The Ins and Outs of Gemini

(It looks like I wrote this post sometime between May 26-29 when Mercury ☿was at the end of Gemini ♊. Can’t remember why I did not post it.  Anyway☿ backed through that same section June 18-21.  Soon, July 10-13, it will go forward through the end of Gemini one last time and say bye-bye to the Twins until next May.)

I made my 2^nd list of Roman rulers this week.  The first was scribbled between columns of a newspaper over a month ago.  There may have been others, but they have been forgotten.  Mercury is in the last little section of Gemini and I can feel the determination to record this information and put it where I can get to it without lengthy searching.  If you look at the zodiac wheel and count the signs around from Gemini at the beginning you will see that Taurus is the last one.  You could also just go backwards one step and see Taurus right next door, the boring sign before the Twins bubbling with news and views.  (I'm allowed to call Taurus boring because I am a Taurus and so proud of my ability to complete the most boring of tasks) You can enter any sign this way and observe the twelve subdivisions that together make up the sign. Gemini begins with a thirst for information (the first subsection of a sign is the purest expression of that sign) and moves from an emotional response in Cancer, through declaration in Leo, fact checking in Virgo, reflection in Libra, introspection on motivation in Scorpio, synthesis in Sagittarius….all the way to making-it-so in Taurus.  In the Taurus part of Gemini what is ‘made so’ is nothing more than information- maybe a map, a photo, a drawing or a list.  What has been perceived in Gemini is being committed to memory, or engraved where it can be retrieved.  Since today Mercury, the planet which actively rules in Gemini, is in the Taurus section of that sign I have an excuse to talk about this process of suspending Gemini bubbles for posterity or future reference.*

I’ve started out on the inside of the forest though, before giving you a good shot of what it looks like from the distance of the rolling plains.  In other words I broke The Twins into twelve little pieces before outlining their unique position in the zodiac.  What differentiates the 30 degrees of Gemini from the rest of the zodiac is the fact that they all look the same- that’s why they’re called twins!  Actually the degrees of Cancer are similarly indistinguishable from each other, but Gemini gets called the Twins because it is the first section in the zodiac where we see this sameness.

A lot of people think Gemini is called Twins because people looked up at the constellation containing Pollux and Castor 20 centuries ago and saw a pair of cute munchkins.  I don’t buy that and neither should you.  It makes a good story like flying reindeer but that’s only useful for getting restless kids to sleep on long winter nights.  The more convincing explanation requires a bit more concentration; the secret is in carefully watching what happens on the mid heaven from one moment to the next throughout a 24 hour cycle.  That is hard to do under any circumstances, so the next best thing is to scroll through a series of charts that record the sky’s changes in secret code.  Just joking, it is only secret because hardly anybody cares to figure it out!

So put on your Taurus work clothes and let’s get down and dirty with some charts.  In a minute here I’m going to send you over to a link where I’ve posted a series of 36 charts for March 30.  The first chart is for 12:43pm March 30 and the rest follow in approximately 20 minute intervals through 12:41am March 31.  You’ll see a line sticking up at the top of the first chart with 0°♈ 07' written over it.  Don’t worry if you don’t know what that means- for now all you need to do is watch how that line gradually moves to the center of the circle.

In the second chart you will see 6°♈ 08' over the line for the mid heaven.  The red curved bar that the line is going through represents the Aries♈ section of the zodiac.  As that red bar progresses clockwise, the MC (Latin abbreviation for mid heaven) will move a tad in the opposite direction.  By the sixth chart it is 2:34pm and Taurus♉ is crossing the MC as shown by the green bar.  The eastern part of the sky has shrunk from 105° 56' to 99°00'- that is a difference of nearly 7° from Aries to Taurus.  The twelfth chart for 4:34pm  shows  0°♊on the MC and the eastern arc of the sky 93°22'.  The line showing the mid heaven is just about straight up.  Before scrolling down to see what happens while the yellow Gemini bar moves across the top of the circle note that the eastern sky has shrunk 5°38' further.  (99°00'- 93°22'=5°38')  

Jumping to the chart where the 1^st degree of Cancer (0°♋06') is on the MC we have an eastern arc of just under 90° - giving a difference in arc from the beginning to end of Gemini of 3°23'.  In every 20 minute interval for Aries on the mid heaven the eastern arc lost at least 1°22' while in the 20 minute intervals of Gemini on the mid heaven the arc shrunk an average of only 0°34'. 

