Pisces 29-30 The Great Stone Face

by Alice

<tt>rachel t @ freeimages.com</tt>

rachel t @ freeimages.com

My friend Alice has Saturn on this degree. Her experience is below:

Upbringing mirrors your souls reflection of a particular energy. Mine was to show an agreeable nature (mask) to the outside world. (1st house). "The Great Stone Face" was that of an in-control even-tempered child/teenager/adult. Friends, relatives and others knew this to be me, I knew this to be me.
Deeper and more intense arenas of expression (pluto conjunct uranus in the 7th) were off limits, which in turn attracted relationships based, not my whole self but my acceptable self. (Saturn - the boundaries my soul was used to).
As time marched on, cracks in the "stone face" began to appear. At the time, my very pent up, (and as Saturn rules karma - eons of relating in this way) ways of relating came charging out (Pluto 16 - 17 degrees Virgo - A volcanic eruption - 7th house), it was quite a shock to myself and others. My very "locked away" plutonic and uranian energy (7th house), exploded, this invited many strangers into my life, which triggered my square to the IC, "A woman activist haranguing". This intense emotional energy I felt was foreign to myself. Alice was down the "rabbit hole" (interestingly I went to primary school dressed as Alice in Wonderland on fancy dress day, years before; and my second husband would call me Alice on occasion as a pet name).
During this volatile period I experienced a multitude of trials and tribulations; my handling of this energy was like a car out of control racing down a winding hillside roadway (which, at the time I had recurrent dreams of)
Saturn and Uranus have inter-related to liberate my way of relating into a more authentic self. Uranus (A ouija board) introduced me to a way of relating to my other self and others in a more intuitive mode. During this awakening I had many interests... astrology, alternate medicine, oracle decks, clairvoyants and worked in shops where we all go to find another way...I found as with all journeys varying thoughts on everything. My search continues.
Chiron (A new moon that divides its influences) bridged this opposition, encouraging me to relate to the world around in a new way. This energy divided aspects of myself into separate pieces so I could view them individually. I, now at Chiron return, am trying to integrate them into a whole, more tolerant view of myself and the world around me.
Saturn has provided personal protection as well as stagnation to my life.

Does any part of the symbol resonate with you?

Do any of the astrological bodies (Venus, Jupiter, Chiron etc) fall on this symbol for you?

What has it meant in your life?

Please note that your comment may be edited for other visitors' experience. We aim to share knowledge and experience for greater learning.

Many thanks!

Comments for Pisces 29-30 The Great Stone Face

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Nov 16, 2015

Self Validation
by: Bek

Thanks for you experience of this degree :)

My personal experience has been that of self-validation. I have Saturn on Leo 11-12 An Evening Lawn Party and Sun on Virgo 10-11 A Boy Moulded In His Mother's Aspirations For Him. At the moment I am going through a period of "quiet" and the many (ego) masks and bags I hold are getting dropped.

I recently met up with a friend who I hadn't seen in ages (and never returns calls or texts) due to her own dark period of divorce. I am learning from her that people will reach out when they want to reach out, and that people have their own wisdom of what they need and when, so I have to trust that my friend can navigate her way through this period without me.

It is through the story of her boyfriend that she and I are learning about masks and bags, so it was really fascinating when our discussion turned to self-validation.
While I was talking about this with her, my toddler climbed up on my lap, stuck her face right into mine with her little chubby hands on my face, and kept repeating "Yes Mummy". Now I know kids are very "in tune" (so even when they are naughty, take 5 minutes to think about what the message might be for you, in between time-outs or smacks on the bum lol!) so I knew I was getting toward the "answer" that clearly my child could feel, but I still wasn't quite there on a cellular level!
(Sometimes we have to talk, then understand, then feel, and then It Is Done and the lesson is completed - maybe not for you but so far true for me.)
So the lesson my friend and I were learning about was in the theme of (Self-)Validation and our experiences were just the many facets of that theme.

When I came home to write about this, the Rhetoracle suggested this symbol to write under, and I knew in my gut to be true for me (I am a big fan of using my body's feelings to show me if something resonates or not).

