Three Misconceptions of the Zodiac Sign: Gemini

Transcript:

0:01
Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology and today we are going to talk about three of the misconceptions that people have about the sign of Gemini. So this is a part of a series that I've been doing about the misconceptions of the zodiac signs. I think it's a fun series, because all year round, I get comments on social media, or I'm forced to look at memes on social media that, you know, really sort of cheapen or simplify the meaning of the signs. Sometimes it's all in good fun. It's just about, you know, stereotypes and jokes about signs and like, I can get down with that. But a lot of the times, it's like, you know, there's a lot of sort of bad information out there about the signs that don't make astrologers look intelligent or doesn't help astrology to be understood for the deep kind of archetypal science that it is. So I thought it'd be fun to at least talk about all of the signs, some of the misconceptions and major misconceptions that we have about those signs about the signs and why those misconceptions exist, and maybe some simple ways of sort of reorienting ourselves in relation to each sign. So today, we're going to talk about Gemini and I have three misconceptions that we're actually going to address all as one because they're all kind of the same. You hear people say these things about Gemini, all the time. And by the way, most of these misconceptions have to do with sort of the psychological characteristics of the psychological dimension of the signs. In the ancient world that wasn't like signs were used to talk about a person's psychology - not nearly as much as they are today. So that's another thing almost worth talking about. Maybe in a separate video is just how were signs looked at and used in ancient astrology compared to modern astrology. So this, this series is sort of more applicable for a modern psychological approach to astrology, you could say, but at any rate, the three misconceptions about Gemini that you'll often hear, especially around the psychology of the sign, and to be fair, it's not that these, these psychological stereotypes or misconceptions aren't, in some ways valid. And it's not that they also haven't been around for a really long time, people have been saying these things about Gemini, and the twins, and even Mercury, the ruler of Gemini for a long time. And there is something to these misconceptions. We have to understand why they exist, and maybe a better way of holding them as students or fans of astrology, people who take in astrological content regularly should know these things, in my humble opinion. So the three misconceptions.

2:46
One, Geminis are two faced, that's a kind of like almost like an insult, right? But I can't even count the number of times I've heard people say, Oh, you know Geminis are two faced. It's an unfortunate characterization and not entirely true. And there's some something to that. But let's separate static from signal is one of my teachers like to say. Number two, Geminis can't ever make up their minds about anything. Okay, so again, kind of generalisation that you'll hear. And then finally Geminis don't take things seriously enough or not reliable or trustworthy. So you've got two faced, can't make up their minds can't make decisions, or maybe even that they're ambivalent or something like that. Geminis don't think take things seriously, they're not reliable or sort of can't be trusted. All of these very negative stereotypes. They can be addressed through one very simple observation about the sign that we're going to look at today. And, and then elaborate upon. So in order to do that, what I would like to do is I would like to show you my astronomy programme, which is called Starry Night. So I'm going to see if I can share it with you. We're going to put it up on the screen. Okay, here we go. So what I have up on the screen is roughly a picture of Gemini season. Now you're not going to see the constellation of Gemini in the sky on this screen. Because this is not a tropical picture of the zodiac but an astronomical one. So the constellations of course, relative the equinoxes have shifted. So that's a sort of more of a sidereal look right now. But it'll serve our purpose today, simple enough, which is just to show you what Gemini season actually looks like astronomically from the standpoint of the Northern Hemisphere, where astrology comes from. So what I want to show you is kind of like imagine that this line that I'm drawing up here is the summer solstice that's not going to be exact or anything, but just imagine that that's the summer solstice.

5:01
What I want to show you is here's the Sun roughly at midday, at the beginning of Gemini season. And this was called a double bodied sign, it was an air sign, spring sign, masculine temple of Mercury, or diurnal temple of Mercury. If we advance one day at a time through Gemini season, I want you to watch what the sun does, how it rises up, we're just going to go step by step, this is one day at a time, you can see that the sun is climbing a little higher in the sky every day. And then it's moving upward toward the pole star. So the pole star is like going to be what the ancients imagined that the sun was climbing up toward, which is this ideal, this emblem of divinity or eternity for God. And it is moving up toward that ideal as, as the arc of the sun rises, and I'm just putting that line up there as kind of an imaginary image of the pole star, right? Then it gets to the very top, you'll notice that it starts flattening out, it's not so much lifting anymore. And what's starting to happen is right after it turns the corner on the summer solstice, it's going to start going down, see how the arc of the Sun and the sun every day at around the same time of day starts coming down in the sky through cancer season. Okay, so that's a picture astronomically of what's happening.

