The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 356, titled:
Gemini in Astrology: Meaning and Traits
With Chris Brennan, Camille Michelle Gray, and Nicholas Polimenakos
Episode originally released on Jun 13, 2022
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Mary Sharon
Transcription released June 17, 2022
Copyright © 2022 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey, my name is Chris Brennan and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. In this episode, I’m going to be talking about the astrology and the meaning of the zodiac sign Gemini with astrologers Camille Michelle Gray and Nicholas Polimenakos. Welcome both of you to the show.
CAMILLE MICHELLE GRAY: Hi.
NICHOLAS POLIMENAKOS: Thanks for having me on.
CB: Thanks for joining me during Gemini season. So just to get the data down, today is Tuesday, June 7th 2022, starting at 12:03 pm in Denver, Colorado. This is the 356th episode of the show, and this is the third in my series of signs on the zodiac where we do a deep dive into the meaning of each of the signs. And today I’m having both of you join me because each of you has Gemini prominent in your chart. Camille, you and I’ve been talking about doing this episode for a month now. What are your Gemini placements?
CMG: Gemini rising and Mars in Gemini.
CB: Perfect. Do you mind if I show your chart?
CMG: Absolutely.
CB: Okay, cool. Let me just put that up on the screen for those watching the video version. So you’ve got 24 Gemini rising, Mars at zero degrees of Gemini, and Mercury is over there in Capricorn at 12 degrees of Capricorn. Perfect. And Nicolas, what about you?
NP: 20 degree Gemini Sun, nine degree Mercury in Gemini, and I’ve zero Venus in Gemini.
CB: I love that. So between the two of you, we’ve got pretty much almost all of the inner planets in the signs of Gemini. That’s a very good coverage, I think for this episode in terms of your qualifications.
NP: Yes, I would think so. Yeah. [Camille laughs]
CB: All right. Let me put up again, for the video viewers, our Gemini stats card that Paula Belluomini designed for me, which shows the symbol for Gemini. Gemini comes from the Latin word which comes from a Greek word which just means the twins because Gemini is the sign of the twins. In terms of the stats for Gemini, it’s an odd sign in terms of odd versus even since it’s the third sign. So it’s said to be as a result of that a diurnal or masculine sign. It’s said to be an Air sign so it’s associated with the element of air when it comes to the four classical elements of Greek philosophy of Earth, air, fire, and water. It’s a mutable sign in terms the modalities of cardinal fixed and mutable because it falls at the end of the spring season in the northern hemisphere. And finally, it’s said to be ruled by the planet Mercury. That’s the primary planet that’s associated with the sign of Gemini, and so that’s one of the primary things that inform some of the significations of Gemini; are these four qualities of masculine, airy, mutable and ruled by Mercury. It’s also said to be the detriment of Jupiter but we’ll get into that a little bit more later. I think those are the main stats and those are the main things that we usually focus on in these episodes just in terms of understanding the archetypal qualities of the sign, and that’s what we’re gonna go for is trying to shoot for understanding some of the higher level archetypes or umbrella concepts. And then from there, also getting into some of the details. Yeah. So Camille, where should we start? Or what’s your usual starting point when you’re trying to talk about the signs or explain them to people?
CMG: Yeah. I like to just start with the most basic fundamental kind of attribute for the signs. And for Gemini, my starting point is awareness; to be aware of one’s environment, to be curious about one’s environment. And if you think about it, you know, coming after Taurus which came after Aries, we have this burst of life. Then we have life that is kind of sustained and maintained through Taurus. And then we have the introduction of Gemini which then becomes aware about its environment, aware that there are other people sparking with awareness as well. And from that kind of base point, we get the classic jumping-off point to communication and talking and dealing with messages.
CB: I love that that’s perfect. That ties in was something I talked about previously that I’m really fascinated by, which is the notion that each sign of the zodiac has some sort of corrective quality that almost counterbalances or contrasts with the sign that came before it. And one of the things that we talked about in the last episode on Taurus was that Taurus as a fixed Earth sign has a very slow kind of plotting quality. And one of the keywords I think for that episode was ‘Don’t rush me’ as a Taurus keyword. Gemini is different, though, because the corrective quality for that is that things get quicker. Things get faster and start moving at a much more brisk pace when it comes to Gemini as one of the qualities, it seems like. Right?
CMG: Absolutely. I would agree. Yeah, that mutable air like you can’t see or catch where it’s going. And it could be halfway around the world in a couple of seconds.
NP: Yeah, it’s almost like Taurus is ‘Don’t rush me,’ and Geminis like “Don’t keep me in one place. Don’t hold me down. I have to be anywhere at any time, any instance, and on a whim it seems. But in the contrast to Taurus, yeah. Yep.
CB: Right. There’s a quickness and that comes with Mercury. Mercury is the fastest visible moving planet when it comes to astrology. And in terms of the planets, at least compared to the Moon which is sort of a planet in astrology but is also a satellite, but besides the Moon, Mercury is the fastest and it also of the planets changes direction and speeds the most frequently. Because it’ll go retrograde three times a year, which is much more frequent than some of the other planets that go retrograde much more infrequently. So Mercury as the moving planet of Gemini is constantly almost changing directions, changing its mind, trying different things. And Gemini as a mutable sign also has that quality of adaptability because we’re moving away from the middle of the season, the middle of the spring in the northern hemisphere with which Taurus is associated with, and we’re getting to the later part of the spring where things are starting to change and it has this double quality. And all the mutable signs in ancient astrology they used to be called double-bodied signs because they have that duality to them of being sort of having one foot in one season and one foot in the other in some sense.
NP: Yeah, you’re dealing with the transitions. The transitions is interesting to me, you know, if we look at it the way we do astrology as we’re starting with Aries and Taurus, Gemini is the first example of the mutability in the sense that’s shown to us if we go in that order. And in the western hemisphere too, I think there’s that critical moment of the in-between space between the Taurus in the end of April in May and going into June. I think culturally too for the Western hemisphere is very major transition point because the next season is summer. It’s a completely different vibe than going into fall in the other seasons. So for me, there’s a certain type of vibrancy, as in we’re moving towards the light in the sense. That’s the feeling I get from the first mutable sign in Gemini.
CMG: Yeah, I like that. It made me or it reminded me of that feeling of getting out of school, which tends to kind of align a little bit with when Gemini season starts. And how that mirrors the freeness and the movability of Gemini, because it’s like now I’m out, I can kind of do what I want, I can play around and have fun in my environment. So yeah, that change-ness and how it takes on that Gemini quality of just being a little bit more breezy at that time of year.
CB: Yeah. And as I was watching this– because we’re doing this series, and today the Sun is right in the middle of Gemini at this point, it’s at 16 degrees of Gemini– I’ve been really paying attention to, as we’re doing this series, and I’m trying to record each episode and release it while the Sun is moving through the sign that we’re talking about over the course of the next 12 months over the course of this year. I was really paying attention to the seasonal qualities recently as I was doing these episodes and noticed that the spring really peaks and reaches its fullest potential during Taurus season during the fixed sign where the quality of fixed is that there’s not a lot of change, not a lot of movement because you’re right in the middle of the season and it’s sort of reached the culmination of what that season is about in some sense during the fixed sign. And by the time you get to Gemini, it’s really started to move into something else. I think that’s going to be a quality that will come up a lot when we talk about all the mutable signs, which is this notion of changeability or transitioning into something else and therefore also having a sort of flexibility or adaptability. There may be not any other mutable sign that is more like that than Gemini in terms of the notion of nimbleness or sort of adaptability.
NP: Yeah, especially after– my opinion– the most stubborn sign of the mall.
CMG: Yeah, the most fixed. [laughs]
NP: Yeah. It’s interesting you said something about the seasons with the Taurus because I think you said here we are doing the 16-degree Gemini Sun. If I think about 15-16 degree Taurus Sun in a sense peeking, you know, if you’re Pagan Wiccan, you’re dealing with Beltane that whole week. That is like the highest, the biggest expanded part of a fixed sign of Taurus there, that energy. And then you start to transition when you move away and it’s kind of overlapping here when we’re coming into the mutable sign. So it’s completely different the midpoint in Taurus and the midpoint of Gemini, that’s for sure. And I think this midpoint of Gemini is really like, Oh, here comes summer. Here we are.” You know? It’s right there. So…
CB: Yeah, the summer solstice is right around the corner and you can kind of feel it at this point. Because we’re getting there, we’re getting so close, and you can have the sense that there’s something new that’s coming up very frequently even though you’re still technically in the previous season. I’ve seen people on Twitter already saying the summer is going by so fast, but it’s not even summer yet. It’s still, you know, this is just the end of spring. So let’s back up a bit and talk a little bit about… Gemini is a Mercury-ruled sign and one of the keywords that comes up so frequently for Gemini is communication, and for mercury as well, of course. But Gemini, I want to say one of its qualities out of most of the signs that I think it gets associated with or all of the signs, is talkativeness and communication as an overarching principle that manifests in many different ways. But it’s probably one of the most core keywords for Gemini in some way.
CMG: Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of the beginning of perceiving, having awareness, and then sharing those thoughts with other people. And the most primary and immediate way that we can do that, of course, is with talking or with white writing. So communication there, but then also just adding to the pantheon of communication, it can be photography, it can be communication through art or even through body movements at times so that communication as long as it’s conveying a message, it’s still all within the realm of that Gemini archetype.
CB: One of the things you did and said during that that reminded me of something actually that’s really important and core is that Gemini is also associated with the hands and the arms. And that’s a very Gemini trait to sort of use your hands and use gestures as part of a means of communicating things besides just using your words.
CMG: Absolutely. I’m trying to control even right now how much I’m talking with my hands. But certainly, it engages the body in that way. And then the ways that you can use your hands or use your arms, for instance like playing the guitar, still kind of a message through art form. But no, using that Gemini rules body part.
NP: Yeah. Another example of this is sign language; another major way of translating of language and symbolism, too. And if we go back, we’re talking about this I think too– I think, I just said it. I think. And it’s that the initial part of wanting to label things. And how you construct, let’s say, a sentence before that you’re labeling. You’re wanting to logically put a word to something, you know? So it starts there and then it gets deeper and deeper. That’s a language. You construct a sentence, you construct a paragraph and it becomes language. Same thing with as you mentioned, playing using the hands to play music. You’re constructing notes, you’re learning, and then you’re sending the message. So there’s so many ways this happens and I’m glad that you mentioned other things rather than words. You know, you said photography, and I was a professional photographer for 12 years. Yeah, there’s a structure that you learn shooting pictures and so on and so forth, but still you’re also putting together certain shades and symbols to construct the language. And then you show it with no words.
CMG: And it’s a beautiful marriage between the technical ability, for instance for photography or for guitar, with how the output or how the message itself can be subtle or artistic or symbolic, etc. All of that is still Gemini as well.
CB: Yeah. And when I did the Mercury episode last year, one of the things we focused on from an astronomical standpoint of just understanding where that’s coming from symbolically with Mercury, and I think that also relates to Gemini, is just that the Sun is the center of our solar system, and in many ways all light is emanating from the Sun at the very center of our solar system. And Mercury is the first planet in between the Sun and all of the other planets, and so in some ways there’s this symbolic quality of Mercury acting as a go-between that that light and that source at the center of everything that is enlivening everything and is acting as the spirit of the universe of the solar system in some sense, and Mercury which is somehow transmitting that back and forth between all the other planets or acting as a bridge between the rest of the solar system and the center of it. And I think when you focus in on that notion of Mercury as a go-between or somebody that can transmit things back and forth, you start getting to the core of the archetype that becomes very relevant for Gemini and the many different forms of acting as a go-between in order to transmit something. Which is essentially what communication is, but that also then leads to others very more specific Mercurial or Gemini-related things like, you know, reporters for example, being a sort of Gemini thing; people who transfer information about things or go to the source of something and then report back what they saw.
CMG: Absolutely, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So in terms of that, I was trying to think of some chart examples and some of the people that I wanted to mention in terms of that. One of them that was really good is I’ve noticed that people with an emphasis of Gemini placements sometimes have a facility really good and aptitude with words, and a way for communicating in a way that’s really impressive either in written form or in spoken form. And one of my favorite written form communicators was Anthony Bourdain who was a chef for was a cook in New York. He wrote this book, Kitchen Confidential, that was just talking about the behind-the-scenes of what it’s like in the world of chefs and professional chefs and cooking and sort of saying these things. But he had a very good way of communicating things very poetically. And he was born with Leo rising and Mercury and Venus in the south node in Gemini in the 11th House. He also had a way of communicating things very poetically not just in written form but also on his television show where he did a travel show and he traveled around and liked exposing himself to different cultures and different foods and understanding different cultures through their food, and then describing it or writing about it and speaking about it in very poetic terms. That’s one of his things.
CMG: Yeah. And that Mercury in the 11th house just being stimulated by the community that it just happens to be in. I always found the most compelling part of his show and of his life was his willingness to sit down with literally anybody, which I think is also a quality of Geminis. Like, if there’s information to be gotten here I’m going to get it, I don’t mind where it’s coming from. But yeah, I always found it so impressive how he could talk and relate to anybody.
NP: Yeah, and I think too with that chart in particular, you saw his Mercury and if I saw it correctly, it was squaring Mars in Pisces. You know, that Mercury in Gemini in the 11th is what we’re talking about, like the community in many different levels. If you think even before he wrote his book, he was in community of just chefs and cooks in New York and all that, and then he just level by level with community. But I think the emotional part came through his Mercury. That the square that he had there, you could see the connectedness aligning to intertwine with anything and everything in the world. You could say it’s more a Piscean energy there. Also, him being a Cancer Sun, and what it is with home and the hearth and the bowl of soup, you know? I think it’s all coming through his Mercury and through that 11th house. And so you could see all the layers of him when you mentioned the word poetic. I think even in itself Mercury in Gemini could be poetic, but in this case there’s that watery part that comes through his Mercury and brings that emotional connectedness. It wasn’t just him recording, it was always personal. It always was personal connection on an emotional level. But he was ciphering that through his Mercury. At least that’s off the bat here looking at that.
CMG: Yeah. And speaking of that square to Mercury, something that I always remember about him is that he was a blunt speaker. He just spoke his mind, “I don’t like this, I do like this, what the hell is this?” [laughs] That, too, can be Gemini as well of just getting that extra from that Mars placement.
CB: Yeah, he didn’t like to mince words.
