About Gemini
No two signs are more maligned and misunderstood than Gemini and Scorpio which is why I spend a lot of time writing and talking about both.
Ask anyone with a basic understanding of astrology to describe someone born under the sign of Gemini and they will tell you “they're two-faced” or "they lie”. It doesn’t help that leaders like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson - both Gemini - are notorious liars and manipulators.
It’s true that you are going to be hard-pressed to find a Gemini that doesn’t know how to blur the truth or spin a tall tale. But then you have to remember that there is good and bad in every sign. And that not having a planet in a sign does not mean you have none of the qualities associated with that sign. We all have Gemini qualities.
To understand Gemini you have to know more about the twins.
Duality
The two brightest stars in the constellation of Gemini represent mythological twins Castor and Pollux, sons of Zeus and Leda, the wife of Tyndareus the King of Sparta.
Zeus disguised himself as a swan in order to have his way with Leda on her wedding day. Nine months later Leda gave birth to two sets of twins, one male, and one female. Castor and Pollux and Helen and Clytemnestra. Castor was the mortal brother, son of Tyndareus, and Pollux the immortal brother, son of Zeus. Helen was the immortal sister and Clytemnestra the mortal sister.
Castor and Pollux were inseparable until one day Castor was slain in battle. Pollux was inconsolable and begged Zeus to relieve him of the bonds of immortality. Zeus granted his request, on the condition that the Twins spend half their time in the underworld as well as in heaven (this corresponds to the times that the constellation is visible or hidden from us here on Earth).
Anytime the underworld comes up in mythology you can be sure, we are asked to face the shadow, which is our hidden self.
The myth of Castor and Pollux speak to the “outer life” or visible self as well as the animus while the feminine reflection, Helen and Clytemnestra, speak more clearly to the shadow self. Helen whose passive behaviour triggered the Trojan War was the opposite of her wilful and human sister, Clytemnestra who murdered her husband King Agamemnon upon his return from the Trojan War.
To understand Clytemnestra’s motives you have to know that she had been simmering with rage ever since Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis, He had done so to curry favour from the goddess just before he set sail for Troy. Furthermore, Clytemnestra didn’t sit around knitting doilies for ten years waiting for her husband’s return. She took a lover, Aegisthus.
The duality of the sisters is apparent. Helen is “godly” but passive and Clytemnestra is all too “human” and motivated by anger and passion.
These myths explore the duality of life and the conflict between the ego and the shadow.
Longing
Gemini knows about longing. They go through life longing for that special “other” who will “complete” them and are disappointed, often, in relationships because they seek wholeness outside themselves. Their siblings, if they have any, are especially important to them because not only do they see themselves reflected back at them but also see that something “extra”- something unknowable. Toni Morrison spoke of this when she said, “A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves - a special kind of double.”
A broken-hearted Gemini is one who has lost the attention and affection of his/her sibling/s.
The basics
Gemini is an air sign, ruled by shape-shifting Mercury. Claire Comstock- Gay reminds us that air energy “doesn’t necessarily translate to scholarliness; a bright, electric air sign is as likely to attend to the imaginative as to the analytic, as likely to bend toward the dreamy as the intellectual. It’s less about the style or shape that thoughts take than it is about the sheer fact that thought is how you process the world, that your eclectic mind is what makes you feel most vital, most alive, most yourself.”
Gemini is curious and highly verbal and skilled at connecting and collaborating. They make excellent teachers who love exchanging ideas and gathering differing points of view but they do not want to get bogged down by details. Gemini is not interested in probing the depths (that’s for Scorpio). Gemini wants to give you what you want. This is one reason why many Gemini natives are drawn to journalism and blogging. They are social butterflies (the air image connected with this sign is the butterfly) and spellbinding raconteurs.
xo
Yolanda