29, Aries 1 and Virgo 30 beside it.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Where the image comes from

Recorded by Marc Edmund Jones in Balboa Park, San Diego, in 1925, as the clairvoyant Elsie Wheeler described the picture she saw for an unseen card; one of 360 done in a single day; published by Jones in 1953 sourced

Degree before and after

Pisces 29 and Aries 1, read beside this degree after Lynda Hill, who calls them its Karmic Condition and its Quest Degree sourced

Degree opposite

Virgo 30, 180° away, offered as a reading aid; it is arithmetic, not a rule of Jones's our construction

A position at Pisces 29°00′00″

Our engine, Hill's rule and every calculator we checked read it as Pisces 30; the Sabian Assembly's sunrise page reads it as Pisces 29. A computed chart practically never lands on it disputed

How the schools read it

Marc Edmund Jones (1953)

Gives the degree a symbol line, a commentary, a one-word keyword and a positive and a negative reading. We quote none of it.

Dane Rudhyar (1973)

Rewords the image and adds a keynote and a commentary of his own, numbering the degrees as Jones did. In copyright to 2068; not used, and the place he gives the degree in his own structure is not shown.

Lynda Hill (1995, 2004)

Uses the symbols as an oracle, with her own commentary, and reads each degree beside the one before and the one after. Her rule and her two names are cited here; her text is not used.

The Sabian Assembly

Jones's own study group serves the 1953 image and keyword of a degree in its oracle, without commentary, on purpose.

EsoTerrier

Our keynote: What one reveres long enough, one becomes.

Claims about it

• The image line on this page, or on any site, is Elsie Wheeler's own wording.

  false

  What the record shows: Her words survive only as Jones's pencilled notes of 1925. Jones reworded them in 1931 and 1953, Rudhyar in 1936 and 1973, and Hill in her books.

• Reading the degree before and the degree after is part of how the zodiac is built, or of Jones's method.

  false

  What the record shows: It is Lynda Hill's practice, and the two names are hers. We show the two degrees with her name.

• Dane Rudhyar's 1973 lines are the Sabian symbols and free to print.

  false

  What the record shows: They are his rewording, with his own keynotes and commentary, renewed in 2002 and in US copyright to the end of 2068. None of them is used here.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

• Pisces 29: A clear instrument the degree before, which Lynda Hill reads as its background
• Aries 1: Emergence; first consciousness the degree after, which Hill reads as where it is heading
• Virgo 30: Focus on the task the degree opposite, read beside it as a reading aid
• Pisces in the natal chart the sign these thirty degrees belong to