The Cosmic Storyteller: Spotlight On Gemini
A Year to Explore Your Options
The past few weeks have burst with Gemini’s breezy energies and today’s Gemini New Moon helps set the tone for the coming month. Whether your mind is overwhelmed with ideas and projects or your social schedule is overbooked, the cosmic energies swirling in Gemini this month will stay with us throughout the year.
The Sun left grounded, sensual Taurus to enter Gemini’s airy domain on May 20th and on May 22nd, it formed a helpful trine to Pluto retrograde in Aquarius, the sign of ideals and collective beliefs. The Sun, having felt what it needs to thrive in Taurus’ 3D reality, arrived in Gemini to make plans when Pluto immediately reminded him that those plans really needed to include his community, his country and his world (Aquarius).
Of course, Gemini’s purpose is collecting information – lots of information about everything. Gemini is an air sign and thinking is its tool of choice. How do we use our minds? Learning, reading, teaching, reporting, communicating. All important in Gemini’s world. But I’d like you to put this on hold until you see what else is happening in Gemini.
On May 25th, the planet Jupiter moved out of Taurus and into Gemini for the next year. So this benefical energy will enhance all those Gemini tools. Jupiter is just moving away from its conjunction with Uranus in Taurus (April 20th), where it picked up the urgent need for societal change due to climate change, unfettered technology and the corruption of corporate power on our culture. Then almost immediately upon entering Gemini, Jupiter aligned with Pluto and got the message. This is a global crisis and our leaders are not leading the way. So we the people (Pluto in Aquarius) are going to have to do it.
Venus entered Gemini on May 23rd just after the Sagittarius/Gemini Full Moon and she too promptly connected with Pluto in Aqurius – big dreams of a better future. She also conjuncted Jupiter at 29* Taurus, hours before this Full Moon and her entry into Gemini. Both Venus and Jupiter are considered the most beneficial planets in the solar system, bringing luck and fortune, love and grace to life. In Taurus, they want to bless our physicality, both our bodies and our Earth, and have us listen to the important wisdom that the body contains. Hopefully, this will keep Venus grounded in her quick jaunt through Gemini (May 23 – June 16).
The interesting thing happening with this Gemini Venus is that she is hidden behind the Sun on her Underworld Journey of renewal, and on June 4th, Venus ‘kisses’ the Sun – conjuncting the Sun, starting her Evening Star phase in Gemini. The Sabian symbol for the Venus/Sun conjunction is 14* Gemini: Two people, living far apart, in telepathic communication. We are all connected, aren’t we? This is the next form of FB – the inner-net.
Venus will appear out of the Sun’s rays in the evening sky around July 11th and we’ll all be under her shining Evening Star energy for the next 9 ½ months. The Evening Star phase of Venus is her Wisdom phase. Hopefully, she’ll help us make wise decisions this next year about what’s important to learn, to teach, to communicate and to connect to.
The Gemini New Moon occurs on June 6th at 17* Gemini: Head of a youth changes into that of a mature thinker. Certainly, this is something to be hoped for at the moment. This symbol indicates a deeper understanding of reality, both outer and inner and a growth in wisdom.
The New Moon is conjunct Venus (our love connections), and Mercury and Jupiter are conjunct at earlier degrees of Gemini, giving us the ability to be that mature thinker. Saturn in Pisces squares this New Moon, bringing a gavitas to our viewpoint. Together, these planets infuse the lessons of Gemini with an importance that playful Gemini usually doesn’t want to shoulder. It’s time to grow up, little Gemini peter pan!
It’s time to stop using that imagination to fly away to neverland (our addictions) and rather work with the imagination to explore our options. That’s where Jupiter enters the story.