CMG: No.
CB: Speaking of words, one of my other examples that somebody on Twitter mentioned today and reminded me of was, there was a debate back in 2008 when Barack Obama was running for president for the first time. We didn’t have his birth time at first and we just had a birth date, and the Moon in that chart with the untimed chart was either in very late Taurus or was in early Gemini. And there was actually an active debate about that in the astrological community at the time whether he seemed more like a Moon in Taurus or Moon in Gemini. And I was arguing with another astrologer and I was like he’s obviously a Moon in Gemini because he’s obviously a really gifted orator, and having a facility with words is a pretty common Gemini trait. And as we were just talking about with Anthony Bourdain, he wouldn’t otherwise have any Gemini placements except for that Moon in the sign of Gemini. And so it’s not that somebody can’t be gifted with words or be good at speaking or writing without Gemini placements, but it was just one of those things that pushed me in the direction of I think he was born later in the day once the Moon moved into Gemini rather than earlier. Then once his birth certificate was actually released, that ended up being confirmed. And so here’s his chart. He has Aquarius rising with the Moon at three degrees of Gemini in the fifth whole sign house pretty closely conjunct the degree of the IC at 28 degrees of Taurus. And I think that’s been borne out not just in the 2008 election, but just during the course of his career in terms of one of the most gifted speakers or public speakers of a generation and having a way with words that’s really effective and really poetic in some way.
CMG: Yeah, especially because there’s the Moon placement in Gemini. It just reminds me of how during his mini-campaigns, he seemed to speak to the heart of people and he was just able to really connect with and rile the emotions up of people that were his supporters, while also just stating the facts or being very Gemini and straightforward in that way but still having that connectedness emotionally.
NP: Yes, if he had a Taurus Moon… And no offense to the Taurus Moons out there, but it’s about timing too. With the Gemini Moon, there’s this sense of timing and knowing what to say at the right time and on the fly. Not planned. It might be more planned with a Taurus Moon on a different pace but it’s for sure Gemini Moon because to go back to stating the facts but also connecting in a certain way with a lot of timing going on. Even though a lot of those speeches they’re written beforehand. But whenever you saw him talking off the cuff, you could totally tell when he was doing it. And he knew when to do it. He knew when to go off the teleprompter and to come across a certain way. And you have to… You’re gauging and you’re tapping into something when you do that, and that something probably is going to come up here in this video as the timing of things. The timing or the material timing that seemed like on a whim or out of the blue, but really it’s a dialed-in conduit to a certain magic. And Obama had it for sure. So, Gemini Moon all the way.
CMG: Yeah. And with his Leo placements and also with that Gemini Moon in the fifth house, I think there is a quality to Gemini and to Mercury of knowing when to perform. Knowing when to like be a certain way, especially when you’re thinking about the mutability, away that you can kind of walk into the room, read it, and intuitively know how to present yourself or maybe what to say. I think that’s something that Obama had and in droves.
CB: Yeah, and just a quickness to being able to respond to something quickly. One of the things I was thinking about recently and talking about I think on the last forecast that is an impressive trait that I don’t always have but I’d like to develop more, is the ability to do small talk better. Like, let’s say with a stranger or somebody you’ve run into, you know, you’ve got an elevator conversation and you have like five seconds to have very quick, not super meaningful back and forth, but to leave a good impression and say something witty or what have you. That’s something that Gemini really excels at and sometimes can get criticized for for being too shallow or too superficial and not going in deep or not going long, but instead being sort of short and quick. But sometimes there’s many different situations where that can actually be advantageous and that can be a skill that is good to develop in some circumstances like that.
CMG: Absolutely. I’m not good at it either but I’m trying. [laughs]
NP: I am…
CB: Nicolas, actually, I think you excel. This is one of those areas where I think you do pretty well when I was thinking of Gemini people.
NP: Yes.
CB: At like, conferences. I know you initially from the Northwest Astrology Conference and one of the things I always remember about you is just seeing you go up to people that are new or attending their first conference and then striking up a conversation with them and sort of becoming friends or welcoming them into the conference through just striking up a little conversation of some sort.
NP: Yes, I can do that. Was a born with it? Yes. [Camille laughs] But it takes some training. It’s gonna sound funny but I think having Mercury in Gemini– and other people seeing Mercury in Gemini, like we looked at Bourdain’s chart his Mercury in Gemini– but is Anthony a type of person you would think that would walk in and immediately say something? Well, first of all, he was famous. There’s that. But let’s just say he wasn’t famous, would he walk into the room and start talking to people immediately? I don’t think so. I think Anthony’s timing was a little bit different because of the emotional watery parts of his chart so his pacing was different. Let’s say for someone like me or someone close to me that has just right there Mercury in Gemini, yes there is this thing that you dial into. And it’s not just confidence, it’s not about confidence, it’s just you can’t help it. It’s like there’s messages coming through you in the moment. And you’re not even processing them, it’s just happening. It’s just things are coming out of your mouth. And I think the art to all this, and what I meant earlier about training, is that it’s about the timing aspect of it, when to do it and when not to do it. Because I think there’s plenty of Geminis out there or someone with let’s say with a certain type of Mercury in Gemini placement where you’re overstepping boundaries and you’re saying things at the wrong time. You have to learn. So, you know, the world’s your experimental place and if you’re aware, you start to train yourself when to do it and when not to do it. And when you do get better at this, then that’s the timing that comes in. Because then you don’t have to say too much. But when you do say it, it’s huge. It can totally affect things. Now to go back to the example you said like, “Oh, you go to conferences and so on and so forth,” yeah, I could do that. Because I know what it was to not know anybody and to do that. But honestly, my training ground was the restaurant business. That’s what my training ground was. I grew up in the restaurant business with my family, and I didn’t know how to talk to people but I was forced to. And that’s how I learned. So even though I have that placement in my chart, I think there’s a training element to all this if you’re going to be good at it, I’d say.
CMG: That raw Gemini energy can come in a little bit too hot. Yeah. Is it? Yeah. So, needing to read the room and train yourself around it is certainly key.
CB: Yes. Sometimes one of the downsides of Gemini energy can be talking for the sake of talking without necessarily saying anything; there being a lot of words, but there not being a lot behind the words. And that can be a downside. There’s some famous Geminis like that. One of them was, you know, Donald Trump for example. One recent example that’s sort of relevant these days is Trump had Leo rising with the Sun in Gemini conjunct the north node and Uranus in Gemini in the 11th house. And he can talk, and on one hand has been able to use that to his benefit of just being able to talk and talk and talk and talk about whatever in the moment, but sometimes you realize that he’s just talking and there’s not a lot of depth of knowledge behind what he’s saying. It’s just like filling the air with words.
CMG: Absolutely. And specific to him and maybe also kind of related to Gemini, it’s the charm factor. It’s like, “I don’t know what you’re saying or what any of this means, but I like the presence.” [laughs]
CB: Right. Yeah, there can be a charmingness to Gemini that’s very appealing and very… It’s not comforting, how can we describe that charmingness of Gemini? It’s interesting because it kind of buzzes a little bit in some sense.
NP: It’s the play on words, first off. That’s one way. Is how Gemini can come up within the moment and play on words, and reading the environment or the person in the situation. There’s something to it. I’m admitting it. Like, I’m reading people’s body languages sometimes so on and so forth, and I’m like I know what to say. But you’re bringing up an example like Donald Trump, who is who he is… He knows what… Adaptability. He knows what’s to say and knows what button to push. He’s got that down, I mean, he has it down. Now there’s the other part of this, and there’s the communication part and the flashiness and the charm and the way it is. But we have to remember the other part of it, I think, which is called a high-level Gemini when you’re dealing with ethics and morality, because it comes down to this in the end. And the bigger story with Gemini is what are you saying and why, in a sense. What are you doing? Are you doing it to manipulate a situation? Because Geminis are masters at this. They’re tricksters. Exactly, it’s a trickster aspect. So are you just saying things, the words? But the other part of talking is listening, and I think that this part of it too is important for the Gemini story if one is to be an artful Gemini and have all the bags of tricks. At that point, you’re not just doing it to fill in the spaces with words to hear yourself talk, it’s like are you listening to the person? Not just what you’re saying, are you listening? And I think there is a key component and key thing. We go back to Obama, he’d listen to you. He’s the type of person when you’re one on one, he would listen to you. Other Geminis, are they really listening or they’re just waiting for you to be done talking because they have something else to say?
CB: Right, waiting for your turn to speak.
NP: Waiting for your turn to speak. So that type of thing is important for me. You could see how the energy moves with Gemini and what could happen.
CB: And that might be important in terms of the distinction between the nocturnal versus diurnal signs or masculine versus feminine signs or whatever you want to call that. There’s a debate in the astrological community right now about what to phrase that as and different people have different opinions, but just it seems like Gemini once we’ve switched to the third sign is a more extroverted sign. If it’s a diurnal sign, one of the things that the Sun and the diurnal planets do is emit light, the Sun emits light versus the Moon receiving light. Maybe part of that distinction is that Gemini has a tendency to default towards talking and the output version of that, whereas maybe a nocturnal sign like the other Gemini ruled sign, which is Virgo, would have a better job of doing the opposite, which is listening, which is the more receptive form of communication. Does that make sense?
CMG: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah, it can also up just in the charts of folks, whether they do have Mercury in Gemini, but where their luminaries are or necessarily what house Mercury is in can really influence the flavor of talking versus listening. But I really like that listening was brought up, and that’s one of the first things I wrote down, that Gemini is the talker and the listener. Because I think kind of part and parcel to the mutability of Gemini is also being able to pick up on the cues, which can be body language, it can be the tone of the room, but it can also be literally what are you hearing? And then how are you going to shape your response in response to what you have heard? So there needs to be that kind of two-way travel with communication and listening.
NP: I love what you said, how you’re going to shape your response? Because I think you can listen and shape at the same time where you’re being respectful of the situation, of the balance of what communication really is. You need a balance and the space for that to happen. Anyway, I really dig what you just said there, it was good. Awesome.
CB: Speaking of that, one of the chart examples that just came to mind as we were talking about this of talking but also listening is a famous Gemini Moon is Sigmund Freud, it’s a little bit outdated at this point, but to some extent, one of the founders of depth psychology and so-called talking therapy of psychoanalytic therapy through talking and through either a dialogue or having a therapist to talk to and to listen and to explore the depths of one’s dreams and psyche and other things like that. So he was supposed to have Scorpio rising and the Moon in Gemini, as well as Saturn in Gemini in the eighth house.
CMG: Yeah, and this is a great example of how context can kind of matter. In the context of talk therapy, whether it’s Freud or someone doing it today, to go back to the listening part, you need to be able to receive and hear what they are saying because the quality of your counseling or your observations depends on having that kind of open ear and that open mind, and then of course knowing how to respond from that. So there are situations where that listening is critical.
CB: Right, and this brings to mind another example I was just thinking of which is a super Gemini that I think of sometimes when I think of Gemini examples which is Edward Snowden, who worked for the NSA or the CIA as a contractor in the early 2010s. He ended up finding out about this government program of surveilling the world basically, the world’s communications and then disclosing it. So it’s kind of interesting in terms of both listening and talking, but he has Gemini rising with Mercury, Mars, the north node, and the Sun all in Gemini in the first whole sign house. So that idea of communications and talking, but also who’s listening? And as well as the notion that sometimes comes up with Mercury about disclosures and about reporting and Mercury sometimes plays that role of the one who discloses things or the one who reports things. In his instance, he became and will probably always become primarily known for or be primarily known for as a whistleblower, essentially.
CMG: Yeah. I was going to say Gemini is what blows the whistle, I have an important message.
NP: Yeah, definitely in his case too. Because of the oppositions he has there, it’s not just certain things being whistle blown, I mean, the depth of it too. The Sagittarius stuff there on the other side is just not making surface small talk, it’s pushing something deeper. And I’m saying that because I’m going to assume this, but his actions are on a deeper ethical level. So in his case, it’s a deeper thing. Have you ever actually heard him talk? I actually listened to a podcast he’s on, he wouldn’t stop talking by the way, he wouldn’t. And he has this cadence, this funny cadence. And you take that and conjunct with the fact that he wasn’t able to say something for a while and he’s hiding out, and then when he gets his chance to say something, you listen to what he’s saying, he wouldn’t stop talking. He just was just going, just waiting for this, and I couldn’t tell if that’s just him in general or the situation that he was in.
CMG: Yeah, and I like the distinction you drew there between Sag and Gemini, where for Edward Snowden it was purpose-driven communication and really kind of aimed to reshape or to expose governments, larger systems, which is a part of a Sagittarius archetype. So it’s not just talking just to talk, but I have something really important and probably could change the structure, I should say, message to kind of get out there.
NP: Yeah, you’re dealing with many levels of truth here with this person, what is the truth and the highest truth for him personally? Then what is the truth in general for the public, for the country? And that’s coming through him along with the files or the information dump.
CB: And just to describe for those listen to the audio version what we’re talking about, in addition to that Gemini stellium, he has Jupiter, Uranus, the Descendant, the south node, and Neptune all in Sagittarius in the seventh house. So that’s the opposition that’s sort of formed with his Gemini placements and some of that strong Sagittarius energy that’s being brought in where there’s an ideological or belief-based component to things and also a sort of rebelliousness with Uranus there conjunct Jupiter within three degrees with Jupiter at three Sag and Uranus at six opposing that Mercury in Gemini. And the fact that he sort of broke the rules or did something that he wasn’t supposed to do and rebelled in some sense in order to do what he thought was right in terms of his morals or his beliefs.
CMG: I was just going to bring up really quickly I saw his Moon was in Scorpio, which is like an aversion to Gemini, so the conflict of should I keep this secret or should I like expose it? Obviously, the Gemini went out energetically and Sagittarius went out because it was a truth that needed to be told. But withholding information from a Gemini or a Gemini witnessing that information is being withheld, I can see how that can be deeply frustrating, because it’s all about open lines of communication.