Having Saturn on Leo 11-12 An Evening Lawn Party, (as well as further intensity with Ceres on Leo 20-21 Chickens Intoxicated) has meant for me that I craved attention but was limited in receiving it. My Sun on Virgo 10-11 A Boy Moulded In His Mother's Aspirations For Him has meant that my mother's feelings and thoughts were so important to me and my identity merged with hers. I used to tell her story of migration and struggle because I thought it reflected well on me, and therefore gained people's approval as a person.

I was a high achiever and knew how to charm people etc etc but recently I am aware that none of these things appear to make a difference. The world is not giving me the feedback to build up my ego.

I have seen many times in my life the "Great Stone Face" - when I have achieved something and others have not celebrated with me, or when I am happy and I can't cajole others into the same mood like when living with my depressed mother who grieved for decades after her husband's death.

I pulled oracle cards once and asked "what do I need to let go of" and got Victory. I asked "what the hell?" and got Envy. I knew this to mean that I was threatened by envy (another story) and to avoid it I had to let go of appearing successful. I knew this to be a block in my own attitude to success (and my vision of success at the moment is "peace and quiet" which I have so I don't want to change anything about my situation). In fact I later realised this to mean that I needed to let go of the idea that Victory means Envy. I need to accept that the Great Stone Face may be there but that I should stop looking for external approval in what I do. Just allow Victory to mean Victory and to not look in the Stone Face for approval and only find Envy or Disapproval or even Ambivalence.
I imagine in ancient times, worshipping a deity, people would have given the gifts to the gods in front of an altar, but what do they get in return? The unmoving statue, still staring.

But of course, it is silly to look for a response from the statue, the altar or the rock face. Of course we know that offering the gift is a way of saying Thank You. And we give the gifts to say thank you because we feel genuinely grateful. And the response from the earth is not necessarily the response we expect, or even that we need a response, because we gave as an expression of ourselves that we wanted to express.

So for me this symbol is about giving what I want to give, as an expression that satisfies me. So who am I? What do I want? What do I want to give? How will I express myself? Once you stop looking for other people's approval, you start asking yourself about you, which kicks off a more interesting exploration. The irony is, that once you stop looking for external approval, and satisfy yourself with your own approval (which removes self-doubt), then when you do get external validation, you don't really need it!

Just like in alchemy - if you are so clever you can turn lead into gold, do you need the gold anyway?

There is a certain freedom with the Great Stone Face. It gives you nothing. So who cares what it looks like?

Jun 23, 2016

pisces 29 - 30
by: Anonymous

PROJECTIONS

The Art of Human Projection

The world of projections revolves around us from birth through to death.

So why do we project as a way of relating to ourselves, comfortable in the ignorance of our truth?
We should ask ourselves,
Do we in fact encourage the other to unconsciously throw these portraits of ourselves to us when our internal change is needed.
Happy to incorporate the favourable renditions but aghast when defective images are slung our way.
Have you ever thought that the "Great Stone Face"that is your 'ultimate ideal', could in fact be your 'ultimate illusion'.
Is it Buddha?
Is it Jesus?
Is it Kim Kardashian?
Is it Bob Dylan?
Is it your mother/father?
Whatever the image that has merged with your ideal, could in fact be the generator of your own projection.
This has set up a no win situation for the real you to emerge.
Do we in fact not like the darkened void of nothing, and rather take on others projections as a distraction from our own ignorance of who we really are?
The frightening possibility that we in fact do not exist.

Do we give others permission to project to allow us to feel stable in this forever changing cosmos.
A safe guard to create boundaries, so as not to be swallowed whole by the infinite.
In a rapidly expanding commercial world, where people are finding it increasingly difficult to find meaning in their life,
Projectionitis is going viral.
Magazines, TV shows, Celebrity slagging, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc etc, the illusionary views of others on the increase with assistance from the multi-media waves.

Do we in fact develop a persona, as an easy way to navigate the world, as it is tiring to be mindful all the time about our own selves.
We don’t have time to contemplate every second of the day about how someone is making us feel, and in this busy world "who can afford a reflection 1 hour each day on daily events"
We like to "in fact" project.
And the tireder we are the more we project.
Observing a movie that we are in the back row for.
Constantly placing others as different to us when we need space to grow and then finding connections with others when we need security.
Maybe a antidote for projection is then reflection.

