How a Face Is Built
Ra found the Faces by studying the lines of the hexagrams around the wheel. Every gate is a hexagram of six lines, each line either yang or yin. Gates that share their lowest two lines fall into the same quarter of the wheel. Gates that share their lowest three lines share the same lower trigram, the building block of the traditional I Ching. Gates that share their lowest four lines form a Face: a quarter of a quarter, four gates sitting side by side on the Mandala.
This is why every quarter holds exactly four Faces, and why the four gates of a Face can sit in quite different centers of the BodyGraph. What joins them is the shared foundation of their hexagrams, which Ra taught gives them a common chemistry. The top two lines of each hexagram only change how that shared theme is expressed.
The first Face, Hades, is the only one whose four foundation lines are all yang. Maia, the ninth, is the only one whose four are all yin. Around the wheel the other fourteen move step by step between those two.
Programming Agents
Ra placed the Faces inside his account of how a human being is made. The Personality, the conscious side of your chart, comes from crystals of consciousness that he said were first gathered into sixteen bundles, one for each Face. The Design, the body side, comes from a single uniform bundle. So the mind is shaped by sixteen different voices while the body answers to one, and Ra used this as the mechanical reason to trust the body's Authority over the mind's reasoning.
He also taught that the Faces compete. Each behaves as though it alone is the whole program and pursues only its own theme. He saw the old argument about whose god is the true one as that competition playing out through people.
Jovian Archive describes the Faces as filters of the same crystalline consciousness people are made of, closer to an operating system than to beings to worship. Knowing your Face shows you the lens your mind was handed.
How to Find Your Face
Look at your Personality Sun: the first gate in the black column of your chart, and the first number in your incarnation cross. The Face that holds that gate is your Face of the Godhead. Jovian Archive teaches it this way: the Sun points to the Face your conscious mind is most shaped by.
Ra's own teaching was a little wider. He said everyone carries some of several Faces, placed in different parts of the body, all feeding the mind. One might colour your Authority while another colours your thinking. The Personality Sun Face is the one you identify with most, and the others sit around it. The line of your Sun shades how the Face comes through, and your Earth and your angle leave the Face itself unchanged.
The Faces and Your Incarnation Cross
Because the Face comes from the Personality Sun, every incarnation cross that begins with the same gate shares the same Face, whatever its angle. The Right Angle Crosses of the Sphinx (13), Explanation (49), Contagion (30) and the Sleeping Phoenix (55) all sit under Kali, and so do their Juxtaposition and Left Angle versions.
One cross name can also fall under four different Faces. Take the Right Angle Cross of Planning, built on Gates 37, 40, 9 and 16. With the Personality Sun in 37 it sits under Mitra in the Quarter of Initiation. In 16 it sits under Lakshmi in Civilization, in 40 under Harmonia in Duality, and in 9 under Prometheus in Mutation. The purpose is the same, and each version lives it through a different collective theme. The cross names your particular purpose; the Face names the older programming it is written into.
The Quarter of Initiation: Kali, Mitra, Michael and Janus
Ra numbered the Faces from Gate 1, yet his course on them opened here with Kali and saved Mutation until the end. This quarter carries the theme of purpose fulfilled through the mind.
Kali, the fifth Face, covers Gates 13, 49, 30 and 55. Three of those gates sit in the Solar Plexus, and her ground is desire, passion and feeling. She turns the mind toward the cycle of endings, rebirth and starting again, and she tears down devotion that has gone hollow. Her shadow is the mind using old feelings to justify the present, with emotion quietly steering what looks like reason.
Mitra, the sixth Face, covers Gates 37, 63, 22 and 36. It carries the agreement at the root of life in a body: the contract of give and take between people. Its questions all circle one worry, whether you will get what you need, and its shadow is reacting dramatically to that uncertainty. Waiting through the emotional wave is the way Mitra's questions get answered well.
Michael, the seventh Face, covers Gates 25, 17, 21 and 51, and holds the whole Channel of Initiation. It sits at the core of how the mind is programmed: sorting light from dark, right from wrong, and building moral law. Michael is the messenger with the sword of truth, and its shadow is judgement held so firmly that it stops being humane.
Janus, the eighth Face, covers Gates 42, 3, 27 and 24. Janus looks both forward and back, and the Face carries the idea that out of two comes something new, the push toward variety in life. Three of its gates sit in the Sacral, and they carry the quarter out of the world of mind and into the world of form and work.
The Quarter of Civilization: Maia, Lakshmi, Parvati and Ma'at
This quarter carries the theme of purpose fulfilled through form: building the world people live in. Ra described its yin Faces as the builders, and taught that their influence grows as the older yang Faces fade. Every one of the eleven Throat gates sits in this quarter.