NP: Yeah. If it’s touching your moral compass and you have this Mercurial quality, how long can you keep your mouth shut? You can’t. And that’s the other part of, does Gemini talk too much? Sometimes there’s a stigma, “Geminis, oh, they’re just yapping away and there’s no depth.” So obviously it depends on the individual in the chart we’re looking at now. In this case too, you’re bringing up that Moon, and I think there’s a deeper something going on there, and it’s like, “I can’t hold this, I have to open, I have to do something. So really he’s not thinking of himself at all, goes deeper. So that says something. Whether you agree or not with this person out there, this person’s living in a deeper way, and he doesn’t have to say anything. There’s plenty of people who have their hands on the levers of certain powers and can press any button, and they don’t care, they just go home and do whatever. But for some reason with him, and I think when you brought up the Moon part there, Scorpio Moon, there’s something that just adds the flavor. “I can’t deal with this anymore, I have to say something. Not only am I saying, it’s going to come cutting in.” So anyway, that’s…
CMG: In exposing what he exposed, he accepted a more difficult life. So talk about being convicted, which is something that Geminis can do.
CB: Yeah. All right, so let’s see what else. There’s a couple of things that were mentioned previously I want to circle back to just to mention passing. One was Gemini Moon is one of the placements I’m often jealous of, because I sometimes see a facility with learning new languages with that placement, that it comes a little bit more naturally or a little bit more easily to them, as well as just Gemini placements in general. So Demetra George, for example, has a Gemini Moon, Robert Schmidt, who was the head translator Project Hindsight had a Gemini Moon, and I was always impressed by how innately or intuitively he seemed to be able to pick up ancient languages by just knowing the grammar and the syntax. He said, “Once you get the grammar down, then it’s pretty easy just to learn the vocabulary or what have you. But you just need to figure out the grammar first.” Or even my friend Austin Coppock has a Gemini Moon and is pretty striking in the way that he comes up with metaphors and poetic similes and things like that in astrology.
CMG: Yeah, that’s a superpower. I like it. I see it too.
NP: Yeah. You could see Austin on a podcast, there’s this moment. His pacing of communication, there’s something going on, but you could see the process happening when he’s constructing his words. His Moon, you see it, you could catch it. It’s interesting with him, but yeah.
CB: Yeah. And then circling back to earlier as well, one thing that was mentioned in passing that’s good maybe to dwell on just a little bit is that idea of adaptability of Gemini sometimes having this notion of almost being a chameleon in some sense because it’s able to adapt to who they’re with at the moment and sometimes take on those qualities in some way. And that notion of adaptability, which is both connected with Mercury, as well as with it being a mutable sign I think is a very important overarching component as well.
CMG: Yeah. And just on a personal note, my childhood nickname was chameleon because my name is Camille, and I think it’s so funny that astrologically I have the setup that would make me a chameleon. But yeah, in thinking about that, and maybe this is a couple of layers deep, but there’s a lot of associations of duplicitousness and two-faceness with the Gemini. And when you’re talking specifically about who you are to this group of people, who you need to be, how you’re camouflaging over there, and maybe how you’re turning into this group of people being a little bit different over there, that doesn’t necessarily have to point towards a two-faceness or being kind of deceptive, rather that the Gemini has the ability to kind of morph into who they need to be for each groups, and it’s an authentic expression both places, but yeah, the Gemini ability to kind of hold multi-identities at once, multiple identities at once, and they’re each authentic, they’re not fake.
NP: Yeah. In Greek myth with Hermes, there’s the reason of chameleon, there’s a reason for changing into something, because Hermes used to do that through humans to alter situations in Greek myth. A lot of this stuff is interesting because Hermes would embody an old man on the road to alter a situation. This was part of the power. The other part of it is in the in-between journey as we’re talking about the chameleon part and the constant transforming, is alchemy in a sense. And things are always changing, and that was the gift or another power as you want to call it of Hermes of doing things on the fly and coming out with something in the middle of nothing or in a situation, again, on the whim. But that was the powers to kind of cut through all that and bring up that magic on the fly. There was always a reason for it. Alchemical is one way you can look at it, because it’s constantly changing and morphing. And changing and morphing, we really think about a transformative progress sometimes like shedding our skin. We’re vulnerable when we do that, at the same time, we’re getting down to purity and then we’re becoming stronger. Now that’s a process, that could be a long-term process. But for the Gemini, it happens in the moment, all in one moment, instantaneously, and they’re riding that vibe constantly or they can. So again, on a deeper level after that, it’s like, what are they really doing it for, wheeling their power? But anyway, to go back to the chameleon part and the transformative part on the fly.
CB: Yeah, and I like that word that you used earlier, because I thought that even though it has negative connotations, it also gets into something really important just in terms of meaning of that word, but duplicity or duplicitousness. And I was just looking at the definition of that, and Merriam-Webster says contradictory doubleness of thought, speech or action, especially the belying of one’s true intentions by deceptive words or actions or to the quality or state of being double or twofold, which is where you get to that notion of two-faceness to say one thing, but then to do another thing or vice versa. But this notion of, I guess, this is the first sign, we had Aries, which is the first sign, we had Taurus, and then we had Gemini, and Gemini is the sign of the twins. And all of the mutable signs have these notions of doubleness or being double-bodied or having two of something, but Gemini is probably the one that gets the most of this notion of there being two sides to it, and that manifests in different ways.
CMG: A lot of that actually also may just come from the symbolism of Gemini, the fact that it means the twins, so two separate entities or one person that splits off into two entities. So that double-bodied nature really isn’t all the mutable signs, but I agree that Gemini gets the most flack for it.
NP: I agree, I agree. Actually, Sam Reynolds, we always talk about this, the two signs that get the most flack are Scorpios and Gemini, they just get a bad rap, everybody’s got a story. Geminis, they just get it. To go back to what we’re talking about, sometimes situations need to be altered, someone needs to be tricked. For you Geminis out there, I just want to be careful with what I’m about to say here, because don’t do things on purpose after what I’m going to say here. Sometimes if you have the ability and the gift to change and manipulate a situation, what are you doing it for? Are you doing for the good? That’s what Hermes used to do on purpose. Trick a situation that was normal on a human level, and in that moment, the divine comes through, the Sun comes through Mercury to the rest of the planets and the solar system. The divine comes through in that moment for the certain reasons and the deep, deep, pure reasons. Now, if you’re a Gemini and you know you can do this, you could see how one can misuse their power hence why Geminis would get a bad rap. So, again, you have to honor the divine, honor the power, and honor the chameleon-like moments that come through out of nowhere. I said this earlier in this podcast, I want to reiterate it because I don’t want Geminis to have a bad rap anymore.
CMG: Yeah, let’s clear the air.
NP: [repeated part] …..needs to be tricked. For you Geminis out there, I just want to be careful with what I’m about to say here, because don’t do things on purpose after what I’m going to say here. Sometimes if you have the ability and the gift to change and manipulate a situation, what are you doing it for? Are you doing it for the good? That’s what Hermes used to do on purpose. Trick a situation that was normal on a human level, and in that moment, the divine comes through, the Sun comes through Mercury to the rest of the planets and the solar system. The divine comes through in that moment for the certain reasons and the deep, deep, pure reasons. Now, if you’re a Gemini and you know you can do this, you could see how one can misuse their power hence why Geminis would get a bad rap. So, again, you have to honor the divine, honor the power, and honor the chameleon-like moments that come through out of nowhere. I said this earlier in this podcast, I want to reiterate it because I don’t want Geminis to have a bad rap anymore.
CMG: Yeah, let’s clear the air right here right now.
NP: Yeah, but I get why they do.
CB: I mean, we’re going to cover the full range and the full spectrum. I mean, with every sign, we’re going to cover the good sides and the bad sides and everything in between to whatever extent we can. So don’t worry too much about… I don’t want to stigmatize any sign either for sure, because that’s annoying kind of astrology, but it is good to think of what’s the full range of manifestations and that every positive manifestation of a sign can also have a mirroring negative manifestation. And then once you identify both sides, I think that gives you a much clearer picture of what the underlying or the overarching archetype is.
CMG: Yeah. So talking about what is the meaning of all this shape-shifting, meaningless shape-shifting, which does exist in the Gemini world is like gossip, and just filling up space with words that are controversial and spicy and can rile people up, but at the end of the day serves a negative purpose in some ways or a completely useless purpose in essence.
CB: Sure. Well, I mean, so there’s a mischievousness and a playful quality to Gemini, so playfulness mischievousness, and we get some of that in some of the trickery myths. What’s one of the trickery myths, Nicholas, from Greek mythology?
NP: There’s a couple, but what was I reading something about last night? First of all, Greek myths are just brutal. Hermes was getting set up. Zeus is setting Hermes up to help Persephone get out of the underworld at a certain point. [unintelligible] did that too, so there’s a trickiness there. And the stories of putting guards to sleep so people could sneak through. There’s that kind of trickiness to move a situation. The other part of it is Odysseus. Hermes goes to visit Odysseus after Odysseus hanging with Circe. There’s this thing of like, “Hey, you need to do this. I’m going to help you get out of here to finish the quest.” And so he comes through. But there’s plenty of stories of Hermes doing some messed up stuff that the gods have passed through. So just so we understand Greek myth, it’s not all happy go lucky, it’s hardcore. But still the common thread you see when you read the hymns or the stories is this transformative process that happens really fast, an altering of a storyline really fast, and it’s very subtle actually how it comes across. It’s a simple thing like embodying another human, moving something out of the way, it works that way most of the time from the things I’ve been reading. I can’t remember what you asked me exactly, Chris.
CB: Yeah, I was just thinking of some of the mischievous… Mischievousness seemed like it’s something that comes up a lot in the myths of Hermes, that mischievous but also youthful quality to Gemini. I think Geminis sometimes get associated with a youthful quality as well, even youthful, not beyond their years, whatever the inverse of that statement is.
NP: Yeah. Well, part of that too, I think, has to do with the thieving quality of things, because it’s the master of thieves, what thieves do on the road, as in things come to them like there’s a situation that comes to you or there’s something on the road. Is it yours or not? Doesn’t matter, it came to me, I walked to it, I met up with it, and then I’m going to take it. So there’s mischievousness there and then what it’s used for. Again, I think it always goes back if we’re talking right now, modern times, I’m just looking at myth. What’s the intention behind it? Is it for the longer story to help alter a story to go a certain way or is it for completely selfish reasons? Do you have an honorable thief who’s doing it not just for himself but for others or is it just completely selfish? I think as for the mischievousness, that’s where a lot of that comes from or from one way to look at it is the thieving quality, and that it’s this vibe and energy that’s kind of popping, it’s popping mentally having fun in the tweaking and messing with a situation and a person, honestly. There’s that balance again about the intention to why.
CB: It makes me think of pranks. Pranking is kind of a Gemini-type thing, or what are some other things like that that are sometimes just doing something for the sake just to see what happens? So a quality or an essence like that.
CMG: Yeah, being spontaneously, I don’t know, jokey or to say something controversial just to be like, “How are people going to react?” Looking to have fun.
CB: That’s a good thing, a wittiness also which can sometimes poke fun at something or playfulness. We were having a debate in some of the previous episodes, somebody said Aries was funny. I mean, Gemini is a pretty funny sign or can be funny because it’s very witty and it has that way with words. We’ve done examples of that of Obama being a good orator or Anthony Bourdain being poetic, but another side of that is just being clever. Cleverness is a good Gemini quality, and that’s another side of that, a standup comedian, for example.
NP: Yeah, totally. Listen, I admit when I’m in crowds of people, I can’t help but to F with people sometimes. It’s a thing. The real reason sometimes could be selfish, but stagnation or again, it’s altering a timeline, it’s altering a story. So if I’m being clever, I’m pointing something out, I’m like, “Hey, what’s this I hear?” And someone looks down, I hit them in the nose, they’re like, “Oh.” But it just changed everything, we just stepped out of what was normal and we stepped away, we transcended for the moment. I think a Gemini can’t help but do that at times. Not just for the laughs of it, to be honest, to laugh about it and the cleverness to break the ice, you could say, in the situation, but also too, again, I use the word cypher, it’s like there’s a [unintelligible] and somebody’s coming through you and you’re going to be humorous and clever and kind of pull at somebody or mess with the room a little bit because there’s something else coming through you to do it, and it can completely alter the story, it can alter a situation. Again, you’re riding as someone who knows this and who’s done it my whole life and has paid the price for being selfish with it. It’s picking your moments when to do it. So if there’s an argument in the room and people are tripping on each other and so on and so forth, let’s say it’s a situation of gossip or whatever, I could come in, a Gemini could come in and change it with a joke or a thing to pull everybody out of that bubble that they’re in and pop it. I’ve done this myself, I’ve seen it publicly, then everything switches in the room, and then there isn’t, let’s say, this caustic activity that could have been going on or the gossip so on and so forth. Now I’m giving you examples of things for the good, for the good of things. Now there’s the other part of it is I’m coming in and I’m being clever with you and I’m talking with you, but you don’t even know it, I just stole your wallet.
CMG: Pick pocket.
CB: Sure.
NP: And I had fun with you, I cracked this joke, and you’re blushing. I chime like, “You look great today, by the way, I mean, you’re shining. Look at that color on you.” By the way, Camille, that room, that whole thing you got going on with the colors there, you are popping, way better than Chris and I are and you’re just bright there, incredibly beautiful.
CB: That’s a good sort of distractive quality, and that’s the double-sidedness, saying one thing but then doing something else on the other end. And that can be used as a benefit into the advantage of the Gemini, but then it can be used, as you were saying, for good or for bad or what have you. There’s also almost a sometimes morally ambiguous quality to some extent as well. And this might be relevant also at this point, which is in the… We run into some issues with the temperaments and the qualities once we get to Gemini because there’s some debate in the tradition about it. But in the earlier Stoic model, the air signs are supposed to be cold, which is opposite to the fire signs, which are hot. And I feel like with the air signs, air signs can sometimes have a cold quality to them that can be dispassionate or lacking in emotion and can be more of an analytical thinking quality that can look at things intellectually but not have as much of an emotional component which would be more of a water thing.
CMG: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to quickly circle back because Nick said something that was so interesting, which is when Gemini senses that the energies are stagnant, it wants to move them. And that just reminds me of all the antics that Gemini can get upto when it’s bored, when it does not have a productive use for all of that mutable energy. But yeah, the way that Gemini can be irreverent in the face of issues that are deeply sensitive or that feeling of cracking a joke when everyone’s crying and it’s like, “Mmh, not really the right time.” [laughs] But yeah, living in that space of logic at the expense of leaning a little bit more into intuition or compassion, or connectivity with other people on a more heart-to-heart level.