To understand ourselves inside and out
A movie then possible of our own making, one that we wish to participate in as the main actor/actress.

Jul 03, 2016

pisces 29 - 30
by: Anonymous

The long, winding, tortuous path we trek to pay homage to the 'great stone face'.
Easily, we submit,
As a babe on a mother’s breast.
In the continuing quest of,
Humanities epic search of the 'Great Illusive Spirit’.
Pioneers such as:
Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed,The Divine Mother, etc together roll out, endlessly shaping a cherished pathway to heaven, 'crystallised' as a perfection of God. 'The Great Stone Face’.

We have travelled this passage way with innocent trust, promenading virtuously, under the instruction of disciples, whom scribed their teachers words onto parchments and stone, to deliver the ground plan of our crusade.
These signposts diligently, then deciphered by, the healers, the clairvoyants, the priests, the nuns, the shamans, etc, a chosen few to share the ultimate intimacy with the divine, to leave others in an arid wasteland of unacknowledged spiritual lack.
'The butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers’, that keep our world turning, are looked upon as 'fallen angels', in stark contrast to the shining halo of the 'illuminated ones’ and their conduits.

Residing in the 1st house of my natal chart,
I realised,
I needed to 'draw the curtains aside' to the image (1st house) that I personally was creating for myself to live up to and through.

This of course started when I pondered the age old roller coaster question,
"Who am I?"
"Where do I fit into this world?"
"What is my purpose?"
This question bounced around in my empty head to such a disturbing degree that,
I started to interrogate more deeply the embedded stories from early days of "Sunday School" and the consequent effect they had upon my unformed child psyche.
Or what I thought was a completely blank canvas of innocence.

A little housekeeping to start the ball rolling,

I thought my faith was Church of England but discovered in my 20’s I was Presbyterian.
My grandfather, Catholic, my grandmother, Church of England, my dad, well ‘god' knows what he was, my mother the same as her mother, and my heathen brother never christened.
Religion not a big part of my family's life.
Sunday school was where it was at for us, with the odd wedding and funeral thrown in.
These places were where GOD lived and that was OK with us/me.

Life then,
As it has a habit of doing, took a sharp detour to the left.
I married into a very church loving 'Catholic family', "god love them", with all the trappings that this brings, church on Sundays, a tolerance for other religions, a kindly attitude and a ‘do good’ personality.
But behind the facade, a secret knowing that they were headed to the pearly gates before me.
Because there is one thing for certain in life, we are all headed to the same end!
"The Pearly Gates".

This attitude gave them an aura of superiority.
Like a gold card at the Hoyt's Cinema, you know the guy that dances down the red carpet to pick up his movie tickets, smirking at everyone he is passing in the line.
And unbeknownst to him,
Everyone looking on, is thinking, who is this jerk?

Anyway,
The marriage continued,
I lived within this unit for 10 years quietly sighing about the attitudes but tolerating them for the sake of peace,
Then I discovered "new age" thought, which really is old age thought revamped,
Of course,
Astrology and new agers looked upon like drugged out hippies, with no credence given to questioning life as we know it.
Just a polite nod and patronising smile, and then that moment when everyone becomes squeamish in their seats.
You know the old saying "at the dinner table never talk about religion or politics".

This is where it starts to heat up:
The search, stormed on,
I visited 3 clairvoyants
Whom relayed, the same story:

I had been an "Irish Catholic" nun in a past life, and died in the potato famine of starvation and tuberculosis.

WTF!!!!
Nooooo!!!!
Not a NUN, how could this be
and bloody Catholic to boot.
Unfortunately,
This scenario did have a feeling of truth about it, although I couldn’t quite pin-point why, as life had not ever contained any serious religious leanings.

As the years rolled on, I embarked on loads of spiritual courses, astrology days, bought 100’s of dollars worth of books, ranging from colour therapy to the Knights Templar back to the real stories of Mary Magdalene and her troupe.
During this period which by the way I am currently still in, others have listened to me, argued with me, laughed at me and joined me in theorising about the unseen blanketed world in which we live.
I wanted to see/feel/intuit the scaffolding in which my inner structure resides. (Saturn)
The structure which we all ultimately reside, some areas more unconscious than others.