Jupiter in Gemini: The Power of the Imagination
Imagination is more important than Knowledge. (Albert Einstein)
While most astrologers see Gemini and its ruler Mercury as the rational, thinking Mind, I always believed the Gemini Twins symbolized the two ways we human beings ‘think’. (One twin was mortal and one immortal.) Our cultural bias leans toward rational, left-brain knowledge (the mortal twin) while, until recently, rejecting the imaginal right brain way of knowing (immortal twin) as superstitious and irrational. But right-brain imaginal thinking is the basis of our human psyche. Our right brains are constantly processing our life’s experience in imaginal form. Too often, we let our left-brain ego shut off its connection to these images and therefore to the language of our souls.
Likewise, Mercury was the messenger of the gods as well as the psychopomp that led human souls to other realms. Mercury, and our minds, move between realms. As the New Moon envisions it, we have to become mature thinkers, which means using both sides of the brain.
With Jupiter’s entry into Gemini, this next year is going to bring us chances to expand our ideas and our imaginations. Jupiter is the teacher, the storyteller, the guide. Gemini’s need to gather information like puzzle pieces might pick up speed with Jupiter’s expansive and excessive energies. Jupiter in Gemini can overload our ‘curcuits’ in all ways if we let it. Overbooked, over-thinking, over-doing.
Or we can use Jupiter’s energy in a different way. Jupiter and its sign of Sagittarius symbolize the quest for truth. With Jupiter in Gemini, we can look for truth in all the wrong places – such as the corporate media. We can get blown away by the news. We can let it confuse and depress us.
Or we can look for the truth with our own imaginations. We can begin to imagine what we need to do at this moment in time to create a better world. Our purpose needs to manifest in the outer world. Jupiter can expand our ‘inner knowing’ just as much as our outer looking. Most of us know what’s going on in the world today. Do we need every bit of imformation repeated over and over by the media, or can we take a look at the big picture (Jupiter) and use our imagination to help us understand how the outer world situation is affecting us. And what we want to do differently.
With Sun, Moon, Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in Gemini squaring off with Saturn and Neptune in Pisces, our imaginations is more powerful than ever. Our thoughts – and even more, our imaginations – create reality. Saturn and Neptune will slow down the frenetic Gemini energies and open them to the Pisces realm of the collective unconscious, where the archetypes emerge in new forms. What does the world need now from us? Can we hear what’s stirring down there?
The other way to think about our world is very Jupitarian. We can do it through the power of stories. Stories stir up Jupiter’s expansive energy. A story stays in your heart and speaks to you of what is and what might be. Jupiter excites the imagination and opens the doors to multi-dimensional thinking, as well as symbolic language. This is the power of Mercury (in Gemini from June 3-17), the ruler of Gemini, traveling between worlds with divine messeges. And this is the power of stories.
What is our truth? What do we stand for? While we’ve been sold on the idea that work is the most important think in life, we all know that’s not true. We work to live, but we live to love. What do we love? Jupiter and Venus joined together at the very end of Venus’ sign of Taurus, the realm of the sensual pleasure of life, life lived in the Garden of the Goddess. We touch our garden home every time we go into nature. It sooths us and calms our souls. Jupiter will carry Venus ‘kiss’ with him through his journey through Gemini. Love and soul will be part of his quest.
There’s so much darkness in the world right now, despite it almost being Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Instead of turning on the news or scanning my iphone, I’m going to tell myself (and you!) stories about possibilities of a better world – about living my soul’s story, the archetypal story that shapes me. We each have one, you know. There is a deep unconscious energy that is steering each of our lives. Our egos, though, often get in the way.
Taliessin, King Arthur’s Bard
When that happens to me, I search for a story to help me understand the chaos of life and how to shape my respond to it. When I was shy and afraid to speak up at the Jung Institute, I decided to use my imagination to help me find more courage. And I did! We have to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven.
So before I tell you the ‘big’ story and the archetypal characters that I believe can shape our response to the global crisis we face, I’m going to try to convince you that “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” as Albert Einstein said.
Until next time. Merry Meet. And Merry Part. And Merry Meet Again!
Cathy
P.S. — find out where Gemini is in your chart so you know where your imagination wants to go.