NP: Yeah.. I will say too to that. Yeah, that coldness and logic part of things can be brutal, I think even for a Gemini internally, depending who they are on the rest of the chart. Let’s say if they don’t have any water in their chart or something like that, the not connecting with situations or people, not only can the person on the other side of them not feel connected but in their own world, Geminis world can feel just alone and disconnected. And you can look at this at many different ways. You can look at it as in Hermes didn’t have a good connection with his mom because she basically was forced to have Hermes, right? There’s a deeper part of this. And not having this deeper connection to the mother and the mother not really feeling like this was their child, in one way in Greek myth you could see how the coldness because Hermes didn’t have anything resolved with the feminine part. There’s a part there that sometimes is not there and doesn’t connect because of the logic. I don’t know if this is making sense to some of you all but for some, I think Geminis is always important to look. And this is when we come back to listening, to get away from the logic and the coldness, I think listening to one’s own self. I’m bringing this up. Linda Goodman Sun Signs book, which many of us have read, has a famous line in there about Gemini about- It’s really in the Love Signs book or the Sun Signs book, but it has to do with Gemini in the end. The way she writes it, she was so talented how she wrote, but in the end it’s like, “Can the Gemini get to a point of listening to it’s own heartbeat?” And you get to that point of getting out of here and listening to your own heartbeat, then you’re getting off the logic and you’re getting into the emotional part. And it’s there, for any Gemini listening and watching who has challenges with this, it is getting to listening to your own heartbeat and shutting out everything else that’s external that you cannot help but gravitate towards to and wanting to connect with constantly. It’s the getting back to self and to listening to this.
CMG: And curiously, what Chris was talking about how each sign that comes after correct something, that’s the correction that Cancer then has. It’s like that awareness traveling down to the heart, right? Yeah.
NP: Camille, that’s so good. Yes, it’s exactly what it is.
CB: Cancer brings in the emotional component and it’s the first water sign in the sequence of the first signs of the zodiac starting with Aries, which I meant to actually show a diagram just of the- This is our poster that Paula Belluomini and I made a few years ago, which is like a wall poster but it just shows the signs of the zodiac starting with Aries, which is the first sign after the spring equinox. Yeah, Spring Equinox, then Taurus, then Gemini. And then that’s a really good point, Cancer comes after. And so part of the corrective quality that you see that’s missing from the first three signs but perhaps is the most missing from Gemini is that emotional component that connects things not just on an intellectual level, which is what Gemini is really good at or a communicative level through words, but Cancer connects things through emotions and through feelings.
CMG: Yeah, you can’t out logic your way through difficult situations. You will hit a wall. And Gemini can’t hit that wall.
CB: Right. So you mentioned– Nicholas– Linda Goodman, who’s a really good example to mention because she was such an amazing writer and she’s really good example of somebody that had their chart ruler, the ruler of their ascendant in Gemini. Because she was an Aries Sun in Venus with Aries rising, and the ruler of her ascendant Mars was actually in Gemini in the third whole sign house. I always use her as an example because 1968 or 69 she wrote that book, Sun Signs. Right? That’s what it was called. And that became, I think, the most highest-selling astrology book certainly in modern times, possibly in all times, although Ptolemy probably gave her like a little bit of competition. But at least in modern times and as far as tracked book sales, it’s sold millions and millions of copies. One of the reasons I think it was so popular is just she had a way with words and a way of describing some of the underlying meanings of the signs. That was really impressive.
NP: Yeah. And if I saw from the chart correctly, her Mars and Venus were sextiling each other? I have to look at that. Yeah. Interesting here, we’ve had a couple of charts here that have Mars in Gemini, and then we have someone with us who has Mars in Gemini. And very important here this year with the second half of the year is what’s gonna happen. But Chris, you brought this chart up really quick. This is someone here who influenced multi-generations astrologically and put things in a plain language for people to make astrology accessible. Whether you like or not the words as some people consider it pop, it doesn’t matter. I just found it interesting though her Mars in Venus because that was a constant theme in her writing. Even if she was writing about an individual sign, it was always this kind of merging of always bringing in love in relation to each other. I just see her Mars in Venus the way they’re relating in the chart, and Linda had it.
CMG: Yeah, I love how you said she wrote in plain language, which I think is such a great quality of Gemini and Mercury in Gemini. And then you can think about the opposite maybe Mercury and Sag, and how there’s a propensity to pontificate or to over philosophize and to get really lyrically and all of that. Which has its place, but there is something to be said for the way that Gemini can be the teacher, and such that it communicates things very effectively and straight to the point.
CB: Yeah, that might be a good thing to dwell on the Sag-Gemini axis and the interplay between the rulers of those two signs, because it really can help to instruct you much more clearly on the meaning of Gemini by contrasting it with Sagittarius and its opposite. Once we do that, remind me to go back to- I want to go into the triplicities, and contrasting Gemini with Libra and Aquarius, which is something I was starting to go into with the air signs as being cold in the contrast with fire signs. So if I don’t remember, remind me of that. All right, so when we’re looking at Gemini, Gemini is ruled by Mercury and its opposite to the sign Sagittarius, which is ruled by Jupiter. And one of the major contrasts there is you get the smallest planet in the solar system, which is Mercury ruling Gemini, opposite to the largest planet in the solar system, which is Jupiter. And one of the major underlying contrast that just comes up over and over again is that Gemini represents small things and Sagittarius represents big things. And when you just take that basic contrast of what are some small things and what are some big things, you can really get a lot out of understanding that axis or that polarity between those two signs.
CMG: Yeah, one of my favorite analogies or ways to picture it is Gemini is the newsroom and Sagittarius are the people that write editorials. Where Gemini is like, “I’m here to communicate the facts on an everyday basis,” and then the editorial Sag folks are like, “What is it all mean? How can we string these facts or what’s happening into some larger higher concept about the truth of our times?” And so that bigness versus smallness also coming in symbolically to represent what is being said necessarily.
NP: Yeah, the basic simple thing of fact and then opinion, too, the way you say in a simple way. And yeah, all have its purpose.
CMG: Also fact versus belief, which a alot of people think are facts. [laughs]
NP: Right.
CB: Yeah. And there can be a sort of in Gemini a dispassionate communicating things versus Sagittarius there can be a focus on believing in things, and what you believe in in your morals and principles being centered and put at the forefront. As opposed to Gemini where just communicating things is put more to the forefront. I’m not sure if that makes sense but that’s one of the contrasts that I sometimes see come up.
NP: Well, and the Gemini angle too if we were to think of what is a priority is like, “Can I get the message out as quickly as possible with these words and these certain facts?” It has to do with the pacing and that’s a priority, right? And so there’s that. Then you see the other side with Jupiter, I think there’s a little bit more time. There isn’t the Mercurial need to get things out super fast. And so there’s the pondering aspect of going deeply and going deeper or bigger and expanding out with Jupiter.
CMG: I also like thinking about Gemini versus Sag, where Gemini can be over-reliant like we said on logic or facts or what makes sense, and then the Sagittarian way of viewing life can be “I have faith. I don’t see it yet or maybe it doesn’t make sense yet, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be any more true.” Right? Gemini would have a harder time expanding itself into that viewpoint.
CB: Yeah, that makes sense. And Sagittarius is definitely more focused on the big picture where Gemini is more focused on the details. All right. Are there any chart examples that either of you can think of that connect to that in any way? I’m trying to think if there’s any good contrast. We did talk a bit about earlier about Edward Snowden and how he has those heavy oppositions between Gemini and Sagittarius in his chart, and having that urge to disclose things but also having that tension– because it’s tied in with his beliefs and sort of a sense of rebelliousness and everything else– but that that was part of the core tension in his life in some way.
CMG: This may be controversial but the Sibley chart for the United States has a Sag-Gem opposition. So I think Sag’s rising and then Mars and Uranus and Gem in the seventh house. And there’s a lot of different ways that that can go but generally, perhaps the war between belief and manifest destiny versus the facts and what’s going on and freedom of speech and all of that. Maybe I’m not explaining it well but that polarity certainly exist in our culture.
CB: Yeah, for sure.
NP: I think we’ve seen it in the last four to five years through the presidential campaigns, exactly what you’re talking about. Of like, there’s the expression of facts or talking about facts, and then there’s people’s beliefs, and then what is true and what is not. This has been the major factor, not just politically but with everything that we do on the internet pretty much has turned into that here in our culture in the States. So I think that’s right on point. And how do you manage the polarity? How do you do that? That gets us for another podcast or something but I think this country has always had the wide openness, you know? This frontierness. The exploration of– and that actually had to do with land– but now it’s in our minds or it’s on the internet how we do it. So again, there’s the factual part if they are even facts, and then there’s the other part of my beliefs in. And here we are where we are politically and where we are as a country and what it’s turned into.
CMG: It also is fake news, right? Sagittarius is like, “This is the news according to my belief. This is truthiness.” Whereas Gemini is like, “No, this is the truth and these are the facts.” A lot of that has been kicked up with the nodes transiting those signs, but it was already baking just because of how divisive our politics are.
CB: Yeah. And I’m glad you brought up the Sibley chart just because early on in my studies, I heard somebody describe the United States as having a heavy Gemini quality. And there’s debates about the Sibley chart, which has Sagittarius rising versus there’s other charts like the Gemini rising chart, but I don’t I don’t think it’s necessarily relevant because there’s a strong Gemini signature in the US chart no matter what because it has Mars and Uranus in that sign. But it’s just kind of a country that has those dualities or that notion of two-ness where, you know, for example politically, it has the two major political parties that are constantly vying for power and going back and forth, and have such almost diametrically opposite ideals and beliefs and visions of what the country should be. But also, you have different parts of the country historically- For example, you had a civil war where it’s like the northern part of the country fights the southern part of the country, or you have these other contrasts of these huge twin cities on either side of the country. Like New York on one side and Los Angeles on the other side or what have you. And just this recurring theme of the two brothers are the two siblings that have these really contrasting almost opposite polarities, but are still tied together at the waist in some sense and forever connected and going back and forth in some way.
CMG: Yeah, definitely. And even deeper than that, it’s like there’s so many factions and different groups of beliefs just going on currently. And that just made me think of how Gemini, especially influenced by Uranus there, can get so fragmented and split off on itself and multiply and multiply until we have so many different people believing and saying so many different things, which is the confusion that Gemini can also bring up.
NP: And I think there’s the other part, too, in our history of saying one thing and our actions mean another on many different levels, with the story of our government and how we portray things and even how we portray the dream of America. And whether that dream is a reality, actually, for many. If it will become a reality. But it’s so constantly changing. And I think about where I’m from. Both my parents are immigrants, you know? They came here on a dream and they followed the dream, the message that this country put out, that in the sense still puts out or tries to put out.
CMG: Yeah, America does really good PR. [laughs]
NP: Yeah, totally good at it. And if you think about the country itself and what it is with PR and media and Hollywood and what’s come out of here, we have it down. We have it down and I think a lot of other countries have taken that from us and they use their own versions of it now. But again, whether we portray ourselves as land of the free, is it really free for some people? We talk about freedom in other countries but then there’s our history, sometimes we’ve had with other countries our interventions with them. It’s like double talk. So to go back, and you can take this on on many different levels, but it’s always constantly changing with our country. But in other ways like you said, Chris, the two parties, the two cities, the coast to coast, it’s always this or that. And then there’s the, I think on a deeper subconscious level, honestly it’s really the need and want to merge the two together. Sometimes you have moments of it where it happens, you know? And that’s where the magic comes, that’s where the alchemy is, and then that’s where the dream of America looks pretty good at those moments. But it’s really not always that way.
CMG: Not to prolong it too much but it’s so curious because Mars and Uranus are in Gemini for the United States. And the moments where I feel like we are the most together is after something atrocious has happened. [laughs] After there’s been some type of Martian or Uranus tower moment or shakeup, right? It’s unfortunate that it has to be that way but yeah.
CB: And one of those that happened, of course, in 2001 was when the Twin Towers were destroyed on the September 11th attacks. That also reminds me that the first Uranus return, astrologers always comment on the first Uranus return of the United States after 84 or some odd years was the civil war. So it was activating that Gemini placement. And then whenever I think about that Mars and Uranus in Gemini, I also think of sometimes people talk about the car culture of the United States, and how it’s such a uniquely large and spread out country, and how especially in the 20th century, most of our cities ended up being built around this car culture, which is kind of a Mars in Gemini type thing. As well as more recently, a lot of people are talking about– unfortunately over the past month– the gun culture in the United States as well as potentially being like a Mars Uranus in Gemini type thing at the same time of Mars, which is like weapons and Uranus which is like technology.
CMG: And also just the sentiment behind it all, like “You’re not going to trample out my freedom to do these things.”
CB: Right. And if you do try to trample on my freedom, you’re going to be killed or attacked with guns. Don’t tread on me or whatever that flag is.
NP: Yeah. Defending one’s own autonomy is the mindset behind that. And that’s a fundamental so-called definition of the country, you know, and the chart is that’s the fundamental premise, per se, is that-
CMG: And when you think about it, the formation of the United States was us divorcing from another country. [laughs] We were trying to get independence. That duality is always kind of there.
CB: Through a document, through the Declaration of Independence. Written documents that they wrote out in the Revolutionary War, you know, which is also happening around the time of the discovery of Uranus to begin with. And suddenly we’re getting great revolutionary war in America in the United States, and then also France is having its own revolution. But the Mars-Uranus around the time of the Declaration of Independence and everything is pretty striking. That brings up another example that I had, or an example chart that I had thought of recently when I was looking through my own files of a famous Gemini and Mercury in Gemini, which is Anne Frank who was Leo rising and had the Sun and Mercury in Gemini in the 11th house. And of course, she’s famously and primarily known today for having written her diary, and having her diary which was written during the Holocaust published afterwards by her father as an example of just what this little girl went through going through the course of World War Two in hiding and all her internal thoughts and the things that she wrote down and put to paper as just part of her process of thinking and living at that age. And then what ended up happening to her when she died in the Holocaust, but having her memories sort of live on through her writings is kind of a really powerful and interesting example of some Gemini placements.
NP: Yeah, definitely when you have Saturn opposite of Mercury there and in a sense there’s resistance in many ways in this person’s life, it’s pretty wide orbit but it’s there. And am I correct in seeiing it’s a retrograde Mercury in Gemini too? Not too sure on that.
CB: Yeah.
NP: But there is a resistance and then the use of Saturn to construct something that’s so deep and fundamental that goes past her life, and deals with something that deals with the hardest parts of what being a human being is.