Projection became a well worn friend,
Each time I projected out to another, it would come back to face me again,
Until I started to realise that the actors and movie screen I was projecting onto came from me not understanding my own inner landscape.
And also
Others inner landscape in relation to myself.

I have been and still are at times the queen of projection
No - one projects better than me! (BTW my father was the movie projection man at the local theatre for a while.)
It appears,
The tighter my barriers were around my personal ability to relax within my own feelings and framework, the more I seek to project onto a target, so as I can negate that part of myself I misunderstand…..(The dreaded unconscious).
This goes for abilities I am not aware of, as well as those self-aggrandising negative thoughts about others.

I have had to sacrifice my personality to allow room for total self expression to exist so as I do not suffocate under the mask of "the all loving nun".

This lived in my unconscious, (my ex in - laws), described in my configuration natally, (Moon in Aquarius in the 12th house square Neptune in Scorpio in the 9th conjunct a Scorpio south node), until I ventured into new realms of thought (Chiron ‘A New Moon Divides its Influences conjunct Saturn The Great Stone Face trine Mercury ‘An Epidemic of Mumps'), and realised much of my beliefs have come from past lives of religious doctrines, with little if any real understanding of spirituality in myself.

I have read in Liz Greene's Saturn - A New Look At An Old Devil, that
"Saturn in Pisces - describes energies which are usually geared up to self-protection and defence against the environment, are rendered ineffectual.
The man may learn through his own helplessness how ultimately impotent the personal will is against his own past which he himself has set in motion".

These unconscious projections of others, were in fact old attitudes from past lives trying to gain access to my conscious thoughts so as I could strip them bare and reorganise my cellular structure.
Most of my friends were Catholic, my first job was in a Catholic hospital, crowded with nuns and religious dogmas, I sent my 3 children to a Catholic school, it literally was surrounding me.
I could have kept asking myself "why" is this happening?
But I started to acknowledge I was interested, as well as appalled at religion and spirituality, and the condition it exists within our community and myself.
As I have Saturn in Pisces in the 1st house, I have been fairly much on my own discovering and integrating information which I find. Coupled with Chiron conjunct Saturn, this has been at times fairly painful and ego-destroying.

As the first house has to do with the will and the use of the will, this has been an area of blockage.
Surrounded by very wilful souls, I learnt to project guilt and selfishness (very Piscean), their way, to cover for my lack of knowledge and expression of my own purpose, pain and understanding of spirit.
My unconscious living breathing belief, "I am doing gods will". Because we all know that god is the all loving, self sacrificing ultimate deity that hangs on the local church altar.
He gave the ultimate sacrifice, 'his life’ for all of us.
So the least I could do is sacrifice my dreams, hopes and wishes to join his brigade of saviours, it was the obvious unconscious choice to be made.

The nun lived in my unconscious (the 12th house), I was unaware of her controlling my circumstances in which I lived, her personality the all sacrificing, loving, good samaritan, doing God's work .
'The more you control your desire nature the higher up the celestial ladder you climb’.
The ultimate pay-off for all your hard-earned personal sacrifice.
These illusionary values needed to be deconstructed and re-evaluated to fit my personal temperament.

Personally now "The Great Stone Face" is the ideal of my own personal god self (1st house) that resides quietly waiting to be aroused.
This spirit needs intuition and expression to emerge, not old worn out dogmas from past life experiences, pushed at any poor person walking by.

As I gazed upon these Great Stone Faces as the ultimate purpose for living,
I had in fact unconsciously buried my own ‘Christ’ self into the unconscious of my psyche.
Leaving my unexpressed divinity unnourished and forgotten in the depths of the 'Earthen Urn’.
The spirit left as a seed waiting for the spark to be provoked, to pierce through the soil, with the passion only those beings whom have experienced there own ‘fire' know so well.

Jesus was a carpenter, just like the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker...
Was this his tool to find his own divinity?
Did he conduit messages through the art of working with timber?
Was this a physical framework to unlock his spirit?

The more persistently I looked to another, the bigger the illusion that was created, with the result of losing my own sense of self and purpose, as I treaded the path of these stone faces.
To walk in your own shoes towards your dreams perhaps is the ‘new age’ Great Stone Face.
A face replicating my very own, yielding my alchemical gold.
I know live in a shoemakers house not a church.

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