6:40
Now, Gemini was called a double bodied sign, which means that it shares in the nature of the sign before it, which is Taurus, and the sign after it, which is cancer. What that means is that, essentially that Gemini is going to share in the quality of light associated with both signs. What's the quality of light, we have to ask ourselves in Taurus? Well, in Taurus, it's a steady climb upward. The light is taken over in the spring and we're steadily climbing upward toward that pole star. Days are growing longer. When we reach Cancer, on the other hand, what's happening when we reach Cancer, the sun is starting to come down in the sky. So one day at a time, the light is starting to diminish, the days are growing shorter from Cancer onward. So Gemini is going to be a sign that embodies the pivot between the gaining of light and the descent of light, reaching that ideal pole star moment and then turning around and coming back down. So double bodied signs like Virgo, like Sagittarius, and Pisces are all Mercury and Jupiter ruled signs. And those signs that Mercury rules are the ones that make turns toward darkness, from the light of the summer solstice, coming down again, returning from light gaining to light losing. And then when we get to Virgo, we're turning from the light half of the year itself into the dark half of the year, when we cross the fall Equinox from Virgo to Libra. So the mercury ruled signs have to do with deconstruction, deconstruction of what? The light which means the mercury ruled signs of Gemini and Virgo embody these pivotal turning points, where something that was light is either starting to become dark, or is handing over entirely to the darkness, in the case of Virgo. So these signs have something inherently to do with the chaos, the metaphysical chaos, of deconstruction, that this is a part of life that that life goes through cycles of, of creation and destruction. I want to read you guys something. This comes from the Bhagavad Gita, the ninth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita. And this Krishna talking about the nature of creation. And he's talking about the cycles of creation, which is one of my it's actually one of my favourite parts of the Gita.

9:34
He says, "This material nature, which is one of my energies, just one of them. is working under my direction Oh son of Kunti, producing all moving and non moving beings. Under its rule, this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again." He then goes on to say, "But it is I who am the ritual, the sacrifice the offering to the ancestors, the healing herbs, the transcendental chant, I am the butter and the fire and the offering. I'm the father of this universe, the mother, the supporter and the grand sire, I'm the object of knowledge, the purifier and the syllable ohm." And he goes on to say that he's all of the Vedas. He then says, "I'm the gold, the Sustainer, the master, the witness, the abode, the refuge and the most dear friend, I am the creation and the annihilation, the basis of everything the resting place, and the eternal seed, Arjuna. I give heat, and I withhold and send forth the rain, I am in mortality, and I'm also death personified, both spirit and matter are in me."

10:59
Amazing, right. He goes on to say a number of other pretty amazing things in this chapter. This is one of my favourite chapters in the entire Gita. He goes on at the end, he talks about people that try to approach him and all of these really highly ritualistic ways. And he says, actually, if one gives me with love and devotion, a lea, a flower, a fruit or water, I will accept it. At any rate, the reason that I read this is because there's a similar sort of simplicity, and duality contained within the sign of Gemini. And it's related to that same pivoting of light into darkness that's happening around the summer solstice that we just outlined. And this can help us make sense out of some of those misconceptions.

11:51
So first of all, you have to remember that these stereotypes two faced can't make up their mind, don't take things seriously enough, or aren't reliable, or trustworthy, or something like that. Sometimes, people say, oh, they're flaky, you know, don't expect a Gemini to follow through on plans, or, you know, these kinds of things. Now, some of these could be true, like there could be, you know, in the stereotypes about any sign or to you know, to a certain extent, there'll be some truth to it. But one of the things to remember is that Gemini is inherently playing with the duality of light and dark. So when we reach that critical moment of the summer solstice, and then the light turns again, imagine it as the ideal. The ideal is, is reflected by the image of the pole star. And the ascent toward the pole star is like the ascent toward God or the light, or an ideal image that we chase, whether it's a job or you know, a particular kind of relationship, or particular kind of body or wealth or possessions or whatever knowledge. Once you have or obtain that though, what happens? Well, it immediately starts to fall apart, nothing in this world that we have, our own bodies or minds, nothing is going to last forever, that facility of my mind, and my speech will eventually be gone. The relationships that I have will be gone. Everyone who's living right now, is not getting out of here alive. And there are so many more souls and stories on this earth that are forgotten, and will never be remembered by other human beings than there are those who have been remembered. That's because time just keeps moving along.

