Dear Readers,
This morning, I woke up at 6am. I’m never ready to be awake at that time, but apparently my Gemini Sun and Moon were gung-ho to welcome the Sun back “home”. At almost exactly 6am, the Sun moved from Taurus into Gemini. Every year, the Sun’s ingress into Gemini feels like this, a relief, a homecoming, a sense of things being right with the world (even though they’re not). It’s the same when the Moon moves through Gemini every month, but those two and a half days feel too brief. It doesn’t hurt that the sun is out, the birds are singing, flowers blooming, and the air is cool and fresh due to a gentle breeze and recent rain.
Gemini season is the transitional moment in time when Spring yields to Summer. In astrology, there are four elements and three modes. Each season consists of a cardinal sign, a fixed sign and a mutable sign, and each mode has one of each of the four elements (fire, earth, air, water). Gemini is mutable air—arguably the most mutable of the mutable signs given the natural mutability of air. It’s the sign of the twins and its astrological symbol ♊ speaks to the duality at the heart of the Gemini experience. The Gemini tendency is to flit from one thing to the next collecting and connecting ideas and information like bees, butterflies and hummingbirds collect and distribute pollen—all creatures associated with the sign of Gemini.
I remember only one line from the first astrological reading I had many years ago. I was sitting at the kitchen table of a woman whose name I don’t remember looking at a strange wheel peppered with symbols. She said, “so you came here to live twelve lifetimes in one...” I felt seen.
And it’s true. There is a continual movement and changeability inherent in the Gemini nature. It’s a natural shapeshifter and connector—curious and playful, thoughtful and analytical, social and extraverted, witty and mentally agile. It loves language, learning and playing with ideas and making connections for the sake of it and is easily bored by routine or lack of mental stimulation and variety. It has a reputation for being superficial and two-faced, and this can be true, but if we look to Mercury, the ruler of Gemini, and into the mythic origins of the Gemini archetype, more complexity comes into view.
Hermes, the original Greek name for the messenger god, was a psychopomp, a guide of souls to the underworld. He and Hecate (an underworld goddess of the dark moon, magic and night) were both deities associated with crossroads and the only gods in the Greek pantheon who could travel from Olympus to the human world, to the underworld and back at will. One of Hermes roles was to escort the souls of recently deceased humans into Hades, the realm of the dead, thus bridging the two realities. Often depicted wearing a traveler’s cloak, winged sandals and helmet, these allowed him to move swiftly between the worlds as both messenger and psychopomp.
Castor and Pollux, the brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, and in mythology the Dioscuri, were twin sons of Leda, queen of Sparta. Castor’s father was Tyndareus, king of Sparta, while Pollux’s father was Zeus, king of the gods. Thus, Castor was mortal and Pollux immortal, but as is the case with many sets of twins, the two had numerous adventures, were constantly together, and were totally devoted to each other. When Castor was killed during a cattle raid, Pollux was devastated and begged his father Zeus to let him share his immortality with his brother. Like all the myths, there are many versions of the story, but in the Odyssey, Homer tells us that the twins then rotated between Hades and Olympus, and between life and death for eternity.
The constant movement of Mercury/Hermes and rotation of the Dioscuri between the realm of the gods and the realm of the dead point to a deeper understanding of the Gemini archetype.
There is indeed a curiosity driven flitting from flower to flower that represents the lighter side of Gemini, but the travel between the upper and lower worlds in the mythology speaks volumes about the dual and paradoxical nature of reality that Gemini is both tuned to and comfortable with, for there is also a deeper drive to embrace and experience both the darkness of the underworld and the light represented by the shining world of Olympus.
This morning, I made a list of the celestial happenings for this week, and it seems only fitting that we begin Gemini season with a calendar chockful of possibilities to discuss. Typical Gemini that I can be, I sat down to write today with the idea that I’d say a bit about the Sun entering Gemini, then write about the Full Moon, Venus entering Gemini, and finally Jupiter joining the Gemini party, all while incorporating the sextiles and trines mentioned below. But if I did that now, after waxing eloquent about Hermes, Castor and Pollux, Gemini and duality, I’d still be writing by the time the Full Moon rolls around, and you’d be reading this after Jupiter takes up residence in Gemini for the next year.
So, here’s my list. I made it through point one in under 1000 words. You see, I’m practicing limiting myself in anticipation of Jupiter’s expansive ingress into Gemini later this week.
· Monday, May 20 5:59AM PDT: Sun enters Gemini
· Wednesday, May 22 8:00AM PDT: Sun (2° Gemini) trine Pluto (2° Aquarius)
· Thursday, May 23 1:28AM PDT: Venus conjunct Jupiter (29° Taurus)
· Thursday, May 23 3:50AM PDT: Venus (29° Taurus) sextile Neptune (29° Pisces)
· Thursday, May 23 6:53AM PDT: Full Moon in Sagittarius (2°)
· Thursday, May 23 1:30PM PDT: Venus enters Gemini
· Thursday, May 23 2:45PM PDT: Jupiter (29° Taurus) sextile Neptune (29° Pisces)
· Saturday, May 25 4:15AM PDT: Venus (2° Gemini) trine Pluto (2° Aquarius)
· Saturday, May 25 4:14PM PDT: Jupiter enters Gemini
To this, I’ll add that a list that includes only trines, sextiles and conjunctions of the benefics is rather exhilarating, but there’s a lot of energy starting to shift from the stable, slow fixed sign of Taurus to the speedy, changeable and inherently unstable sign of Gemini, and that could feel dizzying as the week unfolds. I’ll pop back into your inboxes in a couple days with an update about our busy Sagittarius Full Moon day.
Our world and our lives are in the throes of big change. If you’d like to know how the current and future astrology of this year is likely to land in relation to you personally, I, like my patron Mercury would be delighted to serve as your guide to the star map known as your birth chart. Email me for details: camelliablossoms@gmail.com or…
Thank you for reading my experiment in rolling with the energy of the moment.
Enjoy the Gemini buzz…
~ Cami