The dress features Roman numerals arranged vertically on either side of the upper panel.  The numerals give the symbols for "1, 2, 2" and "1, 2, 3."  Taken together, the numerals seem to be "spelling out" the numbers 122 and 123.

(This is not, of course, the real way to write those numbers in Roman numerals.  For an explanation of why the artist chose to express the numbers this way, keep reading.)

The San Francisco metropolitan area is framed by those latitudes and longitudes:

  Several minor clues in the image and verse confirm the San Francisco location: 

• The face in the rocks is a strong match for the way editorial cartoonists portrayed Ronald Reagan, the former California governor who was elected president in 1980, shortly before The Secret was published. 
• The outline of the table post is very similar to the profile of a cable car, one of the iconic symbols of San Francisco. 
• There are visual references to Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge, and possibly Angel Island. 
• The word "giant" is repeated in successive lines of Verse 7 as a nod to the city's baseball team.

  Most significantly, the woman in the image appears to be Asian and the overall theme of The Secret is of immigration to North America.  The city most closely linked to Asian immigration to the United States is San Francisco, which had a huge influx of arrivals from China in the 19th century. 

  All of these clues strongly confirm that we should be looking in San Francisco.

  Page 28 of The Secret contains a subtle clue indicating that one of the casques is located near the edge of the Pacific Ocean ("the Great Western Sea").

  Golden Gate Park is one of the major open spaces in San Francisco.  It is positioned just across the Great Highway from the Pacific and it forms a long rectangle that flares out slightly at the northeast corner, where Fulton Street bends.  The panel on the front of the woman's dress has a similar shape and a similar flare, suggesting that it is a map of the park.

  The dragon on the central panel of the woman's dress appears to be modeled on one of the two griffins shown in the ironwork above the doors of the Golden Gate Park Senior Center.  Note, in particular, the arched neck, the protruding brow, the short lower jaw, and the way that the beak and some other bump (a tongue?) have been transformed into two upper fangs.

  The Senior Center is located on Fulton Street, at the northern edge of the park, between the Great Highway and Crossover Drive.  The corresponding spot on the map/dress would be on the right edge of the panel as we see it (or the left edge of the panel from the woman's perspective).  But the artist has emphasized that the dragon is actually in the opposite position.  The nose of the dragon isn't just located on the left edge of the panel, but it actually pushes out (with a blue halo) as if to draw our attention.

  The doorway of the Senior Center actually has two of these griffins, one facing left and one facing right.  The artist therefore made a deliberate choice to use the left-facing griffin and put the nose on that edge of the panel. 

  If we take a real map of Golden Gate Park and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise, so that the Pacific Ocean is at the top, there are six features that appear to match up with the panel on the dress:

1. The "Gh" at the top appears to be a reference to the Great Highway, which forms the western boundary of the park.  
2. The dragon's nose on the edge of the panel is a reference to the Senior Center on Fulton Street. 
3. The woman's crossed arms represent Crossover Drive, where Highway 1 crosses the park. 
4. Stow Lake and Strawberry Hill are united into the blue strawberry-shaped area directly below the woman's wrists.
5. The curve where the talons are located is a representation of MLK Drive.
6. The flare in the lower right corner corresponds to the flare in the park where Fulton Street bends.

  If the dress is intended to be interpreted this way, so that the crossed arms match Highway 1 and the bottom end of the panel matches the eastern end of the park, then the western area between Great Highway and Crossover Drive is essentially reduced to almost nothing. This indicates that we are meant to focus our attention on the eastern end of the park.

  Of the six features that are shown in the dress, the upper two appear to be flipped horizontally (from side to side).  The "Gh" for "Great Highway" is backwards and the dragon from the Golden Gate Park Senior Center on Fulton Street is on the left edge rather than the right.

  The middle two features do not indicate whether they are flipped from side to side.  Strawberry Hill would still be in the middle of the park either way and the arms would still run across the park either way.