CMG: And how all of that was forced out in isolation, which can both be a signification of Saturn but also that retrograde Mercury going within.
NP: Yep. Yep.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point; the Saturn opposition and essentially in hiding almost being imprisoned in some way and so the writing is taking place in a context that’s not positive, that’s actually really very difficult. All right. So I wanted to go back to, I think I want to return at some point to that contrast between Gemini and Sagittarius a little bit more. But for now, why don’t we move into talking about the triplicities and the other air signs. And one of the things I did in a previous episode, I think in the Taurus episode, was just trying contrasting the different signs, either in the same modalities or the same triplicities. And one of them that I think might help is contrasting Gemini as an air sign, a mutable air sign with the other two air signs, which are Libra which is ruled by Venus, and Aquarius, which is ruled by Saturn.
So with all of these, I think one of the things we talked about and one of the things that’s different is the tendency to intellectualize things or the tendency sometimes to come off as a little bit cold in some sense, emotionally. And I think that’s something that the notion of there being a little bit of coldness is definitely something that comes up with Gemini, and it’s definitely something that comes up with Aquarius, which is a fixed Saturn-ruled air sign. We get that a little bit softer with Libra because it’s ruled by Venus and Venus is very good at relating socially to things. But even that social relating this can be a little bit- Sometimes Libra is accused sometimes of being a little bit superficial in the way that it relates to things socially. So even there, there can be this perception of a little bit of coldness, I think. Does that make sense?
CMG: Yeah, it does.
NP: I would say out of all three that Libra, because of Venus, isn’t as cold as Gemini or Aquarius.
CB: For sure. Yeah.
NPP: Now, that’s on paper. Gemini I think can turn in and do anything. There’s this part of the Gemini– well, it’s not part of, it is a Gemini story of taking on something else, becoming something else, you know, dark, lights, on… You could look at it that way. I just want to say that out loud. I know we’re keeping it simple but, yeah.
CB: Yeah, we’re just going for generalities here and certainly can’t be taken as 100% all the time. And obviously, there can be– because everyone’s chart, it’s one of the things I always forget to repeat every episode, is everybody’s chart is a mixture of a bunch of different qualities and placements and traits and different things like that and it’s going to express in different ways. So one of the things we’re doing here is we’re trying to isolate one archetype as much as we can, and talk about it in isolation and talk about the spectrum of different manifestations. But obviously, things are in reality a lot more complex than any one archetype or manifestation or anything like that. So nobody should take any One quality that we’re talking about as gospel or the only way something that can manifest or anything like that. We’re just talking about, let’s say, tendencies and generalities of like a general direction that things can go as a default, and a sort of ranking sometimes of signs that maybe have more of a tendency to go in a certain direction or another.
CMG: Yeah, absolutely. And thinking about the difference between Libra and Gemini, my first thought was that Libra is cardinal air so there’s a quality of wanting to get things started. And then when you pull in the Venus rulership, a tendency to want to move through life in a way that’s easy or more harmonious and kind of stokes some balance. And to me, there’s a quality of Gemini that can not only go with the flow, but become fragmented and decisive, move here and move there, move backwards, move up. And then also a little bit more of a tolerance for chaos, which Libra would be a little bit averse to because of that need for balance and that need for harmony. An example that very quickly came to mind was thinking about how a couple of summers ago maybe, Kanye West was getting in a lot of trouble with news outlets because he was saying very outlandish things. He has a Sun Jupiter conjunction in Gemini, and how it was his then wife, Kim Kardashian who was the Libra, who was kind of coming in to clean up after he had said certain things. Kind of like that PR thinking of like, “How can I smooth this over? How can I take that chaos of Gemini and capsule it in some way that it’s not as ragged and chaotic?”
CB: Right. Yeah, Kanye’s one of the great contemporary Sun in Gemini examples. We do not have a birth time for him, there’s probably fake birth times that are floating around for him that have been put out by sources for some reason. I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to track down Kanye’s birth chart over the past decade and this is the closest that we have right now, which is that he has the Sun and Jupiter in Gemini. It’s opposite to Neptune and probably, at least roughly by sign square, a Pisces Moon. But yeah, that’s another example of somebody that’s amazing with words and a lyricist, and also amazing with production. One of the things that’s really cool about Kanye is he’s really good at taking old things and sampling old songs and then repackaging them in some way, which is an interesting Mercury-type or Gemini-type skill to have as well. But yeah, he’s good at creating controversy, and I think it’s part of what you were saying a little bit. There can be a chaotic quality sometimes.
CMG: Absolutely. Or like just blurting things out with no purpose or thinking about the fallout.
NP: Yeah, I think that’s that a Jupiter right there.
CMG: Yeah. Like, “Say it now! Say it loudly.” [laughs]
NP: Yeah, I think about that TMZ interview when he was at the offices. That was intense and hardcore. Again, he’s like the master cypher, you know? He has it in there. But it’s definitely riding the Gemini edge, I would say, because there’s so many profound things in his lyrics in his albums and the stuff you hear. And people connect to it, but on the outside of the music as a person, it’s just an interesting journey. Go back, you said Kim is a Libra, right? It makes me think about how things were privately. Because I think about Gemini and Libra have this flow together and they appreciate each other and the Libra is like, “Actually, I want to hear what you have to say. Sit down, it’s all chill here at the house and the music’s good and food’s good. Just chill, Gemini. Just have a seat. Just stay still for a second.” [laughs] And you could see how there a love can happen. But in the end, I don’t know the real reasons why, but obviously with Kanye I think that Jupiter there just cannot help but push to the edge more in whatever he’s going to say or do, and then creatively. Because in the end– Kanye and his story, his challenges, so on and so forth– but creatively, the man’s a genius. He’s always pushed it.
CMG: I like that differentiation of pushing the boundaries in one way can be too much, but pushing the boundaries to his artistry is genius, as you said, it’s brilliant work.
NP: Yeah. And with that Moon there, with that Pisces-Moon there when he is dialed in, visionary creatively is there.
CB: Yeah, and it’s funny mentioning his now I guess almost ex-wife, Kim Kardashian was a Libra and his previous other major relationship with Amber Rose, she had the same birthday and was also a Libra. It’s like one of the funny astrological trivia things, right?
CMG: Yeah, he needed them to cool him off, to balance him. It didn’t work, but they tried.
NP: Yeah, Venus was trying.
CB: Yeah. So there can be, that’s part of the connection is a connection of that socialness and being able to have that ability to connect people somehow socially, maybe as a quality of the air element that connects Gemini and Libra. Then when we contrast that with Aquarius, which is a fixed air sign that’s ruled by Saturn, we get to a quality that is starting to be a bit different than Gemini because it’s much slower, it’s a lot more hard-headed and inflexible. Those are some of the keywords I started thinking about when I’m contrasting Aquarius and Gemini. What are some that you think of?
CMG: Just like the fixidity in thought and the fixidity in purpose that is with all the fixed signs, there is a direction, there is an ideal. Then with Aquarius and that Saturn rulership, there’s also a purpose. Gemini can be a little bit aimless. So there’s like the difference between consolidating air into a package or a thing that is going to create purpose or creating meaning, whereas that mutable air is just unable to be contained.
NP: Yeah, and you were talking about the crystallization of air here too. It’s interesting to me sometimes the way I look at it, it’s like Aquarius almost takes a little bit of the Gemini and a little bit of the Venus in its way the need for autonomy and for oneself at the same time stepping in socially and being there, but still wanting the space in your autonomy. You have the Gemini part that just has its way of being social and then there’s the Libra part of wanting to balance the room and be social, but that Aquarius there has to have its own world too. If you think about it in a Saturnian way, the line is drawn as to what the space is and then where I go to integrate socially.
I have Aquarius in my chart too so I know this in one way for having [inaudible] Mercury in the stuff going on, I definitely know what it is to like- It’s like, I’ve had enough of this. Leave me alone. I got to be in my space.
CMG: Absolutely. Same here, Aquarius-Sun.
CB: Yeah, so there’s a social component to all the air signs and definitely to Aquarius. Sometimes that’s helpful thinking of the contrast between like Leo which is more focused on the self and what happens when the Sun is in Leo versus when the Sun is an Aquarius and a focus on others or the collective or what have you. But even though it’s an air sign and people for example sometimes modern astrologers associate Aquarius with Uranus in this notion of it being more rebellious or freedom-loving or something like that with Saturn and with it being a fixed sign, there can be much more of an intellectual ideologically fixed component of establishing what one believes and sticking to it and being inflexible in that in some ways, which is something Gemini doesn’t necessarily have as much of. I think of all of the air signs, Gemini is certainly the most flexible and the most adaptable of them.
CMG: Yeah, and the most open to receive new information even if it invalidates the older information that you had. For an Aquarius, that’s like, no, sorry, I’m right.
NP: Libra at the same time is going to be in one way wanting to balance and hear everyone’s way of being or opinion, so on and so forth and Aquarius is like, this is my way, in a sense of the fixed part of it. Interesting progression if you were to look at it that way, the timeline it’s in Mercury, Libra, Aquarius, but anyway.
CB: Right, for sure. All right. So that makes me think of- I’m trying to think of where to go from here in terms of, did either of you- I think Camille, do you have any chart examples you want to share or anything that might be relevant to go in that direction at this point?
CMG: I don’t know if the charts I want to share have that Aquarius element in them. I’m checking. The one I really wanted to talk about was Josephine Baker.
CB: Okay, there it is. I have that chart queued up right here. For our audio listeners, she had Virgo rising with Mercury, the Sun, Jupiter, Pluto, and Mars all in the sign of Gemini in the 10th whole sign house.
CMG: Yeah, it’s a B-rated chart so we don’t know that with precision, but it seems pretty compelling when you look at her life. She was an African-American dancer, performer, actor and she got her start street performing, performing just in her neighborhood, which was the first taste of Gemini I was getting there to maneuver the stuff through places that are familiar or to start doing things in front of familiar faces or in familiar places, that association with neighborhood. But as she advanced in her dancing, one of the ways that she was able to stand out was her humor. She just was a little bit sillier than the other dancers and that elevated her in a way. She was more effervescent, she was more agile, very quick on her feet. If you look up her like favorite, her famous rather a banana skirt dance, she’s just moving very, very quickly.
Then the most curious and interesting part of Josephine Baker was that she lived a double life, which is very apropos for having that many planets in Gemini. During World War Two, she had adopted France as her home base and she was a spy for the French Resistance during World War Two. One of the ways that she was able to gather so much information was first of all, she was so larger than life. It’s like who’s going to think that I’m a spy? That’s what she said. But when she was in those rooms, I think the German Embassy and the Japanese Embassy, she would really charm people to get them talking to spill the information that she was looking after. That’s where the mutability or the concept of listening really came in for me because she needed to know what was important to hear and then what was important to then transmit to the people that were having her do this. She wrote in invisible ink which I just think it’s such a tricky and interesting Gemini way of having to convey a message, right? So that Gemini mutability, a performer, a dancer, this African-American woman who beat the odds and that is also a spy, it seems so contradictory but such as the life of a Gemini person.
A couple more things about her, she accompanied MLK who himself is a great order with Mars in Gemini, which she was also at the March on Washington speech with him and she said something that was so evocative. To quote her she said, “And when I get mad, you know that I open my big mouth and then look out because when Josephine opens her mouth, they’ll hear it around the world,” which is so [inaudible] of her and it’s also just that conglomeration of Mars and mad, I have to say something when I’m mad, Jupiter amplifying the message to people far and wide or the bigness in what she had to say. I just thought that was so very Gemini of her.
She spoke several languages, French obviously, English, but was also a world traveler, which I think adding that internationality or that broadness of Jupiter in the sign of Gemini, she made homes wherever she was or created familiarity with whatever country she was in so it’s interesting how those two different energies can mix and blend. The most interesting thing that I want to end with with her is in the 1960s, she was giving her final performance and she was a little bit ill. After she completed that performance, she went home. A couple of days later, they found her. Unfortunately, she had passed away in her sleep, but she had passed away with all of these newspapers around her, specifically newspapers that were giving her glowing reviews. And I was like, that’s so Gemini to just die like a Gemini with newspapers all around you, but then also that celebratory nature of Jupiter like I’m going to read things that make me happy or that inflate me as being very, very important. Then that Pluto, going back to the March on Washington, being able to have tough conversations, racism, prejudice, all of that was still baked into that very effervescent light and charming character that she lived and embodied.
CB: Right, that’s brilliant.
NP: Yeah, an incredible life. You said something that is so dialed in Gemini, it was her being able to travel the world and adapt and to integrate, to talk with people. That’s the life. That’s the Hermes-Mercury life, is the home is the road. It’s not necessarily where you start and end, it’s the in-between. She’s a perfect example of this. We’re not talking now with technology and what you could do now, we’re talking back then and as an African-American woman. A lot of artists, African-American artists, they left the states and they went to Paris because it’s different worlds, but here’s a person who lived down the road and is definitely a 10th house person. So glad we’re bringing Pluto in all of this because I just think that the depth and level of how she was functioning and the spy part of it, totally Plutonian.
This could be a Mars in Gemini episode by the way because Mars in Gemini has come up in almost all of those charts. It’s like it’s very interesting, especially for what happens later on this year. I have to say this though, with all the Gemini in this chart, I can’t help but look at the Venus-Neptune in this. I just can’t ignore it. It doesn’t seem like it’s evolved, so loved. I’m assuming that when she was wherever she was in the world, charming, talking the languages, there was some good food at the table and it wasn’t just some air Mercurial thing that there was a sense of- It’s like we were talking about earlier. This isn’t pure logic. This is a person who is also coming in with their heart and emotional. In a sense, the comfort that Cancer can bring in combination with all the Gemini stuff here, this is an incredible life and an incredible person. That’s my little quick things here. But definitely, I’d just like to say one more time, the Gemini life and Gemini home is the in-between spaces, it’s on the road. That’s where they live or function. So this is a perfect chart.
CMG: I’ve also heard something brilliantly that the Gemini person stuffs many lifetimes into their just one lifetime. So to wear many hats, to do many things and have that just be in one lifetime spoke to her and speaks to a lot of Gemini placements that I know and you guys probably know, too.