13:52
And this can be something that makes us cynical. And when we're cynical about things when we say like Oh, nothing lasts, nothing's real. Nothing is substantive. Then there's, you know, there's a bitterness that can creep in and almost like a jaundice of the soul that makes us look at everything like it's all BS, it's not really worth anything. And from that we may even take on the feeling that I can manipulate, deceive, trick, take advantage of things for my own ends. And certainly there is that dimension of Gemini, which is why in ancient mythology, you'll have a pair of twins, Castor and Pollux. There's many other examples, Cain and Abel in the biblical sense. There's lots of different twins in mythology and you know fairy tales and folklore and oftentimes there's gonna be a good twin and a bad twin. There's a light and there's a dark but it's not so simplistic because really what we're talking about is the inner struggle with light and dark that can cause us to become cynical, that can cause us to become nihilistic that can cause us to look at things and think there's no substance behind anything. There's nothing that's finally real or eternal. And, you know, it's like, you know, a great line from from a Gemini Tupac Shakur said, life is a game and I'm trying, I'm just trying to go around the board as many times as I can, before I die. Great quote from Tupac, kind of funny, typically good, like Gemini, quote, of course. Some people, having read a little bit about Tupac and doing his chart for some of my classes, you know, some people would say that, you know, Tupac didn't take things seriously enough that he had a kind of like, youthful, I'll live forever, nothing really matters attitude that kind of got him in trouble. And other people would say that Tupac was incredibly wise, and that he didn't take the things that everyone thinks that you should take seriously, they really shouldn't take seriously he was aware of. So there's different things that people have said about him that I've always found really fascinating. Not that I'm like the world's biggest Tupac fan, I liked his music, you know, when I was younger, and I've always found him a very provocative and interesting character. At any rate, the Gemini, you could say the daimon of the Gemini. This is something Liz Greene writes about, by the way, just a reminder that a lot of what I draw in comes from the astrology of fate by Liz green, great book. So in the, in the in the Twin dichotomy, the dark twin is going to be the one that says, Well, you reach an ideal, you reach the light only to turn around and darkness returns. And if that's just an eternal circle, going round and round, then it's kind of like get me off the ride, or it becomes almost like, well, life is just a theme park. And we're just going round and round and like I'm just trying to hustle and play the game. And so that's where that sort of deceptive trickster dark twin thing can come in. But it's really an attitude that the Gemini is taking, not the genuine Gemini sun, Gemini rising, Gemini moon, strong Gemini placements in the chart, I have Mars in Gemini, so I can certainly relate with this. That there can be the cynicism that creeps in and says, Well, nothing really means anything. And then then it becomes a matter of like, well, what's advantageous to me in any moment. And with a almost like a disregard for the idea of there being like, clear moral imperatives or everlasting eternal virtues are ideals toward which our lives should be aimed like God or spirit or the good or the higher self.