  The lower two features are positioned on the correct sides of the panel.  MLK Drive makes a bend on the left side of the dress panel and the lower right corner of the panel shows the same "flare" that is present in the northeast corner of the park.  This confirms that the orientation for this lower part of the panel is correct.

  Taken together, all of this seems to be telling us that we should flip the upper half of the map horizontally but focus our attention on the lower half, which should remain in place.

  Note the artist's clever touch of using Roman numerals and writing out the individual digits when putting the longitudes on the upper portion woman's dress. If the artist had shown the longitudes as "122" and "123" or as "CXXII" and "CXXIII," it would have made it too obvious that the upper panel is flipped horizontally.  But the numerals I, II, and III all look exactly the same when they are flipped horizontally.   Very clever.

Pause For A Moment

If you've followed the (admittedly very complicated) narrative so far, pause for just a moment to ask yourself: What is the significance of reversing the upper half of the dress?

If the artist is devoting most of the panel map to the lower (eastern) portion of the park, why include those two features - the "Gh" and the dragon's head - simply to show us that the upper portion of the map is flipped?

  Each sleeve of the woman's dress is decorated with two columns of blue squares.  The woman's left index finger is upside-down and pointing up at the lower edge of the fourth row of blocks. The woman's right index finger is right-side-up and pointing down at the upper edge of the fourth row of blocks.

  Given that the center panel is a map of Golden Gate Park, it is very reasonable to assume that the blocks in the cuffs are the city blocks on either side of the park.  And, because the columns start very sharply and cleanly at the top with complete squares but fade away into shadows at the bottom, it appears that we are meant to count from the top. 

  The index finger on the woman's right hand is pushing or pointing downwards (eastwards) and appears to be telling us to stay east of a street three blocks from the top.  But the index finger on the woman's left hand appears to be pulling upwards (westwards) and telling us to stay west of a street four blocks from the top.

  If the crossed arms represent Crossover Drive and the squares on the cuffs represent the city blocks on either side of the park, one way to interpret this clue would be to start each count from 19th Avenue, where Crossover Drive meets the city street grid on the south side of the park.  In this case, the woman's fingers appear to be signaling that we should restrict our search to the area between 15th and 16th Avenues (the area between the red lines in the map at left).  The strip of land indicated by the fingers includes large parts of Stow Lake, but it also includes the very eastern tip of Strawberry Hill, including Huntington Falls and the Chinese pavilion.

  The problem with the analysis above is that Crossover Drive doesn't run straight across the park.  As Verse 7 notes, the highway does a little zigzag as it runs through the park ("running north but first across").  The south end of the drive is 19th Avenue, but the north end is between 14th and 13th Avenues. 

  If we try to apply our sleeve/block count to that reality, it suddenly makes no sense.  The right hand would be telling us to stay east of an avenue three blocks from 13th, but the left hand would be telling us to stay west of an avenue four blocks from 19th.  There's no overlap between those instructions.  What to do?  A searcher cannot simultaneously be west of 15th Avenue and east of 10th Avenue.

  SOLUTION: THE HANDS ARE REVERSED!

  The entire message behind the reversal of the upper dress panel is to tell us that we should also flip the woman's crossed arms from side to side.  The woman's right hand - currently pointing to blocks on the right side of the panel - is really meant to apply to blocks on the left side of the panel, and vice-versa.

  Once we flip the blocks indicated by the two hands, and attach the block counts to the places where Crossover Drive enters and exits the park, we can see that the hands are telling us to stay in a seven-block range, between 9th Avenue and 16th Avenue.  This reduces our search area to a narrow slice of Golden Gate Park extending from the east end of Strawberry Hill to the California Academy of Sciences.

All of the clues up to this point have brought us to an area in the center of Golden Gate Park where there are a number of special features.

(Note that Highway 1, Crossover Drive, and Park Presidio Blvd are all the same road.)