NP: Yeah, and you have overlapping lives here in this situation. It just overlaps and it’s I think a great example of a Mercurial life in a way. No one’s perfect. Everyone’s got their own personal stuff, but yet something where someone’s dialed in creatively for themselves and then also has a connection to the greater whole and can change situations, which she did in her messages and relating to people and also being a spy but first and foremost, a creative, genius, beautiful person. I’m so glad you picked this chart because to just to go back to the fact that the Geminis get a bad rap, this person right here is not a bad- You know what I mean?
CMG: She’s an exemplary person.
NP: Yes, yes.
CB: An exemplary Gemini.
NP: Yeah, hashtag that. Hashtag exemplary Gemini, please. A word of that can float around.
CB: We’ll redeem Geminis. Maybe we can start that hashtag of just like people can see if they can help us find more exemplary Geminis like that to help redeem and counteract any negative ones. Because there’s been some Geminis, I have to say, over the past few years that have set Geminis back like 20 years so we could use more charts like that. We’ve talked about some of them. One of the things that comes up that this one reminds me of is that mutable signs in the ancient Hellenistic in the Greek and Latin texts, they would say that mutable signs indicate two of whatever they signify or if they’re being contrasted with other signs, they indicate multiple of whatever they signify. This one was a really good example of that of her having multiple different careers or having two different lives in some sense. That notion of there being multitudes is really important when it comes to Gemini.
It reminded me, because this is coming up largely in a career context for her, but it reminded me of Frida Kahlo’s chart for example who has Venus in Gemini conjunct Pluto. It’s Leo rising with Venus in Gemini conjunct Pluto and square Saturn. That’s tricky because she had a famously one major relationship throughout her life to another artist that was a very tumultuous like intense, very passionate relationship, but also very difficult one with it being conjunct Pluto and square Saturn. But then she also had famously many different relationships and love affairs during the course of her life in some ways that influenced her art and different things like that. I think that comes through a little bit through that Venus in Gemini placement for her.
NP: You’re talking about Diego Rivera, yes?
CB: Yeah, as her primary relationship.
NP: Yeah. I don’t know if anybody caught it, but as soon as you said Venus-Pluto, I was like, “Oh, that’s an intense life.” Eventually, she dealt with medical issues in the sense couldn’t move around. Imagine that someone’s Venus-Gemini couldn’t move around.
CB: Yeah. Well, she had a very tough chart with Leo rising and the Sun is in Cancer in the 12th house and it’s conjunct Neptune. I think that’s where some of her creativity came from. But also, it’s opposite to that Mars-Uranus conjunction in the sixth. Then she famously was in that trolley car accident or that bus accident and got seriously injured and survived, but there was a very long recovery process, and then had lingering issues from that for the rest of her life.
NP: Yeah, I’m going to say something to this point too because we’ve looked at several charts, most of the people that we’ve looked at have some amazing creative output. As for a language, as for a piece of art or whatever you want to call it, I’ve always felt that there’s also to- The Aquarius archetype sometimes you see they’re one step of everybody else. They see things ahead that nobody else sees. But I think Gemini has something to this. There’s a long-lasting quality to the messages, and especially if they’re coming out creatively, that goes beyond their living life. All the charts that we’ve seen, most of them people who have passed, and Kanye is going to be the same way even though he’s still around, he’s going to be the same way. It’s just like there is a way of communicating things and messaging that they can go beyond generations in the language just as for a generation, that the messages that are being said they still come across 200 years from now, even more. I think that’s an important thing too if sometimes the Gemini archetype doesn’t have that thing of depth per se and it’s true as in it’s in the moment, things are quick and there’s the facts and you grab them and you put them together and you put them out there. But on a deep level, the written word and how it gets etched into stone lasts forever. So there’s something to all this with Gemini archetype in the story of what our true message is. Just thought I’d say that.
CB: That makes me think of newspapers have been mentioned as a Gemini thing, newspapers though, because think about, it’s like something that’s printed for one day and it’s only good for that one day and people read it and take in that information, and it’s important and intensely important for that one day and then it’s not. In some ways after that, let’s say it has a drop off that’s very fast. Or to give a more relatable one for astrologers, something like that is like daily horoscopes, which is like this very small, bite-size, let’s say it’s in a newspaper, even though that’s quickly becoming a thing of the past or something that may not be relevant to people watching this in like five or 10 years, but let’s just say abstractly like a daily horoscope that is a short, bite-sized piece of information supposed to tell you about your day and some relevant astrological information and it’s important that there’s a lot of focus in on it in that day, but then it does drop off afterwards in terms of its relevance in some way. I think there’s something relevant there and there’s probably other- What are some other versions of that if something that’s super relevant for a relatively short period of time or that’s bite sized in that way is like small, but still impactful in the way that it delivers information in a short period?
CMG: It makes me think of Twitter. I think Twitter has a Gemini placement in its natal chart.
CB: The first tweet if I’m remembering correctly had Mars in Gemini, I believe, Twitter’s first tweet.
CMG: Yeah, it had Mars.
NP: I don’t know the chart you pulled up, the Twitter chart, but it’s definitely air and fire. If it isn’t, I’d be surprised.
CMG: You’re right, Aries.
CB: Yes. It’s funny because that first tweet chart has Mars in Gemini and it’s squaring Mercury conjunct Uranus in Pisces.
CMG: Just saying anything.
CB: Yeah, people popping off on Twitter or getting in trouble or the famous Twitter mobs of large groups of people getting riled up and going after somebody on Twitter or what have you.
CMG: It’s all ephemeral. It’s like a tweet can go viral that’s very relevant kind of similar to news because people get news on Twitter, then it’s deeply irrelevant in a week. Even the way the algorithm works, what they’re showing you is like this is recent. Yeah.
NP: Yeah, the timing and pacing of it, too. Because if we’re thinking about newspapers, you would get a newspaper 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning the cafe would. The music stories were constructed maybe to a certain point in the middle of the night and it had to go to the machines to get printed out so there’s the timing. So now with a tweet, if we talk about trends, something can trend and something can completely overtake the news cycle within an hour and two hours. One trend can go and just disappear because of an event. So definitely we’re looking at that chart just see the erraticness of it all. Plus, we’re also looking at the times that we’re living in. Going back to newspapers, everything was at a different pace. Everything lingered a little bit more, even though like you said, Chris, it would just last for the day until the next newspaper, the next issue or whatever came out the next day.
CMG: The internet has exacerbated the pace of Gemini sometimes, like the way things just turn over so constantly. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. I wanted to say also that that doesn’t invalidate what you were saying earlier, Nicholas, because one of the things is if people do go back and look, historians do, those are some of the things that give you the most insight into what was happening at that moment in that split second of time where those things that were the most relevant and the most immediately relevant in that short span of time on that singular day and those bite-sized things can be tremendously insightful about what was on the mind of people at that time. Even though it’s for people that are living their lives, it has a very short shelf life.
NP: Yeah. What just popped in my brain with all this is when Uranus is going to go into Gemini, not just for the USA chart but in general for what we’re talking about of how the messages, how the deliveries get from point A to point B, and we’re talking about two different areas of messages. We’re going to talk about newspapers and we went to Twitter. We’re talking about time and pacing, the time it takes, and then the documentation of it and going back and what last, but I’m curious what will happen with Uranus in Gemini with all that, the timing of things and what messaging is, and how that will have some changes coming up to it. Gemini is always going to change, but Uranus is involved mundanely, it’s a culture. There’s a shift that’s about to happen. It’s already happened. I think we see it. I think we see it too of how we’re relating with each other within social media apps and I think we’ve hit a wall. There was one thing about freedom of our expression as what we own, that’s all something else, but as in how it happens.
Again, we had the printing press and the newspapers coming out and then we have the apps with Twitter and what it is now, but this isn’t going to last forever either. I’m curious, Gemini curious, that what is coming next and how will things get from point A to point B? Now, it seems like a side note, but cryptocurrency is part of this and Blockchain is part of this because of the rapidness of exchange of a transaction. We have to remember this too that Hermes rules the transaction, it rules that connected transaction that- Say that again.
CMG: Commerce.
NP: Commerce, thank you. Yep.
CB: Right, there is a not Mercurial, but a real commercial component that was a lot more prominent especially in ancient astrology that sometimes gets forgotten about in modern astrology, but it was very prevalent in ancient times.
NP: Yeah, the rapidness is the key point right now with Blockchain is how fast the transaction can happen with less energy output as possible. That’s what everyone’s fighting for right now to figure out the best way. That’s a very Mercurial thing once the system is there because if we think timeline-wise, the printing press, then there’s the Twitter or their apps, and then there’s this next level coming, and that Blockchain thing is going to be connected to every… It already is. It’s going to be connected to every single thing that we do. You and I can make a transaction without a banking system in the middle of it, and it’s how fast that happened and it’s going to completely change our world, our culture. Just some thoughts I’ve had about that just talking about messaging.
CB: Yeah, for sure. Changes in technology and changes in communication and potentially commerce are pretty straightforward things that we can expect from Uranus in Gemini that are coming up, although it’s a little hard with Uranus because Uranus is always expect the unexpected. And sometimes when you try to expect what Uranus is going to be, it’s actually hilarious how far off we can be because sometimes it’s something that’s so different that you can’t even anticipate or conceptualize it ahead of time because that’s literally like the archetype of Uranus is like that curveball or that thing that comes out of left field that you didn’t really even imagine, but then it ends up changing everything.
The last time Uranus went through Gemini was around 1941, 1942 through 1949. It was really the heart of World War Two and just the rapid advances and changes in technology, especially in travel and different things like that but also, communications that took place during that time. A lot of that was motivated by the World War of course that like rapidly it put much more pressure into those advancements in technology, but then also saw some major changes of course like the development and the unleashing of nuclear power and nuclear weaponry at that time ended up being relevant. Wasn’t one of the first tests or one of the tests of the atomic bomb was like a Mars-Uranus conjunction of Gemini or something?
NP: Yeah, I think so. It’s interesting you say this because of what we’ve been through with COVID and what’s happened because of COVID on a technological level where companies had to adapt like we’re on Zoom and all that stuff. What’s going to come out of this when that ingress happens, you start to see the results later too. If anybody’s going to deal with it… Well, there’s one thing about having Uranus in Taurus. I have a Taurus in the Sun and I could tell you right now how difficult that is. But if anybody’s going to maybe go with the rapid don’t know what it’s going to be type of thing, it’d be Geminis. Yeah.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point. So if anybody is most suited to dealing with the rapid changes of Uranus in Gemini, of Uranus going through as somebody’s zodiac sign, it’s going to be the Geminis who are the most perhaps the most adaptable of any of the signs.
NP: Living for it to actually, yeah.
CB: All right. So we had a list of keywords where I put out a tweet and I said, “What are your keywords for the zodiac sign Gemini like I did in last two episodes?” And a bunch of people submitted their keywords. And Camille, you put these together in alphabetical order. I’m wondering, there’s a lot of them, but I’m almost wondering if it would be useful to go through them. I mean, some of them we’ve already mentioned or some of them we agree with. It’s not like there’s a bunch that we don’t, there might be one or some that I’m not sure if I would say for Gemini. But for the most part, they’re pretty accurate, right?
CMG: Yeah, I think so.
CB: Okay. So even if it wasn’t all ones we would use, there’s certainly ones that people do mention in connection with Gemini or did when I put out that survey. Why don’t I read through some of them and then we’ll just pause, or if there’s one that either of you want to linger on, I can pause, just let me know.
CMG: Okay.
CB: All right. Keywords on Gemini from Twitter, “all the words”, adaptable, alert, amplifying, analytical, aware, banter, books, both, breezy, bright, bullshitter, busy, butterflies, buzzing bee, I like that because bees buzz around from flower to flower just collecting pollen.
CMG: The pollinators.
CB: Yeah. Cartoons, chaos, charming, chatty, child, childhood, choices, clever, colorful, common sense, connective, conversational, curious, dabbler, I like that, somebody who dabbles in many different things. Debate, detached, dexterous, dispersion. Dexterous was actually a really good one, somebody that is able to do different things or is sort of flexible which can mean flexible physically, but it can also mean flexible mentally or just adaptable to different scenarios.
CMG: One thing about dexterous that I always think of is how people can use their hands. My hair braider can braid things so, so, so, so fast. That use of hands, she’s a Gemini, can also come through that way.
NP: And talking to you at the same time.
CMG: Absolutely, talking my ear off.
NP: And doing that, the multitasking, that’s the key.
CB: Yeah, I like that. And also debates, being debaters and liking the debate and being enlivened by that in some sense. If you were to go on a date with a Gemini or somebody that has heavy Gemini placements, maybe liking that or the process of flirting, let’s say, with Venus and Gemini might be having a sort of witty back and forth between two people.
CMG: Yeah, teasing as flirting.
CB: Right.
NP: Yeah, definitely, that’s the deal. But also too it’s not just with the date, it’s with the hostess and the owner of the restaurant same time. It’s a flirting with a charming thing too. You’re on a date with somebody with Venus and Gemini, but at the same time, we walk into a room like, “Oh, you have such a great place,” to the restaurant owner. Like, “Oh, tell the cooks that the meal was amazing,” that kind of a thing. So it happens on all levels.
CB: And they keep doing that all night. Meanwhile, your date’s walking out the door and you’re still chatting up everybody.
NP: That could happen. Again, we go back to the beginning of this podcast and video about the art of it in understanding a situation and remembering priorities and who is of most important. You Geminis out there who always, “Oh, I can’t hang onto somebody, I don’t know why.” Well, there is a priority, remember that. The most important person in the room, remember who the most important person in the room. In your mind you might think at certain points of the night that person and that other person were the most important person in the room for those five minutes, but if you want to hold onto somebody, concentrate a little bit.
CMG: Yeah, that could be some of the downsides of Gemini, hard to concentrate, hard to stay focused or spinning too many plates at once and some of them inevitably drop.
NP: Yeah, for sure.
CB: Right. Yeah, that was something we were talking about in the last forecast of maybe also sometimes because we’re contrasting signs that are connected or relate in some way. But another interesting contrast that we could have done and haven’t done as much of in this episode is signs that are in aversion, that don’t relate because they don’t share any of those same qualities, and that’s where you get some of those disconnects sometimes of having different tendencies or different styles. What both of you were talking about right here reminds me of Mercury and Gemini and some of the things you’re talking about of that quickness and chattiness and things like that and being able to chat up multiple people versus, let’s say, Scorpio, which is in aversion to and doesn’t share any of the same qualities because it’s a fixed water nocturnal or feminine sign, and therefore maybe wants to focus more on just one thing and stick with that or one conversation that it wants to have intensely with one person as opposed to having multiple conversations going on with different people, and that can be part of a sense of discomfort or not relating due to different styles.