17:51
Now, on the other hand, the other thing that's true is that all spiritual paths really, I can't think of one spiritual path really in the world that I've learned about, you know, Buddhism, Christianity, all the ancient mystical schools, that shamanic traditions that I studied in the Amazon, and so forth, that don't talk about the attitude that we should take up given the presence of this duality of light and dark. For example, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says that God is the source of both creation and annihilation, of both things that rise up and come to be and things that fall down and pass away. Krishna doesn't say, so it's all meaningless. Krishna says, I'm the syllable ohm, which is like the sonic version of creation, maintenance and destruction. And that this ohm is like constantly repeating. It's an image that we get in the Puranas, for example, when the Lord exhales all the universes out of his body, and then brings them back in, over and over and over again. So that's not something that is looked at, in either, you know, places like the Gita, the prana, at least things that are part of the Bhakti tradition that I study and other yogic traditions as well. That's not looked at something that that's not looked at as something that's supposed to be the source of our cynicism, the feeling that nothing is real, and almost like an inborn kind of nihilistic tendency to just do what we will deceive makeup or own rules, disregard any kind of authority and be sort of non committal about you know, any any kind of lasting ideal. But again, this is inherent in what the sign is dealing with reaching the light and immediately turning away and falling back away from the light. The instructions of the spiritual traditions with regard to how we You know, how do you deal with this duality are pretty bad or, you know, pretty basic recognise that it's in the completeness of creation and destruction. recognise that it's in the completeness of light and dark that divinity resides. It's in the totality of the relationship between the two and bhakti. We call this achintya-bhedabheda-tattva, which means simultaneous and inconceivable oneness and duality. It's like thinking about a fire. God is like, in our tradition anyway, God is like a fire and creation, the unit, you know, infinite universes of creation are like sparks that emanate from the fire. They are the spark is the same as the fire but it's also separate from the fire simultaneously. You could think about it, similarly, like there's sun beams coming into my room right now. So the sun ball is not present in my room, the actual ball of the sun. But it's emanation is in the form of like photons or whatever, like light beans are in my room. So the the sun both is and isn't in my room right now. So similarly, the way that you many ancient schools of philosophy thought about God was as simultaneously one and many. This is why many people confuse the idea that Hinduism is a polytheistic religion, but it's actually a mono poly dance, you know, the one is the many and the many reflects back the one.

21:38
So from the standpoint of these traditions, which are obviously similar, these ideas are talked about the one in the many, the yin and the yang, you know, sort of differently in different traditions, and some are not going to include the idea of like a personal God or whatever. But the basic idea of being that it is the, the totality of this movement, the, the Tango, so to speak, the lila the play of this, of these movements that we talked about, for example, the epitome of this movement in Krishna Bhakti being about love, that ultimately, this movement is about the soul and God dancing as lovers through you know, stages of union and separation union and separation, that you need some degree of separation, across which love can move and speak and, you know, infinitely draws closer, there always needs to be like a little bit of separation for unity to be like increasing and intensifying. So the almost like tantric dimension of reality, is also present in the sign of Gemini. And you'll also find that, you know, the Gemini lifetime is in a sense, moving from, oh, there's no, there's nothing substantive I, you know, I'm, I'm, you know, the, what does the two face thing come from? Well, you know, it's like, this or that doesn't really matter, I'll do what I want at any given time that like, you know, is, you know, is is helpful for me in the moment, maybe sort of selfish underlying nihilism can't make up my mind, we can see where that comes from, in a sense, that psych sort of psychological trait, it's because there's an ability to see the, to not just see things in terms of dualities, but to see things in terms of a not an either or, but a sort of a both and so it's not always the Geminis can't make up their mind, it's that they're going to be more acutely aware of the inconceivable and simultaneous oneness and duality, so to speak, that's inherent in all things. Yes. And no, we're the same. And we're different. Now. I always used to hate it in yoga studio world when people would come into the yoga studio. And like, almost like, let's let me Let's I gaze Let me test you. Are you a real yoga teacher? Let's knelt or something like that. And I would always be like, Oh my god, so annoying. Probably because I come from the Midwest, you know, in the Midwest, it's like impolite to like, stare at people. So yeah, so it's like, I don't want to meld with you, I'd like to get to know you. We're different beings, you know, let's, let's like cut to the, you know, like, you've got to get to know my soul first before we acid mine blend or whatever. So, I would always like be really frustrated with that. And then in time, I realised also that you know, there were partners parts of me that was that were uncomfortable with a deeper blending or merging of, you know, my mind, my heart, my emotions with others. And so some of that had to change to some of that was like my own resistance. But these are things that like these, these dualities in general are things that Geminis are, are much more acutely aware of, than than other signs. That doesn't have to be just if you're a Gemini Sun Moon arising, a Gemini stellium, Gemini midheaven, Gemini rising and so forth.