  The artwork in Image 1 contains many visual references to confirm that we are in the right area: 

• The rose is likely a reference to the Golden Gate Park Rose Garden.
• The shape below the crossed arms appears to show Strawberry Hill, the island in the middle of Stow Lake.
• The stone formation of the fingers holding a baseball could be a nod toward what is often called the "ball-thrower statue."
• The woman's eyes and nose, resemble features on the faces on the two concrete sphinxes that are located near the de Young museum. 
• The woman's thin, arching eyebrows that form a semicircle above each eye resemble the eyebrows on the Buddha sculpture in the Japanese tea garden.

  Most of the curves in the dragon's body do not match up with the roads in Golden Gate Park.  The one exception is in the area where we are now focused.

  At the southern end of Crossover Drive, just before the freeway leaves the park, Martin Luther King Jr Drive begins a broad, sweeping curve that takes it out to the center of the park before returning to the edge and Lincoln Way.  The dragon's body captures that same curve (confirming that the map below the crossed arms is not flipped).

  Pay close attention to the spot that the dragon is pinpointing for us by making the small circle with its talons.  That spot should be directly below (east of) Strawberry Hill, where MLK Drive is making the swing back to the edge of the park.  That spot, between MLK Drive and the California Academy of Sciences, is the home of the Garden of Shakespeare's Flowers.

The San Francisco image is one of only two paintings in the book that have a rounded top.  The image also prominently features an armored, arched doorway in the center of the image, seemingly giving extra emphasis to that shape.

Visitors investigating the Shakespeare Garden are likely to notice that the window at the top of Image 1 is a reasonable match for an armored alcove that holds a bust of William Shakespeare in Golden Gate Park.  The alcove is recessed in a brick wall decorated with quotations from Shakespeare's plays.  (Intriguingly, the brick-and-concrete pillars on either side of the alcove have patterns that look like stacked Roman numerals.  Hmm....)

Shakespeare bust photo used under a creative common license

Some rights reserved by joshleejosh on Flickr

1) At stone wall's door

2) The air smells sweet

  The combination of clues from the image and verse should make it clear that we are meant to begin our stroll at the Shakespeare bust and the wall that holds it.  The reference to a "sweet smell" almost certainly refers to the San Francisco Botanical Garden's Garden of Fragrance located 100 yards to the west, across MLK Drive.  Designed in 1965, the garden is specifically intended to benefit the visually impaired by providing a garden experience through the sense of smell.

Here, then, is our position at the start of the stroll.

(This map and subsequent maps will use yellow ovals to correspond to the lines of the verse.)

3) Not far away

4) High posts are three

  The three "high posts" are the Sutro Tower, which dominates the skyline to the south, above the open area of the park.

Golden Gate Park photo used under a creative common license

Some rights reserved by torbakhopper on Flickr

The image on the right above is a high-resolution close-up of the symbol at the bottom edge of the woman's dress.

The image on the left above is a portion of the 1977 Rand McNally map of San Francisco, which would have been a very common map for visitors at the time Byron Preiss hid the casque.

  The book provides two strong clues to help steer our attention to the eastern end of the park.  One is the reference to "high posts are three."  The other is the outline of Twin Peaks Reservoir in the margin of the dress.  The reservoir is beside the Sutro Tower in the cluster of hills by the southeast corner of the park.  (Click on map below to see a larger version in a new window.)

5) Education and Justice

6) For all to see

  "Education" almost certainly refers to the nearby California Academy of Sciences, which has been in the park since 1916. Most of the original Academy buildings were damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and there has been been significant construction and renovation as a result.  Any specific visual or verbal ties to those buildings are probably lost.

  "Justice for all to see" could be in reference to a number of different monuments, but is probably just a reference to the flagpole and the Pledge of Allegiance that ends with "liberty and justice for all."

