Gemini in Three

The birth of consciousness

“On my 40th birthday, rather than merely bore my friends by having anything as mundane as a midlife crisis, I decided it might be more interesting to actually terrify them by going completely mad and declaring myself to be a magician. This had been something that had been coming for a while. Seemed to be a logical end step in my career as a writer and the problem is that, with magic, being in many respects a science of language, you have to be very careful what you say. Because if you suddenly declare yourself to be a magician, without any knowledge of what that entails, then one day you are likely to wake up and to discover that is exactly what you are.”

-Alan Moore

Enter: The thrice great Mercury, the Magician, the God of (Sm)All Things

While Mercury is not the decan lord of any of these three Gemini thrones, they are the host of Gemini and the one who calls the shots here in this Hermetically sealed Air Temple. This is the first of the air signs and the last of the spring signs that launched the solar new year with the 00°Aries Sun at the Spring Equinox. This series of Gemini hurls us to the pinnacle of the sun’s journey to maximum height. The sun is over twice as high in the sky here than it is at the winter solstice, a feat that is finished through the three faces of Gemini. In the Thema Mundi, the theoretical chart of the world and an evergreen teaching tool for students of astrology, Cancer assumes the ascendant which puts Gemini in the 12H. Parking the social butterfly sign of Gemini in this dark house might seem like cruel fate, forever ensconced into the teaching tool of the Thema Mundi, but it makes sense if you consider the lessons that Gemini is capable of teaching us. As for all of the other decan lessons, using the imagery of the Rider Waite Smith deck that will act as helpful guides in the decan journey, I’ll go ahead and begin with that here. Gemini I

First though, let’s look at the two Major Arcana that welcome us to the story: The Lovers and the Wheel of Fortune. In Rachel Pollack’s book “78 Degrees of Wisdom” she writes “In many versions of the King Arthur legend the king dreams or see before him on the eve of his final battle, a vision of a rich and powerful king seated on top of a wheel. All of a sudden the goddess Fortuna turns the wheel and the king gets crushed at the bottom. Sobered, Arthur realizes that no matter how much secular power we accrue, our fate rests always in God’s hand.” The image on the wheel card is of a golden disk, crossed with the sigils of each element. The Hebraic letters YHVH (Yod Heh Vau Heh) intersected with the spelling of TORA, meaning “law”, are on the outer edge of the disk. There are a series of animals that surround the card. A sphinx holding a sword sits at the top of the wheel, and hovering inside of clouds sit an angel and phoenix over the sphinx’s shoulders. To the left side is a descending serpent and to the right, rising up from the bottom of the disk is Anubis, an ancient Egyptian god of the dead, shown as a man’s body with a jackal’s head. Below him, sitting in respective clouds in the corner are a winged bull and a winged lion. All of the winged creatures (suggesting the fixed signs in astrology) are reading from a book, indicating the wisdom that comes from being stable throughout the turning of the wheel. The Lovers card has a bright and shining sun at the top, an angel stands within a hovering cloud below the sun with it’s arms and hands raised up in a sign of blessing of what is below. Directly below the hands are two trees and standing in front of each tree, a naked woman and a naked man. The woman stands in front of a tree with fruit and a serpent climbing into the leaves. The man stands in front of a tree with leaves aflame. The two human figures have their hands open and stretched out but pointed towards the ground. Behind them along the lower half of the card is a barren mountain with a single peak that points back up to the angel at the top of the card. Now, let’s look at the minor arcana card that meets between these two majors: The 8 of Swords, Gemini I

The 8 of Swords features an individual in long robes, blindfolded and bound with a binding that holds the arms against the body. The 8 of Swords character isn’t completely bound, though, they can walk. In fact, their legs are free to move as their feet are already touching the rivulets of water of the shared primordial consciousness. There are three Swords to one side of the character and five Swords to the other side. All of the Swords are placed in the ground, tips in the earth and the hilts skyward. They have created a sort of fence or boundary that the character has walked through, a doorway or threshold of no return, away the scene behind it. Behind it, far off in the distance, is a mountain with a castle built on top, it’s shining red cylindrical roof line the same color as the robes of the character. A scene of exile is presented here, that the person is blindly cast away from the kingdom. Was this exile self inflicted or placed upon them?

“Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.” -Alice Hoffman

The cards that flank the 8 of Swords are the Wheel of Fortune (as Jupiter) and The Lovers (as Gemini). These two combined may not conjure up the dark and difficult image that the 8 of Swords immediately conveys, but that’s the thing with alchemy: the result will often surprise you. Even if you thought you knew what you were making when you combined two ingredients, you aren’t always in charge. Two ingredient combining in alchemy is where the secret third thing originates. Jupiter enters into the temple of Mercury as this first decan lord, a guest of honor in a land far from it’s own home. Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces which are in opposition to the Mercury signs of Gemini and Virgo. In astrology, when these two planets are in each other’s homes they are in a state of exile, or detriment. They are unable to express themselves in a way that comes naturally to them but this only makes them resourceful (in my honest opinion and honesty is a life skill in Gemini). Jupiter showing up as the guest in Mercury’s home brings all of the possibilities of Tarot with that Wheel of Fortune card and sets a game up for Mercury to play. And Mercury loves a good game. It invites the querent to begin to ask all of the questions that the spinning wheel of fortune has to answer. I tell this to my tarot clients and feel compelled to say this to you: you may be going up on the wheel or down on the wheel, but know that as long as you are on the wheel, that’s all that really matters. Fortunes change, they fade and reemerge, they shift with the winds and dissolve into the sea. Just stay on the wheel and keep riding it out. Samsara ain’t always so bad. When you add in the influence of Gemini, the sign, as represented by The Lovers, you now get the influence of: choice. This card was once called The Choice. It is the choice between one thing instead of another and appears to be one of the curses of Gemini. It feels hardest in this decan, the first of three for where Gemini must make a choice, because it’s a card of realization. If anything, Gemini signals the cracking open of consciousness or awareness of it all. And the desire to gather and know without regard to hold responsibility for that knowledge, it is simply that desire for it all. The entire story of the suit of Swords, but particularly this section of the suit, is reminiscent of the the Garden of Eden. The Lovers card is a direct nod to this archetypal relationship, division and union of this story, angelic witnessing, serpent on the tree, two naked people etc. We look closely at this chapter in the Eden story: when Eve is convinced by the serpent to take that exploratory bite out of the apple from the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; that choice, that bite, it creates division and causes expulsion from the illusory complacency of perfection of Eden. That single bite cracks open our awareness to knowledge and this is Gemini I. The birth of consciousness. Jupiter piping in and saying “yes yes! expand! grow! explore! BITE THE APPLE” and encouraging the curious mind that Gemini brings. There is a cost to this, however, there is magic dripping out of all of these words, out from all of this knowledge and Gemini I can express like a child without worry of consequence. Nothing is off the table and Mercury’s sticky little hands want to get into everything. We’ll later get to the consequence that Gemini II begins to face (pretty hard, actually) but while we’re in this world of cracking open-floodgates of enthusiasm, I’m thinking of the Fool’s journey through the tarot and the dichotomy of the Fool and the 8 of Swords. The Fool keeps it’s head held high, while the 8 of Swords has a head hanging low, blindfolded even. There is no bondage with the Fool, only the momentum to move forward carrying everything he needs in a knapsack on his shoulder. The 8 of Swords has nothing to show for itself but exile. And though they may have been exiled out of the Garden, they are now beginning something completely new, just like Eve…just like the Fool. In the Thema Mundi, the primary motion draws us from the 12H of Gemini towards the bright dawn of the Cancer ascending. Before that, however, we must travel through Mars and two of the most collectively recoiling cards in tarot in Gemini II.

Oh, Lord of Cruelty, the reason that we fear you is because we love. Full stop. Love is the ultimate motivation for what is behind this sorrow reflected in the 9 of Swords card.