It’s fair to say that much of astrology is misunderstood by the mainstream. It is fair to say that the signs are often reduced to tired stereotypes via newspaper horoscopes or punchy instagram memes for the sake of greater relatability. But what’s so fun about this discipline is that astrology is as deep as you are willing to go. Once you get past the surface descriptions, you see whole worlds open up within each sign, realizing the depth and variety within the expanse of the whole zodiac.
Gemini may be perhaps the most misunderstood. They are often reduced to two-faced liars or all the worst qualities of someone’s cheating ex. In this essay, I will explore the traditional significations of Gemini to better flesh out an accurate picture of the sign of the twins, and help us understand which stereotypes can be discarded and which have a seed of truth. This article is relevant for anyone wishing to know more about Gemini, but may be especially pertinent if your ascendant, lot of spirit, sun or moon is in this sign.
May these words deepen you understanding of this rich area of the zodiac.
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Of Many Shifts
Like Virgo, Pisces and Sagittarius, Gemini is a mutable or double-bodied sign. The latter name comes from the duality of their imagery. While Pisces’s emblem is two fish and Sagittarius’s is a half-man, half-horse, Gemini is signified by a pair of twins, two beings borne of the same womb when only one is expected. In the realm of Gemini, the unified multiplies and fate becomes less predictable. Mutable signs are often given ambivalent meaning due to their variability. Ibn Labban tells us that if Mercury and the Moon are placed in mutable signs, it makes the soul of the native “possessing many sides, quick in change, restless, inconsistent, of double mind, clever”.1 Perhaps the prejudice against the double-bodied is due to their resistance of categorization; the nature of double-bodied signs is to be many different things at once. This attunement to change may present as mercurial or unreliable. But, really, mutable signs hold court for the many complex, contradictory possibilities this world gives us.
Being an air sign, Gemini’s mutability is focused on the realm of thought and relationships, particularly, “the subsequent ability to translate thoughts into words,” which is another way of relating to the outside world.2 As the diurnal ruler of Mercury, the translator and messenger of the gods, Gemini weaves together disparate thoughts, tinkers with ideas, and externalizes this process into speech for others to hear and understand. Adding to this lexical ability, Valens tells us that “[under Gemini] are born scholars, those working in education and letters, poets, music-lovers, declaimers…translators, merchants, judges of good and evil, sensible people, practitioners of the curious arts, and seekers after mystic lore”.3 Whether it be the written word or the transport of goods and services, Gemini has a natural talent for communication and exchange, even extending to deeper, esoteric knowledge.
While this mental fluidity can lead to “fluent and articulate speech,”4 it can also be frustrating when a stable, felt truth is desired. Being symbolized not just by a set of twins but by two pillars, Gemini represents the duality and contradiction of knowledge. Gemini affirms that for every true thing we can say, there is an equal and opposite contradiction. Somehow, both are correct. The world is too big to reduce to hard and fast truths, Mercury’s airy domicile tells us, which can also lead to a certain playfulness with facts that stretches ideas past their reasonable or ethical limits. As astrologer Priscilla Costello points out, “[the] downside” of Gemini’s intellectual mutability “is being glib, talkative without saying anything of substance” or “‘phony’—and “mercurial” in the sense of being vacillating and undependable”. With a lighter grasp on capital-T Truth, than its fiery sister sign, Sagittarius, there can be a twisting of the truth for superficial or mercenary purposes. In the etheric realm of the mind, facts and logic can be stretched simply for fun or to make an argument that fits your own aims. Lawyers are classic Mercurial professions because, regardless of the innocence of their clients, they must craft an argument that convinces others on behalf of the defendant. The facts don’t matter as much as their ability to poke holes in the prosecutor’s narrative and provide enough contradiction that doubt creeps in.
Manilius characterizes the double-bodied this way: “the signs that are accompanied [i.e. mutable] are powerful for good or ill, dispensing doubtful destinies.” As such, the flexibility Gemini has with words may lead them on a more winding, varied path through life, but this changeability also adds a tempering to the Gemini archetype that a more direct or single-minded sign does not possess (more on that later).
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