7) Sounds from the sky

8) Near ace is high

  "Ace is high" refers to Highway 1 (also known as "Crossover Drive"), which runs across Golden Gate Park.  "Ace" in this reference means "one" and "high" would mean both "highway" and literally "high" (because Highway 1 is elevated where it goes through Golden Gate Park).  "Sounds from the sky" would match this interpretation because Hwy. 1 is a six-lane highway and a person standing nearby in Golden Gate Park can hear the roar of traffic coming from above.

9) Running north, but first across

  This line is almost certainly meant to have a dual meaning. Highway 1 runs north through most of San Francisco, but at Golden Gate Park it turns and runs due east (across) for a few blocks before turning north again to go to the Golden Gate Bridge. Just at the bend where the highway turns there is a stone cross called the Prayer Book Cross that was a gift from the Church of England and was erected in 1894. 

  So Highway 1 runs north but first across, and before it leaves the park there is (first) a cross.  (Click on map below to see a larger version in a new window.)

Lines 3 through 9 have just oriented us to the major landmarks near the Shakespeare Garden.

The precise interpretation of lines 5 & 6 doesn't matter because none of these lines are sending us off in any direction.  (We're not expected to hike up to the Sutro Tower or climb into traffic on Highway 1.)  The lines are just confirming what we can see and hear from where we're standing.

10) In jewel's direction

  The ambiguity of this line is probably deliberate.  Are we supposed to know "jewel's direction" and start off that way?  Or are we meant to discover "jewel's direction" by solving the subsequent lines?

  If "jewel's direction" has any inherent meaning, the "direction" in question would most likely be "west."  San Francisco is the only west coast casque location and the book talks about reaching the "Great Western Sea."  But a searcher in 1982 wouldn't have a cell phone or GPS unit to guide their walk.  The tool for finding west would be a compass.  And, in 1980, magnetic north in that spot was rotated 16.34 degrees clockwise from true west.

  For more information about how a wiki user solved this piece of the puzzle, see Postscript II at the bottom of this page.

  Note that the puzzle still works quite well even if a searcher isn't convinced that "jewel's direction" means magnetic west.  If we are meant to browse around and solve the next lines to find the true direction, we will still end up on the same path.

screenshot from the magnetic field calculator provided by NOAA

11) Is an object

12) Of Twain's attention

  "Twain" is capitalized here and is presumably a reference to Mark Twain, who worked as a newspaper reporter in San Francisco from 1864 to 1865.  Because Twain was a prolific writer with an active and curious mind, there are almost an unlimited number of things around the city that could be said to be objects of his attention. 

  The crucial thing to keep in mind, however, is that Preiss has started us in the Shakespeare Garden looking at a particular door in a wall.  The next step in our search (the object of Twain's attention) therefore needs to be reasonably close - within a short walk from the garden.

  At a corner directly across Music Concourse Drive from the Shakespeare Garden — directly (magnetic) west of the door in the wall — there is a hard-to-miss, gold-plated bust of the composer Giuseppe Verdi.

  Mark Twain had a love/hate affair with opera.  He was a frequent attendee for many years but he complained that the music of unfamiliar operas was often "that sort of intense but incoherent noise which always so reminds me of the time the orphan asylum burned down."  Verdi's Il Trovatore was one of Twain's favorites, however, and in August 1866 he attended a performance of it in San Francisco.  The experience had such an impact on him that it prompted him to write his own version.  Verdi therefore certainly qualifies as "an object of Twain's attention" and the position of the bust near the door in the wall makes this a very strong match for the clue.

Verdi bust photo used under a creative common license

Some rights reserved by torbakhopper on Flickr

By A.F. Bradley, New York (steamboattimes.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

  It's worth stepping back at this point and asking why Preiss chose to phrase his clue this way.  If he wanted us to use the Verdi bust as a navigation point, there are many, many ways he could have made the connection stronger and more direct using music, opera lyrics, clues to the name, and so forth.  So why choose an extremely obscure connection to Mark Twain?

