Gemini New Moon, May 24, 2009
As the Sun enters Gemini, we turn our attention to how we use words, what we want to communicate, and what information we need to proceed with our plans. We’ve been inspired to do something new in Aries, have taken time to decide what’s of value to us in Taurus, and now we have to set our minds to gathering helpful information.
Gemini does this through personal experiences. Watch any Gemini, and you’ll see how they eat up experiences. Everything is fascinating to them and they dive right into life to explore, taste and touch. That’s what makes them so versatile – that wanting more without judgment or discernment. Which of course, is one of the problems for Gemini. Everything is of equal value to Gemini’s mind. That might be why it gets so cluttered!
Gemini, the first air sign of the Zodiac, is all about naming things and relationships. There’s an amoral aspect to Gemini thinking because it doesn’t try to find out what is good or best for you. It likes facts, and doesn’t care about a context. It’s a type of thinking that is learned from the environment, and often it doesn’t stop to look for meaning. The experience is all.
But we’re at a stage in our evolution where we have to examine what we’ve learned from our culture and see how useful it is to our lives, as well as how deadly it can be if we don’t learn to think for ourselves. The 4th of July chart for America has an aspect that indicates media manipulation – and we’re living up to the worst of that aspect. Most of you know this – the media is biased toward consumerism and keeping the powers-that-be in power. And so it’s our duty to learn to think for ourselves if we’re going to continue the 60s revolution and bring about real change in the world.
(While Obama talks a good talk about change, he does have a Gemini Moon, which means his Gemini is more unconscious. He’s naturally a good communicator and his Aquarius ascendant wants to bring in a new vision, but he’s not picking people to run the show who really understand what this change entails. He’s thinking in old categories. But since this new Moon is on his natal moon, perhaps he’ll change his mind!)
That gives rise to another Gemini attribute. Gemini wants to classify things, to give a frame of reference to its activities. That puts us in the mind field, and so we need to look within (not something Gemini likes to do) and see where our minds are at. Now more than ever, we are called to use our minds, not be used by them. Our educational system (a Gemini system) fills our minds with facts, but often doesn’t teach us how to find meaning in those facts.
While we’re here on Earth to have a ‘human experience’, our souls need to find meaning in those experiences, which we find in Sagittarius, the sign opposite Gemini. The Sagittarius full Moon early next month will make us aware of the meaning of what we are experiencing now. But with the New Moon in Gemini, it’s all about experiencing our lives and giving voice to those experiences.
So, how do you use your mind? As anyone knows who’s meditated, usually the mind is continually talking to itself, running the tape that makes us feel secure (even when it’s a negative tape) about ourselves. It keeps our world in place. But what happens when the world we live in no longer makes sense?
The mind is a terrible thing to waste, and so we need to stretch it to its limits. Gemini is the sign of the divine and mortal Twins, and it tells us that while part of us is mortal, another part is immortal. The mind offers us amazing possibilities once we learn how to use it. So, this month, take time to understand how your thoughts create your reality. How does your thinking limit your possibilities? Where do you put yourself in a box? If this isn’t a time for original thinking, I don’t know when is.
Each year at the Gemini new Moon, we get to re-set our mind’s ability to perceive the world. Get rid of old categories. Meditate and get to know your mind – it is, after all, a big part of how we relate to the world. Let images arise within you and put words to them like a poet. Don’t believe anything but entertain possibilities. The world as we know it is changing, and in the midst of the chaos of this death and rebirth, we get to make up new categories, new ways of seeing the world and seeing each other.
The Sabian Symbol for the Sun and Moon at 4 Gemini is: Holly and mistletoe reawaken old memories of Christmas. This image relates to happy Christmas memories, when magical thinking was our reality. If we take it as our instructions for renewing the mind, then it’s time to believe in magic again and make new categories for our minds to work with based in spirit and imagination.
But what do the holly and mistletoe symbolize? The Celts had an alphabet of the trees, and in it, the Holly is ‘best in a fight’. Holly has to do with battle and being a spiritual warrior. Its wood was used for spear shafts, which demanded balance in the hand and directness of flight. It implies protection. It speaks to keeping our thoughts balanced and direct, which is one way we can protect ourselves from manipulation and fear-mongering. And it helps us to be clear about what we want and focused on getting it. It is masculine energy at its best. We use holly at Christmas to protect our hearts when we open ourselves to Love and all Love’s possibilities. Since Holly stays green all year, combining masculine and feminine energies, it symbolizes LIFE.
The Mistletoe was considered magical by the Druids. It is a parasitic plant that grows on Oak trees. It is a symbol of sacred feminine energy and sexuality. It links us to lunar rhythms and changes and protects the child within. And of course, it’s all about kissing! And as we know, kissing is sharing the breath of life with someone else.
So these two plants are used both for protection and for their magical ability to connect people through love. At Christmas, when we welcome back the Light of the world, we step outside time to renew the world. But we bring our protection and we center ourselves in Love. That’s a good image for this new Moon.
