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