CMG: Yeah. The Scorpio on the date with the Gemini would be seething, “Why aren’t you paying attention to me and only me?”
CB: Or why do you keep changing the conversation to different topics? Let’s stick with this one topic and really get to the heart of it.
NP: Yeah. If the Gemini was smart, they would keep their mouth shut and lend to the air of mystery and not say too much with the Scorpio and you let that simmer. The Scorpio’s going to chase the mystery.
CB: Maybe that should be a whole other episode, astrology dating tips based on the signs.
CMG: Yeah, chemistry with the signs.
NP: But they’re aversion to each other, that’s legit. Yeah, there could be another episode to open up a Pandora’s box there, but yeah.
CB: Yeah, how to bridge the gaps between signs.
NP: Yeah, because it can happen. Let’s remember that too. We have everything that we know and learn, and as things change, we adapt. And here we are bringing in the other word adaptability again. Again, higher level Gemini, if they have it together and they’ve been studying and doing it right, they can then let’s say it was something I said like, “Oh, they’re going to keep their mouth shut. Oh, I know when to not say anything here, and I’m going to actually not just be teased by the Scorpio, but I’m going to tease them, I’m going to bring them along too.” That could be fun actually, there’s a solution possibly.
CB: Yeah, and the point with the aspect doctrine and with the ideas of aversion versus affinity is not that signs or different signs or people that are born under certain signs can’t relate, it’s just that I think it’s easier sometimes to relate to somebody else when you share something in common versus sometimes it can be a little bit harder to bridge that gap, but it’s not impossible if you don’t have certain affinities or you don’t relate on certain levels right away, but there can be ways around that for sure.
NP: Yeah, for sure. And that’s work, put in the work, certain things there. But yeah, it definitely free flows with other signs, that’s for sure.
CB: Yeah. All right, back to our list, we’re about a third of the way through. So dexterous dispersion, diversified, double-edged sword, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, duality, duplicitous, dynamic, eclectic, that’s a good one, effervescent, erratic, erudite, exchange, experimental, explorer, I want to say, extrovert for sure.
CMG: Sometimes, yeah.
CB: Sometimes extroverted, not all the time.
NP: Actually, can I say something to that?
CB: Yeah.
NP: Maybe people don’t know this, but as a Gemini, heavy Gemini, knowing some other Geminis, they lead a secret life. You’ll catch them in the room and they’re extrovert, but I’m telling you, they lead a secret life of introversion and walking alone. It’s that walking the road story again. I’m just saying this for people to understand. If they want to get to know a Gemini or understand, dude, there is another side. Again, there’s the other side, and it’s an alone introverted place with their thoughts and the messages that come through. And it’s not easy to hold that type of responsibility, it’s pretty deep actually. So I don’t know what y’all think about that.
CMG: I agree as someone who lives a double life internally and externally.
CB: Yeah. One of your things, Camille, is that you’re a musician in addition to an astrologer.
CMG: Yeah, and I work for the federal government as well. So three things at the same time right now.
CB: Yeah, you contain multitudes.
CMG: Exactly.
CB: And Nicholas, you actually also wear many hats as well, I think, and have more than many hats during the course of your life.
NP: I have. I grew up on the restaurant business, I was a professional photographer, involved in the music business, so many other things. Some of you know I’ve been involved in backend helping put on conferences, books, astrology books, I know that. I don’t know it, but I know of it. But I will say you have to find your moments to know when to stop picking up something else and juggling something else.
CB: Yeah, so sometimes that can be a benefit in a shortcoming, is like knowing a little bit about many different things, but maybe not going as far into any one thing as one could potentially.
NP: Yeah. I’ve learned from the fixed signs to focus in on one thing and to go all the way with it, so to not have so many things, and you know that in your life. One thing I do sometimes on a deeper level is I’ll go look at progressed Mercury in the chart, I will see what’s going on with that because sometimes that will be a reflection of whether I or a client who has maybe Mercurial qualities, who can juggle many things depending on what the progressed Mercury is doing if its just stationed or not, whether they’re more focused on one thing or not, that’s just a side note, but I think a Gemini and the Gemini archetype has to learn to know the limit and what it can and cannot do.
CMG: Yeah. Kelly Surtees said something similar on the previous walkthrough the signs that you did a couple years ago, where Gemini can have four options, that’s fine. But nine options is too much, so to whittle down how much you can go between.
CB: Okay, before being spread too thin basically.
NP: Oh yeah, you get older, you’re not as physically dexterous, let’s say. So it’s the adaptability in that way of knowing, “Okay, how can I make the most use of my energy and time and the rapidness and the quickness of things and understanding that?” Because no one can get out of death, even Hermes who goes back and forth from there and might have the looks and look younger so on and so forth, you still can’t escape it. This is the gauging of that. What happens in one’s mind is things are popping off really quick and fast, but your body’s not there anymore, and that could show its reflection of how many tasks can you do, how many lives can you lead at the same time.
CB: So that may be a lesson though that takes a while because the tendency for a Gemini is to want to do everything or do as much as possible or wear as many different hats as possible. But maybe that eventually becomes one of the lessons sometimes is running into a wall once you have taken on too much.
CMG: Yeah. But then to just kind of speak to the positives of that, wanting to put yourself in as many experiences as possible I think speaks to the openness of the Gemini. And I think one of these words will come up, but continuing to learn new things or do new things keeps the mind very young, kind of that child-like quality of, “Ooh, what’s this? What’s that?” So kind of divorced from maybe career trajectories or doing things practically. There’s also that kind of existential nature of being open to learn anything really.
CB: Of curiousness.
CMG: Curiosity, yeah.
CB: Curiosity.
NP: Yeah. I’m so glad you said that, Camille, because really what you said there regardless of age is the energy rejuvenator for a Gemini.
CMG: Exactly, that’s the life force.
NP: It’s the life force, yep.
CB: Okay. So that’s one of our higher-level Gemini archetypes then is curiosity. And then a bunch of hundreds of different sub-significations all come from that umbrella concept of a fundamental curiosity about life. All right, so let’s go back. And then one of the significations that wasn’t on the list, but now this I just added because that brought it up is just a Jack of all trades is a good Gemini phrase.
CMG: It is.
CB: All right. Fickle, flaky, fleeting, flirtatious, fluctuating, fragmented, gatherer, ghosting, it’s a funny modern keyword of talking with somebody, dating or something, but then just disappearing.
CMG: Yeah, because you’re not interesting anymore.
CB: Right. If you’ve lost the Gemini’s interest, they just move on to the next.
NP: Yeah. I think a lot of people live in that life because they’re going left or right on the swipe and they’re just…
CB: Let’s see. Ghosting, gift of gab, glitter, goof, gossipy, gregarious, group chat, handy, humorous, hunger for knowledge, impulsive, inconsistent, indecisive, inquisitive, intellectual, intelligent, inventive, Jack of all trades, which I just added, jokester, learning, levity, light. Keeping things light is a good Gemini term in terms of… Linguistic, manipulative, marketer, media mogul, messenger, mischief, multifaceted, multiplicative, multitudes, myriad, networker, next door, nosy, novelty, observant, on trend. Novelty is a good one, liking novelty.
CMG: Yeah, the newness of an experience to learn something is to do something new.
CB: Yeah, and that that’s prioritized in some way, the experience of maybe… That could be another corrective thing because for Taurus one of the things we talked about in the last episode is there is this reveling in or enjoyment of that, which is familiar and that which you already know that you enjoy because you’ve tried it once versus almost a fear of venturing outside of that or reluctance to venture outside of that, because you could experience something that you don’t really like and then you have this sense of regret that you could have just done the thing that you liked instead. And Gemini inverts that because Gemini almost has instead the emphasis on enjoyment of that which is new and that which does expose you to something that you haven’t tried before and that in and of itself being enjoyable or pleasurable in some way.
CMG: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: Let’s switch back. Novelty, observant, on-trend, open, peering, pickpocket, playful. Pickpocket, Nicholas talked about that earlier.
NP: I’ve done it, I used to do that.
CB: You used to be a pickpocket? That’s awesome.
NP: I’ve done some things that I’m not proud of as a Gemini.
CMG: Were you good at it?
NP: Yeah, I could do it. I’ve stolen cars before. There’s just certain things, on the rapid pressure, getting into a car, I’ve done some things. I grew up in Chicago.
CB: One of the things that’s funny going back, because I was just reminded of this last week and it goes back to the youthfulness, Gemini thing, a really good example of that is actually you’re a good example of that, Nicholas, because I often think that you’re younger or a lot younger than you are. When you told me your birth data the other day and that you’re Saturn in Taurus, I was surprised again because I always think of us as closer in age, but I’m Saturn in Scorpio born in 1984 and I’m 37, and how old are you?
NP: Oh wow, you’re going to do this.
CB: I mean, your chart’s already been up on the screen and your birthday is on the screen.
NP: I’m going to be 51 in a couple days here.
CMG: I wouldn’t have guessed either.
NP: Yeah. There’s all these clinics you can go through and you could do all types of things to add years. There’s also augmented reality and filters. I’m not using, I’m not doing any of that.
CMG: No, that’s pure Gemini.
NP: It’s pure Gemini. Listen, I’m not saying this is the tonic that I drink to do it, but the tonic is water, it’s hydrating and taking care of yourself. This isn’t tangential, it’s going to make sense what I’m going to tell you, and this goes into my experience as a Gemini and my client world and so on and so forth. What I just did is the key for the Gemini is you have to breathe and you have to get air in your lungs to clear your mind. Because if your mind is troubled and your mind is confused, you’re not going to start looking a certain way and your body and your nervous system, which the nervous system for the Gemini is such a huge deal because of the sensitivity and the antenna of reading the observance, one of the key words here was observance, I’ll tell you. Your nervous system is connected in such a way and so dialed in antenna-wise that you’re there, but you have to breathe if you want to get deep into this and be dialed in that way. Because if you’re not breathing, you’re disconnected and your mind will trail off and will do funny things to you, things that aren’t real and it will affect you physically. So since we’re talking about the way I look, I’m not saying that’s what it is, it is what it is. I’m Greek and Ecuadorian, that could be part of it. So there’s that, but I’m saying on a Gemini level, since we’re talking about… I’m not a doctor, I’m not a medical astrologer, but I’m saying air through the lungs, going for a walk, breathing air, especially these days when we’re in front of screens and especially a Gemini, someone’s Mercurial, you just get locked in and you notice you don’t even remember the last time you took a breath, a deep breath. So as for longevity, as for focus, as for higher level Gemini living and life, breathe. Breathe taking breathing techniques.
CMG: I don’t think we’ve talked yet about Gemini and nervousness, anxiety, fidgetiness and deeply connected to the nervous system and how stress is the number one ager, makes you age faster. Yes, remembering to take a breath.
NP: Yeah, especially these days because the attributes that a Gemini has is the multitasking that we’ve talked about, to be able to do multiple things at once. And you’re living the golden age of this, we are technologically. So you’re doing that, but you’re still human, and you have to catch that place for you. Like, “I’m going too far. I’m just tweaking.” And this is for the Virgos too, but it’s like… But seriously, you’re on point there, that nervous system isn’t just your nervous system, it’s connected to your intuition, to your digestive tract, to everything. And if you want to be on point and you want to be able to be the buzzing bee efficiently, got to breathe.
CMG: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right. Let’s go back to our keyword list. The next one is postman, which is actually kind of interesting because I was looking at an article on Patrick Watson’s site that he wrote about Uranus and Gemini. And he said that when Uranus was in Gemini between 1690 and 1697, the first post office system was established in the American colonies. So funny little bit of trivia. Potential, precocious, psychopomp, question, quick, range, rational, ravenous, receipts, research, shops, silver tongue, sly, smart ass, sociable sparkle in eye, sponge-like. Sparkle in eye, you like that one?
CMG: Yeah, it’s cute.
NP: Yep, I like that one too.
CMG: That mischievous look in the Gemini eyes.
CB: Yeah. That reminds me there’s that old clip of Norm Macdonald on Conan O’Brien’s show in the nineties, and they’re talking and Norm Macdonald had been kind of making fun of Conan’s other guest that was sitting right next to him the entire time. And then it sort of calms down, and then Conan says something to Norm. He says, “Make a joke out of that.” And there’s this pause, and then Norm looks at him and Conan knows that he has something, he’s come up with something, and then he says it and it just absolutely is a hilarious joke. But there’s this moment of there’s that sparkle in his eye of that he just thought of something really witty and really funny, and I think that’s what that’s talking about. All right, so back to keywords here, spry, stimulated, student, superficial, swift, talkative, talkative twice, which is actually funny, teasing. That’s a typo, but it’s actually really right.
NP: No, that’s right for sure.
CMG: Talkative squared.
CB: Teasing, the wanderer, thoughtful, toe dipper, transmission, twins, two-faced, understanding, vata, which means airy in Sanskrit, verbose, versatile, vivid, whistleblower, witty, and words. That’s pretty good. That’s pretty good coverage. I mean, that actually makes me feel really good. It’s funny that we did this at the end of the episode rather than at the beginning like other ones, but I feel like we covered a lot of those at this point looking back on the last two hours.
NP: Yeah, no for sure. I’m looking at psychopomp there and what that means in myth and also too the basic story of Hermes goes into the underworld, has access to the underworld, leads people to the underworld, and knows the way back. But usually when you’re leading somebody in the underworld, you’re not coming back the same. So just to say that thing of the duality, but also too of what being human is and then the connection to the divine. And those messages that come through have to come from that divine place, but also have to deal with the underworld story too and the gifts that the underworld brings. It might not seem like that for people, but in the bigger pictures of things, what metaphorical death is and the access to that, the access to that place, that chamber, that’s Hermes all the way. And Hecate can do it too in myth, but Hermes is the known person to bring people there. So can’t forget that.