  The answer is that in this, as in all the puzzles in The Secret, Preiss wanted searchers to combine library research with on-the-ground explorations and visual connections.  And the bust of Verdi in Golden Gate Park has a strong visual connection to Mark Twain (with the long, wavy hair, thick eyebrows, and bushy mustache).

  Any searchers who followed the clues to this point and investigated the Shakespeare Garden would likely come across the golden Verdi bust and have the response of "Whoa! Mark Twain!"  Something would click in their minds and they would have a flash of insight.  And then library research would confirm that there really was a Twain-Verdi connection.

So, unlike lines 3 through 9, lines 10 through 12 clearly ARE sending us off in a particular direction.

We...

• start at the Shakespeare Garden,
• proceed due west using a compass,
• pass the Verdi bust that looks like Mark Twain, and
• continue on in the same direction to the southern edge of the Japanese Tea Garden.

  The connection to the Japanese Tea Garden obviously works well with the Asian theme of the painting, but there's no chance that a casque would be buried in such a manicured space.  Instead, when we reach the intersection of paths at the edge of the garden, we are meant to discover a double set of stairs leads up through the woods to Stow Lake

13) Giant pole

  These are the stairs that connect the Japanese Tea Garden to the edge of Stow Lake.  Running up the middle of the staircase to the lake is a long metal handrail.  It is, very literally, a "giant pole."

  Readers who followed the earlier explanation about the cuffs on the woman's dress may have wondered why the rectangular city blocks were split into squares by a middle line.  The most likely explanation is that the cuffs are meant to give us a visual clue toward this stairwell.  As far as we know, this is the only stairwell in the central area of the park that features a long, straight pole running up the middle of many steps.

All rights reserved by Yagi_94118 on Flickr

  From the top of the staircase one can see across Stow Lake to the stones of Huntington Falls that resemble the stones behind the woman in the painting.  One can also see a Chinese Pavilion near Huntington Falls that was given to the city of San Francisco as a gift in 1976.  The pavilion was dedicated in 1981.

 More importantly, the giant handrail that runs up the staircase ends in a spiral very similar to the spiral shown in the stem of the rose in Image 1. 

  Note that the representation of the handrail in the painting includes:

1. the spiral,
2. the support post (shown as a railing running across behind the woman), and
3. the bulge where the spiral was welded on to the pole.  A bulge like that would never happen naturally on a rose stem.

  There is no way that this combination of features could be a coincidence.  The fact that they appear in the image and are given the "blue halo" effect means that they are important. 

  This is the iconic "Aha image" - the distinctive, man-made shape that appears in every picture to confirm that one has found the right spot.

14) Giant step

15) To the place

16) The casque is kept.

  The spiral end of the handrail appears at the top of the staircase where the stairs intersect with a path.  Visitors who have climbed the stairs to this point can turn left or right. But if we continue in the direction of our "giant pole" and take a "giant step" forwards, we find ourselves out in the path about 4' from the spiral.  The spot is currently covered with asphalt, but in 1981 the path may have been narrower (or it may not have been paved at all).  If there was bare soil here at the time when Preiss was visiting, it would have been an ideal spot for digging because the rock wall would provide some shelter from prying eyes on Stow Lake Drive.

  The leaf on the stem of the rose seems to be confirming the same interpretation, pointing diagonally downwards from the intersection of the handrail and the post.

3/22/18: If any San Francisco searchers want a moment of internet fame, it would be nice to get a picture illustrating where a "giant step" from the top of the stairs would take us.  Get a perspective similar to the photo at left and have an adult stand with one foot beside that post in the top step.  The other leg, extended forwards in a "giant step" out into the path, should indicate our approximate burial spot (now covered with asphalt).

All rights reserved by Yagi_94118 on Flickr

So here is our final hiding spot.  It's in the central area of Golden Gate Park, within the boundaries described by the picture and the verse, but still a little-used spot where (in 1981) one might have been able to dig without attracting attention.

Final Location: 37°46'11.0"N, 122°28'16.7"

(Latitude: 37.769726°, Longitude:-122.471294)