Insights for Gemini
May 20
Sun enters Gemini 08:59 AM EDT
We underestimate Gemini when we ignore the power of words, the dangers of distraction, the damage to our ability to know fact from fantasy.
Well, we used to underestimate it.
Given the epidemic of misinformation, the distress of the children and the noise of communications alongside our shorter and shortening attention spans, Gemini might be a good time to turn off notifications. Visit more, text less. Explore your neighborhood. Slow down enough to delight in birds, butterflies and bees winging their ways through this world we share with them.
Jupiter and Venus will join the Sun in Gemini over the next 5 days, underscoring the proliferation of Gemini themes. Only you can determine the ways of your mind. Only you can be aware of the thoughts in your head. And only you get to focus or fragment your attention.
May 22
Sun trine Pluto
This is the Sun’s first encounter with another planet as it moves through Gemini and builds toward the Full Moon tomorrow. It promises strength and empowerment. It is the nature of mind to chatter, to flit and fly from thought flower to thought flower. It’s as important to strengthen as well as relax the mind muscle as it is for the triceps and biceps!
May 23
Full Moon: 02 degrees Sagittarius: 09:53 AM EDT
Venus conjunct Jupiter and sextile Neptune
Jupiter sextile Neptune
Venus enters Gemini
Riding through the night sky, shining, shedding light on all manner of things: There is no hiding from the silvery light of the Moon without hiding yourself from the night. The power of your seeing and your vision is real in proportion to the strength of your mind’s ability to know that you are thinking.
Venus on the threshold where Taurus becomes Gemini reminds us that we, the Planet, are on the threshold of a new world, a new age, a Great Turning. What do you experience at the gate between real world things and the stories you tell yourself (or that you listen to) about the possible world to come? To explore this question you might still the body and observe the mind. Or possibly dance, move and fill yourself with the glorious moment, alive beneath the shimmer of moon light. Both/and is always a favorite of mutable signs like Gemini. Time to distinguish the noise in your head from the story guiding you on your way from there to here and beyond.
May 25
Venus trine Pluto
Jupiter enters Gemini
It’s a riot of Gemini that started on the 22nd and will be with us even through the spring of 2025. There is always Too Much Information these days, and scams galore. Think thrice before you respond to anything. We are blown around by the wild violence of war and the strange dysphoria that comes when our politicians attempt to rationalize the necessity of it. A Dionysian frenzy of blood-lust seems capable of overtaking the most average and reasonable person. But there is also the riot of color and form which nature has created. Music, laughter, stories, markets and the entire range of clever creations of humans. Gemini promises to take us madly off in all directions. A steady mind, a sense of humor, a willingness to adapt are the tools you want for this adventure.
May 27
Mercury sextile Saturn
Some thoughts are random and blow through our minds like breezes, zephyrs, sprites going about their own business from here to there. Other thoughts are fingers pointing to the Moon, nudges from the soul, messages from the gods meant to nourish meaningful action and consideration. You decide which and when to follow your thoughts. You are the only one inside your mind.
May 29
Mars conjunct Chiron
Over the hill of what your eye can see, just beyond the horizon, is another reality, as real and unreal as your own. That’s how it is to live on a big ball.
May 31
Mercury conjunct Uranus
Anything can happen and it does. Be curious. Be interested. Be willing to be the change. It’s a lot to ask given whatever you identify as stability, order and what you have been led to expect is your due. This is our time: We have not been here before.
June 2
Jupiter trine Pluto
Mercury sextile Neptune
Stepping into the second half of 2024, the issue of attention and intention continues to be worthy of consideration. To guide our thoughts we must first be aware that we have thoughts. Awareness is the primal power. If we are the masters of our own oblivion we are equally the engineers of the world to come.
June 3
Mercury enters Gemini.
Mercury lives here. It’s home base for everything a trickster could want. Joining with the Sun, Venus and Jupiter Mercury ups the ante of all things involving thought, which is just about everything. Jupiter is not at home in Gemini. Jupiter is about faith not curiosity. Put all these characters together and give them a trine to Pluto and there is a story to tell. Of course I don’t know what your story line is. Do you? Who is telling it? Is the algorithm dragging you to the counter with your credit card in hand? Is (are?) the media, scaring the hell out of you, even as it promises solutions to every problem? Is your mind, out of control, dragging you hither and yon with persistent, unwanted thoughts? Or is your own story, rich with meaning and the ability to discern what is worth thinking about and what isn’t?
The mandate of Homo sapiens is to learn new things, maybe to learn old things in new ways. This is our potential. Take charge of your ability to do this: One thought, one breath at a time.
June 4
Mercury conjunct Jupiter, trine Pluto
Venus conjunct the Sun (Star Point)
At the risk of too much information and for the sake of love alone I am going to try and give a description of the Venus Star Point (VSP). This celestial event occurs every 18 months. If you would like to read even more about it and figure out your very own VSP you might do that here.