25:06
So you have to remember that inherent to Gemini is an exploration of the simultaneous oneness of light and dark. It's a both and situation, the more that Gemini gets into the either or, situation, the dual the dual side. And, and tends to reject the Unity side of things. That's when you're going to see things like, I can't make up my mind or nothing means anything. So I'll do whatever I want. Or now I'm not going to take anything seriously because you say it's this but you know, whatever. That's just a fart in the wind. You know what I mean? And Geminis can actually have really witty funny senses of humour about all of this stuff. And this idea that Geminis aren't reliable, they don't commit to things. None of this is true. You'll just find, for example, like, you know, I have some of my best friends are Geminis and I feel like you can find that a Gemini is able to have their own view or position while completely considering or being able to step into the view of someone else, or even the view that's completely opposite to their own. You know, for this reason, Mercury was the God of associated with rhetoric and debate and argumentation, but also of games of play of like racquetball, and things that go back and forth wrestling, you know, stuff like that. I mean, think about biblically, wrestling has a high place in terms of how we're getting to know God, Jacob wrestled with an angel, Jacob, wrestled with God all night until God broke Jacob's hip. And the point of that was, I can't, I don't know you. There's something about you, that's inaccessible to me. And I'm going to keep wrestling until I understand. So we're all wrestling with opposites and dualities with light and dark all the time. So the message today is cut our Gemini, some slack. You know, there's a reason that these stereotypes exists. That's an important part of what a Gemini is working with, on an archetypal level, and I have very rarely seen that a Gemini is what I see is Gemini is exploring light and dark Gemini is exploring, paradox.

27:16
Gemini is exploring the both and newness of things, or rather than the either or, or being challenged between two different ways of thinking either or, versus both. And none of which means that a person has to face that they can't make decisions, that they're not serious that they're not reliable. So you know, and be thankful if you have some Gemini energy around you, because one of the things that you'll get from Gemini, you can't take yourself too seriously. If you become heroically wedded to your amazing like Marvel comic book ideal of what makes something good or triumphant or virtuous. No, I have a Gemini creep into your life and remind you that like the darkness is imbued within the light that you're trying to hold to that the more we cling to some thing you know, and this is good, and everything else is bad and stuff like that, you know, the more that the we don't see that the shadow is secretly a part of what we're doing. So Gemini, having a Gemini around can be the trickster, the laughter, the comic, the ability to subtly point out the shadow in things. We need that right, we need that so that we can grow and learn in the actual, you know, the full scope of creation, not just not just the things that we glom on to, you know, and it's a funny thing because alchemists said this too, you know, there was a dark sun, there's a sun and there's a dark sun. And they're like a dyad. And you know this if you think about the sun, because remember, this is the sign that takes us up to the pole star and the longest day of the year and then turns immediately comes back down. So many of the images that we follow mercury member rules Gemini, the psychopomp, the guide of souls like the daimon, a spirit guide that leads us toward adventures and one of the adventures rooted in? Ideal images. If you ever want to read a great book read the Soul's Code by James Hillman about the diamond and thinking about the diamond a lot because my social media manager Cat Neligan, also a fantastic astrologer has just written a book about the diamond that'll be coming out eventually. This idea that the soul is stirred up by longings and images of things that it wants and it seeks and it yearns for. In many different philosophical traditions were led toward that light, it's very luciferic in a sense, it's like little angels, guiding us toward something that we desire or want to see or experience. And as soon as we touch it, if it's has any glimmer of like vanity, ego, or things that are just temporary and illusory, we realise oh, it's empty, right, and then it starts to fall away. But if we do this enough, which is what life is really here for us to experience to do these kinds of things, we experience it enough, we start going like, well, what's actually real. And this starts leading us to the difference between, you know, the kind of dark images that the shadow we sort of distorted images that we follow versus the real thing. The eternal forms the, the idea of the lasting virtues, we start getting a halo around us of light, that's not a literal light, but it's some other kind of light. And that, that light is the those are the emanations of the highest virtues that we start to pursue, you know, rather than, you know, like, I'm really hoping that I can have a Lamborghini before I die or whatever, you know, whatever it might be. So at any rate, there's a lot to this sign, and to the interplay of light and dark that's in the sign. So I hope that this has reminded us of that today and kind of invigorated us with a new way of thinking about Gemini and understanding ourselves or people around us. hope you've been enjoying this series. If you have any good stories to share about your experience as a Gemini with Geminis you know, other thoughts you want to add to the conversation, please feel free to leave them in the comment section. I always love hearing from you guys. And yeah, we'll have more tomorrow. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.