Spring is dissipating as we enter the season of Gemini. Beltane ruled Taurus is in the rearview mirror as the twins rush up to greet us. As is the nature of the zodiac, we feel the new season as an answer to the previous one. Gemini talks, tricks, and mischief-makes, where Taurus languored, lazed, and stopped to smell the magnolias. Gemini is bored and is ready to make things interesting.
There is a very old tradition of astrology that we think began in ancient Egypt wherein the zodiac is separated into 36 slices instead of 12. The signs remain the same, but each one is split into three smaller parts. Each of the smaller parts show a slightly different ‘face’ of the sign in question. These 36 parts are called decans and thanks to the work of Austin Coppock in his book 36 Faces, the decans are now more accessible to the wider astro-audience then they’ve been in a real long time.
The three faces of Gemini have been dubbed by Coppock (drawing on a Smörgåsbord of much older sources): ‘The Apple of Eden,’ ‘The Hermaphrodite,’ and ‘The Executioner’s Sword.’ The season of the first decan of Gemini: The Apple of Eden, started May 21st and will end June 1st when the Sun passes into the twins’ second decan. The Apple of Eden represents this decans’ gift of absorbing massive amounts of knowledge. The Apple of Eden is that first bite of the forbidden fruit that flooded the original couple with wisdom. The first decan of Gemini is the endless data collector. It’s the journalist who can never write the story because she’s gotta research all the angles first. Angle after angle after angle. Coppock says that: “Beckoned down too many pathways simultaneously, one becomes motionless.” Now’s the time to collect the information without worrying about how to synthesize it.
In this season we use curiosity to see the many possibilities.
Thursday May 25th, a new moon in the first decan of Gemini will be happening amidst a spicy grand fire trine, an approaching Mars-Saturn opposition, and a Venus-Pluto square. Basically, it’s a lot. The trine between Uranus and Saturn which is now departing, but will be back again in a number of months, has been evident in the swarms of roasted egos and fizzled nerves. Although this transit is on it’s down swing, I think we can still feel it in the spicy after taste of this new moon. The Mars-Saturn opposition on the other hand is just gaining steam right now and will reach it’s full potential at the end of this week as astrologers from all over the world gather in the booming metropolis of Tukwila Washington for the annual Northwest Astrological Conference. The Mars-Saturn opposition puts a Gemini Mars (the aggressive communicator and the devil’s advocate) on one side of the see-saw and a Sagittarius Saturn on the other (the paternalist preacher-man and the dogmatic guru). If you feel like you’re sellin’ out your higher morals for the thrill of a good word-spar, or if you find yourself neglecting your passionate curiosity out of guilt or insecurity, use this new moon to find a way to hold all of the different, disparate, weirdo parts of you at once. Breathe out needing to make sense of it all and breathe in playful curiosity.
The final flavor note of this new moon is that Venus-Pluto square. A Venus-Pluto square pits power against love. A self-involved Aries Venus gets a mean side-eye from a cold and calculating Capricorn Pluto. Check yourself against baby-fits, superfluous scrutiny, and any other kinds of acting out you might feel up to. If you have an anxious or avoidant attachment style, you might feel an extra bad flare up coming on. Even if you are mostly secure in your relationships this could be a time when that gets tested.
For this new moon you can celebrate Gemini by playing games, doing trivia, engaging in impassioned debate, creating a scavenger hunt, leaving notes for the fairies, playing pranks, making memes, enjoying novelty, and starting as many sentences as possible with: “on the other hand…”
mabel vautravers 