                                                      Total decrease in eastern arc
                                                              Aries           7°00'

                                                              Taurus         5°38' 

                                                              Gemini         3°23'

                                                              Cancer         3°23'

                                                              Leo             5°40'

                                                              Virgo           6°57'

                                                              Libra            4°47'

                                                       Total increase in eastern arc   
                                                              Scorpio        3°27'

                                                              Sagittarius    17°22'

                                                              Capricorn     7°18'

                                                              Aquarius       3°23'

                                                        Total decrease in eastern arc    
                                                              Pisces           4°48'  

♈-♍on MC  Click on the link for the series of charts showing Aries through Virgo crossing the mid heaven.

 

Instead of doing charts for the last six signs of the zodiac I am preparing a video slide show of a 24 hour cycle for the day of the Greensboro sit ins.  That project will take some time, especially if I keep distracting myself with these posts!

What really blows me away, that I can't wait to demonstrate in the upcoming slideshow, is the unmistakable change that takes place while Sagittarius is crossing the mid heaven.  Sagittarius opposes Gemini on the zodiac wheel and the Archer is indeed the opposite of The Twins.

Now I’m wondering where I put that list of Roman Rulers….

*post was written around May 27

New Moon Center Stage in Birjand, Iran

The new moon is now a done deal, but we can still talk about it.  I’ve got a few maps showing where it was in the sky in a few places around the globe.  The sun was not yet up in our town but it was in a lot of other places. 

 

Around here, people up sky gazing before sunrise could have seen Venus, except for the clouds.  I don’t know because I was sound asleep.  Looking at the first chart (for Raleigh) you can see the symbol for our lovely neighbor light (♀) at 4°♊32‛ and it had just ascended.  

The rest of the charts are for the same time in different places around the globe.  

The Sun/Moon pair are pretty high in Istanbul and Baghdad, but not quite center stage.

The last chart shows Birjand, Iran where the local time was 12:38pm.  You can tell it was the same time on all the charts because the fast moving Moon was lined up with Sun and the Universal Time was the same.  Universal Time is about the same thing as Greenwich Mean Time. 

Since Birjand was facing the Sun/Moon coupling, located at almost 6°♋ we know they had just gone through the lowest point in their daily revolution on earth’s tilted axis.  While the Sun is in Cancer (♋) we see it highest in the sky.  Whoever sees the Sun, or any other object on the mid heaven when it is at its highest elevation knows they are at their lowest point in their daily spin. 

While Birjand was it its low point, Bakersfield California was its high point with Capricorn (♑) on the MC (I did not make a chart for Bakersfield- you will just have to believe me, or go find the Bakersfield and Birjand on the globe).  Raleigh was turning down, as shown by the sign Aquarius (♒).  Are you dizzy yet?

For a review of the different signs on the mid heaven and how that relates to the Earth turning on its axis go to this link.

Last but not at all least- it took me 20 years to figure this stuff out. Part of the problem is that this is so difficult to explain - I have not seen it laid out anywhere in my studies of astrology.  Though the concept is amazingly simple it is not at all obvious.  Please do not despair if you cannot make sense of this stuff.  Give it time.  One day you will look at a clock and translate that to knowing where you actually are on Earth in our solar system and it will be worth it to have felt so lost when you started out trying to understand the real meaning of astrology.  Don't give up.....and one day you will know where you really are.