Maia, the ninth Face, covers Gates 2, 23, 8 and 20. It carries the feminine principle at its source: direction itself, and the moment life is born into a body. Maia grants the bounty that makes civilization possible, and its shadow is the belief that money and personal power are everything. Ra held that the future direction of civilization rests with women, which is why he stressed their education and empowerment.
Lakshmi, the tenth Face, covers Gates 16, 35, 45 and 12, all of them Throat gates. It carries fortune, prosperity and opportunity, and the codes and manners that let a society progress. Ra linked it to the long nurturing human beings need, which is why material means matter. Its shadow is wealth becoming the only thing that counts.
Parvati, the eleventh Face, covers Gates 15, 52, 39 and 53. It carries home, hearth and domestic happiness. Ra described its chemistry as one of pressure and stress that everyone carries but that lands far harder on women, because the old arrangement leaves the woman holding the home while the man is free to roam. Its shadow is society replaying those fixed roles without question.
Ma'at, the twelfth Face, covers Gates 62, 56, 31 and 33, all of them Throat gates. It carries truth, justice and the order that holds a civilization together, voiced through naming things (62), telling their story (56), leading (31) and remembering (33). Its shadow is living out the ideals of the past in place of your own truth.
The Quarter of Duality: Thoth, Harmonia, the Christ Consciousness Field and Minerva
This quarter carries the theme of purpose fulfilled through bonding: the relationships that keep the species going.
Thoth, the thirteenth Face, covers Gates 7, 4, 29 and 59. It carries wisdom, writing, time, science and magic, and its answer to life reads as a sequence: take up a role (7), grasp the pattern (4), commit to it (29) and bring new life into being (59). It builds a life of relationship in service of continuity.
Harmonia, the fourteenth Face, covers Gates 40, 64, 47 and 6, and holds the whole Channel of Abstraction. It carries the family bond: harmony between partners, and the role of providing for the people you belong to. It holds bonds together through friction, and its shadow is power used over a partner, or given up to one, within the roles of sex and family.
The Christ Consciousness Field, the fifteenth Face, covers Gates 46, 18, 48 and 57. It carries love of your neighbour, and the idea that success comes through competition that threatens no one. Ra taught that the original Christ Consciousness bundle is real, and that its force has been spread thin as the faith built around it split into countless branches.
Minerva, the sixteenth Face, covers Gates 32, 50, 28 and 44, all four in the Spleen. It carries the survival of the tribe through training its young: passing on values (50), keeping what works alive (32), staying alert (44) and finding what is worth the struggle (28). Gate 44 closes the quarter.
The Quarter of Mutation: Hades, Prometheus, Vishnu and the Keepers of the Wheel
This quarter carries the theme of purpose fulfilled through transformation. Ra described its Faces as the oldest and most yang in the Godhead, forces that shaped humanity long before it could reflect on them, and he taught that they are coming to an end. Less of his teaching on these four is public than on the others, so this section keeps to what he is known to have said.
Hades, the first Face, covers Gates 1, 43, 14 and 34, the only Face built entirely on yang. Ra treated it as the deepest and purest form of yang conditioning, and linked it to the theme of breaking an old covenant. Its gates hold self-expression, insight, the skills that command resources, and raw power.
Prometheus, the second Face, covers Gates 9, 5, 26 and 11. Ra opened his teaching on it with the story of the Titan who took fire from heaven and handed it to humanity, and Jovian Archive connects it with invention and new thinking. Its gates hold focus, rhythm, persuasion and ideas.
Vishnu, the third Face, covers Gates 10, 58, 38 and 54. Ra's teaching on it turned on two ideas: that life is sacrifice, and that the god returns again and again in new forms. He held that this Face is still very much at work. Three of its gates sit in the Root, driving joy, the fight for purpose and ambition, all organised around the love of self in Gate 10.
The Keepers of the Wheel, the fourth Face, covers Gates 61, 60, 41 and 19. It sits where the end of the wheel meets its beginning, and Gate 41 starts the Rave New Year. Ra presented it as a hidden force of continuity rather than a single god: the people and patterns that quietly keep the world turning, often without knowing it. He also taught that the bond between Gates 19 and 49 starts to come apart as the 2027 mutation arrives, which puts this Face close to the centre of the coming change.
Living With Your Face
Your Face describes the background theme your mind was programmed with, the ground it keeps returning to when it tries to make sense of life. Seeing that theme clearly lets you notice when it is running you. Ra's instruction for every layer of the chart applies here too: the mind is best used to understand, and decisions are best left to your Strategy and Authority.