The only aspects to this new Moon are a quirky alignment with Pluto in Capricorn, and a nice alignment with the lunar nodes. We have to adjust our thinking to the new realities of our times. Mercury, which rules Gemini, is still retrograde in Taurus, squaring the big Aquarian conjunction, grounding us in the lunar rhythms and natural laws and processes of Earth. The message is: slow down, look around, get out of your old routines. See things from a new perspective. Take it from a Taurus who keeps over-working mentally, this Mercury square is forcing us to listen to the Jupiter/Chiron/Neptune conjunction - one way or the other! Make a list of all the body-soul-spirit issues in your life that ‘went wrong’ these past few weeks. Then do something about them.
So if the message is ‘see the world with new eyes’, remember that everything has slowed down (this Mercury retrograde has been hard on everyone!). You don’t have to complete things now. Let them grow at their own pace. So stop and smell the lilacs and roses! And see what it is that you really want in your life.
The biggest event of this new Moon is the Jupiter-Chiron-Neptune conjunction at 27 Aquarius. This triple conjunction starts a new cycle of global healing and regeneration – if we work on it - and these three energies will stay close together for the coming year, enhancing our ability to give birth to something new. From May 16th to the 20th, the Sun and retrograde Mercury in Taurus square these three celestial bodies, triggering any resistance we have to the new Aquarian vision of universal peace, equality and consciousness being offered to us. Look in the news for indications of both the challenges and the new vision. And if you feel like an alien, even a legal alien, don’t worry – it’s a by-product of all that Aquarian energy.
(Check at the end of this newsletter for a special offer on a mini checkup about how this affects you.)
Chiron is an asteroid orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. It symbolizes a bridge between our ‘reality’ and other realities. Chiron was the leader of the centaurs, the horse-men, and he was the teacher of great heroes. While he was immortal, he was wounded by a poisoned arrow and suffered horribly. Although he was redeemed in the end, his suffering is what makes him the wounded healer. Although he was already a wise teacher, his suffering (suffer means ‘to bear’) brought him greater wisdom. Chiron represents that wisdom we get from looking for meaning in the suffering in our lives.
Jupiter, the king of the gods, raised Chiron from his suffering to be the constellation Centaurus, so that humankind could literally look up to him and be reminded of his mythic life for inspiration. So we see that Jupiter values Chiron’s wisdom. Since Jupiter is concerned with expansion, meaning and new perspectives as well as with our social awareness, we have a collective opportunity to really look at our culture and understand what causes the suffering our capitalist economy has created.
This conjunction brings to the fore how we need to raise our collective awareness of alternative healing methods. Perhaps these methods will be acknowledged and even included in any universal health care system we implement in the US. Perhaps each of us will start to use them in our own lives, and stop using a health system that is not only broken, but potentially dangerous to our health. (The negative side of this energy is the backlash about the mother who refused to let her son undergo chemotherapy, relying on alternative therapies instead.)
Jupiter and Neptune are both concerned with spirituality and hope, although the b-side of that is delusion and mass psychosis (or the swine pandemic?) Idealism or disappointment are probable now, with most of us hoping for real and sustained change in how the world works and the powers-that-be wanting to maintain the status quo. If we want our ideals to manifest, WE HAVE TO DO IT. That means writing our senators and representatives, changing our habits, voting with our wallets, envisioning and then implementing a new life-style. The energies are available to us, but they don’t promise us more than that they are available. We have to use our minds (Gemini) to make clear decisions about how we think about ourselves and our lives here on Earth at this moment in history.
For the most part, these three energies open us to healing ourselves, seeing how we fit into the scheme of things (Gemini categories again), and opening a space for each of us to contribute our wisdom to the world. This is a time of grace. Just accept what comes to you as part of your destiny. Dream and be inspired, but have no expectations about the results.
The Sabian symbol for this first of the ongoing conjunctions at 27 Aquarius is: An ancient pottery bowl filled with fresh violets. All bowls are symbolic of the power of feminine spirit to contain something, to hold and transform an empty space into a filled space. The ancient powers of the mother Goddess were powers of life and death, fertility and abundance. Violets blossom in the Spring, bringing new life and beauty to our lives. They symbolize simplicity and modesty, which brings opportunity and luck. Violets are attuned to twilight, a magical in-between time, so they connect us to other dimensions of reality. Call on your ancient soul-wisdom and get a fresh perspective on what is truly important for life here on Earth. We can do with less if we have the basics – love, friendship, honest work, the physical security of home and hearth – and good stories to bring hope to our hearts.
Astrological happenings:
May 16 – Saturn goes direct at 15 Virgo. Saturn is heading toward its third opposition with Uranus in mid-September. This is that 60s energy awakening again. Another opportunity to choose between the old and the new. (I just took my 84 year old mom to her first rock concert – Joe Cocker!)
May 16 - Sun squares Jupiter, Chiron and Neptune. We can either open ourselves to our spiritual energies or get deluded. Your choice!
May 23 – Jupiter/Chiron conjunction. First of three: May 23, July 22, December 7.
May 27 – Jupiter/Neptune conjunction. First of three: May 27, July 10, December 21.
May 28/29 – Neptune turns retrograde until November 4.
May 30 – Chiron turns retrograde until November 1. Mercury turns direct.
June 15 – Jupiter turns retrograde until October 12/13.
Special offer:
$25 for a mini reading about how this Jupiter/Chiron /Neptune conjunction plays out in your chart.
Email me your birth data (date, time, place) when you ask for the reading (my computer crashed and I lost all chart information.)
Bright blessings on you! Cathy Pagano sophia@wisdom-of-astrology.com
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