Astrology is what some call sacred geometry. We live beneath the sky and as the Sun, Moon, planets and stars journey through the heavens they create shapes and patterns. Nowhere is this more striking than in the perfect 5 pointed star that Venus inscribes from the perspective of Earth, as she orbits the Sun. (5 of them over an 8 year period.) Today is such a point in space. This particular point occurs at 14 degrees of Gemini. I do not always pay so much attention to this conjunction when it happens, but this year, this particular degree will be activated by Jupiter and Saturn as they make conjunctions and squares (respectively) with this sensitive degree. Venus has spent months as the morning star. About 40 days ago she vanished from view. Today is the day when she changes from morning to evening star, still out of view for another 40 days or so: From eastern star (morning, Lucifer) to western star (evening, Hesperus). Once she reappears she will grow brighter and brighter over the coming months until, at a peak of glory in the western sky after sunset she will begin to weaken and once again vanish into another conjunction with the Sun, appearing to be retrograde to our earthbound eyes. It’s a drama. A dance. A sacred story told, retold and enacted by our ancient ancestors for thousands of years.
There is more to this story but for now let’s say that this point in space, this conjunction, this invisible, mystery is a kind of seed that will take 9 months to grow and become Venus retrograde (March-April 2025). Symbolically, if we are of the nature to imagine such a thing, it is asking what we value, what matters to us, (Venus is always about matter) particularly when it comes to ideas and information (Gemini is always about thinking and communication). What stories are we telling ourselves and the children of Earth? To what do we listen? If you aren’t sure you might find the answer in the marketplace. Consider which things you spend your time, money, effort and love on. Venus often reveals herself in our receipts. There will be tests when Jupiter and Saturn trigger this point.
Mercury, Jupiter and Pluto which are also active today suggest that we empower ourselves by thinking about such things, if not on account of astrology then just because it matters.
June 06
New Moon: 16 degrees Gemini: 08:37 AM EDT
Everything is communicating with everything else. We are part of the conversation. We must listen if we are to align ourselves with creation. Coming so close on the heels of the VSP our intention to align with planetary energies invites us to contribute our intelligence to the conversation through the work of our hands as well as the thoughts in our minds. Gemini loves handwork, be it gardening, sewing, knitting, woodwork and more. Humans are clever if not always wise. Perhaps an intention to offer our cleverness to the conversation is enough.
June 08
Venus square Saturn
As Venus makes her mysterious journey into the west she encounters Saturn who loves a good test. What’s it feel like to know what you want, even to know what you should want, but not be able to get it? Does it inspire you to work hard or to despair? Saturn likes effort, Venus isn’t so sure …
June 09
Mars enters Taurus
Sun square Saturn
True and real aren’t always the same. Even if the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, there are no rigidly straight lines in nature. Except perhaps the edges of crystals and maybe the threads a spider casts when making her circular web. The best thing about life might be its paradoxical nature. You, me and everyone we know are living the paradox. Forget about solving your problems with ‘either/or’. Better to try ‘both/and’ for now, maybe forever.
June 11
Venus sextile Chiron
Mars square Pluto
Frustration is eased by curiosity. You can punch the wall but it only hurts your fist. Remember these things as Mars makes its way through Taurus. The getting of wisdom is always an option.
June 12
Mercury square Saturn
As Mercury moves toward its conjunction with the Sun (cazimi) you might con (with) sider (star) the three stories of our time:
2. The Great Collapse and
We are living in all of them at the same time here in 2024. Even so, just knowing which one you resonate with at any given moment can illuminate your next steps.
June 14
Mercury conjunct the Sun
Mercury conjuncts the Sun 6 times a year: 3 when it’s retrograde and 3 when it’s direct. Retrograde is always considered to be a bit more mystical. At that time we are meant to listen to our heart’s song, the still, small voice.
When it’s direct as it is today we listen to the world around us. What do you hear? Bird song? Traffic? Rivers running? Laughter? Tears? Music? Mayhem? The news of the world can be as interesting as it is distressing. As mindless as it is meaningful. Try listening with awareness that you are listening. You could take it as it comes or you might dial in the station that has the greatest chance of teaching you something you don’t already know. (FYI: Joni Mitchell who wrote “You Turn Me on, I’m a Radio” – click the link - has a very close Mercury Sun conjunction.)
June 16 & 17
Venus square Neptune
Venus enters Cancer
Mercury squares Neptune
Mercury enters Cancer
Mercury conjuncts Venus
Lots going on here as Neptune hovers at the threshold (last degree) of Pisces and Venus and Mercury wander by on their way to Cancer.
Human longing takes many shapes: we long for peace, for quiet, for chocolate, for the divine. Mostly, of course, we long for love, especially if we didn’t get enough as children. Patriarchy’s signature accomplishment is to have severed the bond between mother and child. This disruption over centuries has separated us from nature, our own as well as the Earth’s. Don’t blame your parents or yourself for the constant craving which dogs your days. Honor it as an invitation to the Great Love we humans share with the Great Sprit. Magic happens when we do this.
That’s about Venus.
Mercury in its moment is about the confusion that happens when what we feel in our guts conflicts with what we think we know. Feeling knows things in a different way than thinking but they both know.
Trust in poetry, music, image. Be leery of opinion. Find the flow and let it carry you for a bit. Venus and Mercury together tell a great story: the never ending one.
June 20
Sun square Neptune
Even the Sun must encounter Neptune at the threshold where Gemini ends, just before Cancer begins. Thinking and feeling are not done as they struggle against each other. Lucky for us we know how to deal with these energies during the longest days and the shortest nights of the year (in the north). Celebrate! Hallelujah anyway. Tell your own story. Dance your own dance. Sing your own song. All the while surrendering your attachment to its perfection and finding the harmony that happens when you match your steps with others.
May we all be safe from harm.