CMG: I wanted to say just one thing about the superficiality and maybe debunking a myth that Gemini is like the Jack of all trades but master of none. I kind of was thinking about that, I know it’s not true that Geminis cannot be experts, but then it kind of dawned on me that maybe the route that Geminis take to become that master or to become that expert is like super not linear. Gemini can have a propensity to kind of wander and take a lot of detours, but there’s still richness in that experience, and that can all still kind of play into the ultimate kind of knowingness or whatever the Gemini was studying. So just another thing to kind of flip that notion that Geminis have a light touch knowledge. They can go quite deep just in zig-zaggy ways.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Because in Dorotheus of Sidon in the first-century election astrology text in book five, he says that when mutable signs like Gemini are emphasized in the election chart, for example, by having the Ascendant in Gemini, that the person will start one thing, but then they’ll have to start a second thing, and then the second thing that they initiated will have to be finished before the first one can come to completion. So there’s this discursive sort of quality to Gemini. One last thing that we’re going to do was contrast Gemini with the other three mutable signs, which are Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. We’ve talked a little bit about the Sagittarius one, but talking a little bit more about Virgo and Pisces and also Sag might be good just by way of contrast. So why don’t we start with Virgo, which is also a mutable sign, it’s also a feminine or nocturnal sign, but the main difference is that it’s a Earth sign, so a large part of the contrast between Gemini and Virgo is that earthy quality. I guess actually, I misspoke because Gemini is a masculine sign and Virgo is a feminine sign, so that’s part of the contrast as well. What are some of the things that come up, Camille, or do you think of when you contrast Gemini versus Virgo?
CMG: Yeah, you touched on it. I was thinking about how that Virgo energy and that Mercury energy in Virgo is kind of acting on the material plane. So I think there’s more of a lean towards trying to make things make sense, which is very fundamental to earth is like, does this make sense? Is this practical? But also something that you said a couple years ago in the podcast talking about Gemini as well, which is that Virgo is after this kind of scholarly understanding or a very technical and detailed understanding that I think maybe Gemini isn’t necessarily thinking about or interested in with how it’s learning. So Virgo can also be, I think, a little bit more of the critic and a little bit more critiquing there, and I have this feeling that Gemini has this quality of openness or understanding or tolerance for mistakes or coloring outside the lines that maybe Virgo doesn’t have.
CB: Yeah, for sure. There’s a much more grounded, practical quality to Virgo, and both of them have that ability to focus on small things. But Gemini tends to move on a little bit better instead of just sticking with that, whereas Virgo tends to focus on the small details and see the cracks in things of the minute ways in which there’s an error, there’s a problem with something or ways in which it could be better.
NP: Yeah, there’s that thing too of wanting it to be refined a little bit more. And I think because of being an Earth sign, you’re kind of taking certain things and then transforming it into something else that’s mundane. So, you know, the refinement of Virgo— which I so love that sign. I so love that sign and my heart goes out to them too because I don’t think they get enough credit for what they take on. The responsibility that they even take on themselves to deal with that refinement that we’re talking about is a lot of pressure. [laughs]
CMG: And it requires humility, right?
NP: Yeah, totally. Yeah.
CMG: “This isn’t perfect, so I’m gonna try.”
NP: Yeah. Definitely that’s a difference from the way the Gemini’s running, walking in the world.
CB: Yeah. So Virgo is much more practical whereas maybe Gemini is a little bit more abstract knowledge. Virgo is a lot more applied, grounded knowledge, but also one of the keywords you just use was like helpfulness. What are some other contrasts between those two?
NP: I think the contrast too is– because we’re talking when you had the chart up about masculine feminine– I just think that’s a major part of it, too, of how the Virgo is going to move and use its energy. And compared to the so-called masculine Mercury or Gemini, the way it’s moving at things, then you have on by definition the receptivity of the feminine Virgo. So how they’re both moving Mercurially is different. I know we’re talking about basic definitions here and that they don’t just stop there, but I think that’s probably the biggest differentiator to me. It is that.
CB: Yeah, so there’s more of a contemplative quality of Virgo, whereas Mercury in Gemini is more emitting things and putting words out there. I don’t think you have as much of that talkative quality with a Virgo that’s constantly putting words in the air unnecessarily. And that’s one of the differences just between, you know, air with Gemini rises upwards versus Earth falls downwards. And just the sort of directionality of like an internal versus an external expression of Mercury.
NP: That’s a great way to put it, the internal external. If the busy bee is going around in the garden, well, the Virgos more specifically in the part of the garden, and more dialed-in in a certain way. And there, the mutability happens within the dialling in part of going back and forth and tweaking and looking at those cracks and patching them up and going back and forth there. But I think that’s where the mutability is happening. But the receptivity and a little bit more of the internalised focus that you were talking about, so… Yep.
CB: Yeah. And Virgo seems like it excels a little bit more of staying a little bit more, even though it’s a mutable sign with one thing, and just really learning how to do that one thing as well as it can and doesn’t need as much change, and going back and forth or holding multiple things as Gemini does.
CMG: Yeah, and thinking about how Virgo wants to refine and get things as close to perfect or as close to ideal as possible. It’s kind of like the way that they approach it is mutable. Like, the way that they’re approaching that problem-solving from like this point of view, that point of view, that tool or less of that, that can be more of that internalised mutability with Mercury there.
CB: Right. Yeah.
NP: God, I kind of wish I was a Virgo now. [laughter] I like that! I’m Pluto, athough.
CB: When we get to the Virgo episode, we’ll talk about some of the downsides of some of that. Let’s go on to– even though we’ve already talked about this– the contrast now between Gemini and Sagittarius, and also how Pisces relates to that because Pisces is the other sign that’s opposite to Mercury’s other ruled sign, which is Virgo. And so we see some commonality there as well. One of the major differences between, let’s say both Sagittarius and Pisces versus Gemini is again, just that big picture stuff versus the small immediacy of Mercury in Gemini.
CMG: Yeah. I also like to think of Pisces as a consciousness, which is something that’s just beyond thought. Not necessarily things that the Gemini mind can articulate or understand, it’s just something that’s moving in the background of our reality that kind of ebbs and flows as we move through life is more Piscean.
CB: Yeah. So as a water sign, there’s an emotional component there that’s sort of missing from Gemini to some extent, which is more intellectual.
CMG: Yeah, yeah.
CB: All right. I think that’s pretty good since we’ve already talked about quite a bit the opposite sign of Sagittarius and things like that. Maybe that’s good in terms of contrasting the four mutable signs?
CMG: Yeah.
Cool. All right. Well, I think that’s really bringing us to the end of this episode then. We’ve covered a tonne of different significations, we’ve gone through some great different example charts. I’m not seeing any major ones that I meant to mention that I’m going to really be kicking myself for afterwards. There’s a few stand-up comics and a few people that are good at doing radio or podcasting, which is really just having an ability to think quickly and engage in conversation and use that to their advantage. That seems to be one of the great Gemini abilities or superpowers in some sense that can be used for good or for ill.
CMG: I was gonna say there’s one chart example I think I would be biting myself over if I didn’t mention it, and it’s Shakespeare. It’s William Shakespeare. And the birth date is in question but I looked and both Venus and Neptune were in the sign of Gemini. And Shakespeare is this person who a lot of people don’t know, created and made up so many words. And kind of going back to what Nicholas was saying about how that Gemini storytelling can affect people or move beyond the life of the person that used it, Shakespeare is kind of ebbed into our Zeitgeist permanently. And it’s so funny that his Neptune was in Gemini. He imagined up these words, it came through plays and sonnets, which is a Venusian type of medium. And those two planets were opposing Uranus, then we get that quality of like, “I’m going to create my own words. [laughs] I’m just gonna put things together.” And yeah, they’ve become things that we use currently and may not even know.
NP: Yeah, I would actually consider Shakespeare subversive, actually. A lot of what he was sneaking in at the times, culturally, and what he was pointing out even with just the way people lived was subversive and smart.
CMG: He was a smart ass. [laughs]
NP: Yeah, he was a smart ass. And it was like, “Keyword? We got one of those!” So yeah, definitely. Yeah.
CB: I was just looking really quickly for other Neptune in Gemini people and one of the ones that brought up that I’ve used as a Venus-Mercury conjunct ascendant in Libra example is the famous poet, T.S. Eliot. But it was interesting it brought up that he also had a Gemini Moon, Moon in Gemini conjunct that Pluto and Neptune in Gemini.
CMG: Yeah. These people who their words kind of capture the public imagination, and just live on through that.
NP: Yeah. And then if no one caught what Chris said during this episode about containing multitudes, you know, you were referencing Walt Whitman. And I know that was on… Yep. Like, everything he wrote is sort of riddlely, kind of riddle-like sometimes in a way, but easy to understand and to process the functioning of the words. So, yeah.
CB: Yeah. All right. Brilliant. Well, I think that’s it then for this episode on Gemini. Thank you both so much for joining me to cover the third sign of the zodiac. I think this sets a really good, you know, I’m still exploring and getting used to and learning how to go through this series, but this is a nice next step in that. And it’s been nice to see the evolution of this series as I’m going through each of the signs. So I want to talk to both of you about where people can find out more information about your work. Camille, what’s your website and where can people find out more about you?
CMG: My website is camillemichellegray.com. There’ll probably be notes in the YouTube video about how to spell those things. But on there, you can find consults and different things that I do. I write very periodically on there as well. I also have a very active Twitter presence and my handle is @millymichelle, m i l l y m i c h e l l e.
CB: And you do consultations, you’ve written articles before, and at some point you’re thinking about doing a podcast?
CMG: Yeah, I’m thinking about it. This one went so well that maybe I’ll actually start doing it sooner, but we’ll see if my Gemini ideas can catch up with reality. [laughs]
CB: Yeah. Well, I definitely want to encourage you to because I think that would be amazing. And people can let us know in the comments below this on youtube if they’d like to see that.
NP: I agree. I think you should do a podcast. The way the tone of your voice… There’s a flow that you have. You’re perfect for it.
CMG: Oh, thank you.
NP: Since we’re talking about communication and influence style, you got it. You got it.
CMG: I’ll give that to my Taurus Moon, the silky vocal cords. [laughs]
CB: And you’re also a gifted writer, because that’s how you and I first met. You’ve written a lot of articles on Reddit and stuff like that?
CMG: Yeah. Thank you.
CB: Yeah. All right. And Nicholas, what’s going on with you? You’ve got a website and you’ve also been doing a YouTube channel recently, right?
NP: Yeah, I started pushing my YouTube channel at the end of 2021. My website is sparklesofgold.com, I have my videos up there. I started a podcast at the beginning of the year, it’s called The Sparks of Gold Astrology Manifesto. I’m doing that. I’m on Twitter, IG mostly. I’m on Pinterest. Can you believe that? I’m on Pinterest, [laughs] Tik Tok… I’m doing it, I’m seeing where it lands. But yeah, you have my YouTube there. That’s been my world, it’s learning YouTube and doing it and putting messages out there and I love it. I love doing it and I love doing the podcast. And to go back to you, Camille, I really totally got your back on this. You’d be amazing at it and yeah-
CMG: I’ll have you on.
NP: Yeah, we’ll do the exchange. We’ll do the exchange, which is so famous in the podcast world. So I’ve been doing that. Yeah, sparklesofgold.com. The other thing is I’m also part of putting on the ISAR2022 conference that’s happening in the end of August outside of Denver. I’m working alongside Laura Nalbandian who asked me or hired me to help. So officially I’m doing many tasks for that conference, from selling ads to watching over the AV part, whatever it takes, whatever Laura asks. And yeah, we’ve had some great changes happen actually in the last 24 to 48 hours. Austin Coppock’s going to be there speaking now, so on and so forth. So yeah, thank you for putting that up, Chris. There’s that and part of that. Yeah, that’s about it with my world right now.
CB: Cool. Yeah, I think I’ll put links to both of your websites in the description below this video on YouTube or on the astrologypodcast.com website for the entry for this episode. So people can go there to check out both of your websites, and I’d definitely recommend following both of you just because I’m sure both of you are going to be doing cool stuff, already are, and will be in the future. And I look forward to seeing it. So yeah, thanks a lot both of you for joining me today. I appreciate it.
CMG: Thanks for having me.
NP: Thank you, Chris. Thank you.
CB: All right. Well, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of the Astrology Podcast. That’s it. We’ll see you again next month for the episode on Cancer at some point once we moved into Cancer season here the next few weeks. So thanks a lot for watching, and we’ll see you again next time.
Special thanks to all the patrons that supported the production of this episode of the podcast through our page on patreon.com. In particular, thanks to the patrons on our producers’ tier including Thomas Miller, Catherine Conroy, Kristi Moe, Ariana Amour, Mandi Rae, Angelic Nambo, Issah Sabah and Jake Otero. If you like the work that I’m doing here on the podcast and you would like to find a way to support it then please consider becoming a patron through my page on patreon.com and in exchange you’ll get access to bonus content such as early access to new episodes, the ability to attend the live recording of the month ahead forecast each month, access to a private monthly auspicious elections report that we put out each month, access to exclusive episodes that are only available for patrons, or you can also get your name listed in the credits at the end of each episode. For more information, go to patreon.com/astrologypodcast. The main software we use here on the podcast to look at astrological charts is called Solar Fire for Windows which is available at alabe.com, and you can use the promo code AP15 to get a 15% discount. For Mac users, we use a similar set of software by the same programming team called Astro Gold for Mac OS which is available from astrogold.io, and you can use the promo code ASTROPODCAST15 to get a 15% discount on that as well.
If you’d like to learn more about the approach to astrology that I outline on the podcast, then you should check out my book titled Hellenistic Astrology: The Study of Fate and Fortune, where I traced the origins of Western astrology and reconstructed the original system that was developed about 2000 years ago. In this book, I outline basic concepts but also take you into intermediate and advanced techniques for reading a birth chart, including some timing techniques. You can find more about the book at hellenisticastrology.com/book. The book pairs very well with my online course on ancient astrology called the Hellenistic Astrology Course, which has over 100 hours of video lectures where I go into detail about teaching you how to read a birth chart, and showing hundreds of example charts in order to really demonstrate how the techniques work in practice. Find out more information about that at theastrologyschool.com.
And finally, special thanks to our sponsors including The Mountain Astrologer magazine which is available at mountainastrologer.com, the Honeycomb Collective Personal Astrological Almanacs available at honeycomb.co, and the Astro Gold Astrology App which is available for iPhone and Android. You can find out more information about that at astrogold.io. There is also a major astrology conference happening this year that’s being hosted by the International Society for Astrological Research conference, and that’s happening August 25th through the 29th 2022 in Westminster, Colorado. You can find out more information at isar2022.org.