What is most noticeable about twins is that they are the same. 

 

I am stating the obvious, however this is essential.

 

Have you read The Purloined Letter, by Edgar Alan Poe? In this story, detectives are searching a room for a letter that is hidden in plain sight… and they don’t find it! Similarly, the occult meanings of symbols are often too obvious to be noticed. 

 

So look! The twins are two and they are the same. They can talk. They can understand very well what they mean. Twins sometimes develop a language that only them can understand. This is called cryptophasia. 

 

There are jokes brothers and sisters can tell and be the only one to understand. There are jokes that make French people laugh, but not English, and vice versa. Fortunately we have enough in common to be able to appreciate a good deal of humour.  

 

We could draw a Venn diagram: two overlapping circles. In the shared space, jokes both French and English find funny. In that area, we are like twins. Chinese people may not understand our complicity. As for the rest of the diagram, we are strangers; mutual understanding, if possible at all, will require some learning (which is another of the themes associated with Gemini)

 

The symbol shows twins. It’s an archetypal image. It’s about being similar, like twins, or in a less perfect way, like brothers and sisters, or in an even less perfect way, like compatriots among foreigners. 

 

We are on a spectrum. The extreme opposite of Gemini could be a human and a weird creature from another planet. Now, if a movie starts with extraterrestrials crossing the intersidereal space on a flying saucer to meet us, what follows is either complete war, or a touching story about finding similarities. The most moving moment will be when the alien makes a joke and laughs with humans. When we laugh together, we understand each other so well we are like twins!

 

The symbol of the twins is a good example of how the language of symbols work: the picture shows perfect similarity, it means similarity, which is a necessary condition for contact, communication, mutual understanding, exchanges, and whatever derives from these main roads of meaning. 

 

Now, to be more or less similar, we also need to be two, and two is not just two, it is the beginning of many. With Gemini there are others. Others are inevitably different. Even true twins are not the same person. Gemini shows being the same and being different in one picture. With otherness comes variety, multiplicity, and with this comes curiosity and desire to learn more 

 

So you see, it’s possible to start exploring a zodiac sign and understand a few important things without talking about mythology. We can learn more by meditating on the story of Castor and Pollux, or do some research about Babylonian mythology, where the zodiac signs are from, and learn that there were twin gods guarding the entry of the underworld… 

 

As soon as we are two, there is a distance between the two. Taking it from there appears another spectrum: we can be close or distant. The greatest distance between two beings is being separated by death. Is this distance real or is it an illusion the twins invite us to dissipate? At soul level, can we ever be separated? Can we still communicate? Ask a medium… 

 

With Gemini comes breathing, a bodily function that underlies talking. Breathing also demonstrates duality: we breathe in, out, in, out and again. The breath connects inside and outside. The twins are twin worlds. 

 

Let’s now throw the spanner of Saturn into the Gemini works. 

 

The Aquarius side of Saturn is Air like Gemini, but Fixed. 

 

The twins are having a chat but what they are talking about is a complex mental structure. Big Ideas take more time to communicate than bits of information. Plato used the dialogue form in his writings. Meeting Socrates was always somehow heavier than a little chat about the weather with your neighbour. 

 

Socrates kept challenging his interlocutors, asking them questions about the meaning of their words, until they became utterly confused by their own contradictions. You would be wise to know that you don’t know, but what can you do but shut up after that? Annoying others maybe… 

 

If you have Saturn in Gemini, you have an inner Socrates. You may wish he drank the hemlock and left you free to enjoy easy going conversations, but you can’t help it, there are always motives for headaches. Philosophical semantics (the study or science of meaning in language) tends to focus on the principle of compositionality in order to explain the relationship between meaningful parts and whole sentences, you see what I mean. Saturn in Gemini gives you a lot of homework. 

 

You may be thinking: “Wait! I’ve always heard that philosophy belongs to Jupiter!” and you’re right. Philosophy, broadening our horizons, looking at the bigger picture is typically what Jupiter does. Plato’s myth of the cavern is typical of Jupiter: we look at our human condition from a higher or broader point of view, we realise there is more to it that meets the ordinary eye, we get an intuition of a superior order…

But look at what Socrates  does: he keeps asking “Yes, but…” questions. He referred to himself as a gadfly and to his philosophical investigations as annoying but necessary. This is more like Saturn. 

 

Jupiter and Saturn are like Yes and No, they mean opposite things but they are inseparable. 

 

Socrates’ ways have a definite Saturnian style, they apply to the way we use words and think, that is Gemini. 

 

Saturn in Gemini may also manifest as a speech impediment or a learning disability. With Saturn, Gemini forgets how to be mutable. 

This is just a thread of interpretation, there must be many others.

 

Saturn in Gemini may prefer repeating well known interpretations given by experienced authors in reference books, and fear the leap of faith towards personal understanding that Jupiter would take. However, with time and study, Saturn, one day, decides it can do it as well. 

 

The Capricorn side of Saturn wants achievements, not pure intellectual stuff. I have a friend who has a dominant Saturn in Gemini, conjuncting her MC from the 9th house side. When I met her, she was leading an English as a second language for adults school. She studied linguistics. She had various professional activities over the years.  

 

I’ll leave you wondering. Can the twins become old? Can you think of other threads to follow? Symbols are inexhaustible. I’m sure it would be possible to write a whole treatise about Saturn in Gemini, and there would still remain a lot to say… 

 

Jean-Marc

https://www.jeanmarcpierson.com/

 Reading her book “The Houses Temples of the sky” – and excellent book, by Deborah Houlding, I learn that Manilius, a Roman astrologer who lived in the first century wrote a poem as big as five books, the Astronomica, or Astronomicon, which is one of the most ancient sources that talks about the houses extensively. 

 

And well, Manilius, bless him, said that Venus is in joy in the 10th house, and Saturn in the 4th. 

 

Joy is one of those traditional concepts. Traditional astrologers will tell you that Venus rejoices in the 5th house, and Saturn in the 12th. Jupiter rejoices in the 11th house, the Sun in the 9th, the house of God, the Moon in the 3rd, the house of the Goddess, Mars in the 6th and Mercury, at the helm, rejoices in the 1st house. 

 

Deborah Houlding doesn’t think, like some other historians do, that poor Manilius was just mistaken. Other ancient astrologers, including Ptolemy (the Most Famous), attributed marriage to the 10th house. It makes sense for Venus to rejoice in it.

 

As for Saturn, it suits its dark, cold and heavy nature to rejoice in the 4th house, the lowest of the chart. Manilius wasn’t designing his own system, he was taking pride in handing over ancient knowledge to his contemporaries.

 

How come Venus ended up rejoicing in the 5th and Saturn in the 12th then? According to Deborah Houlding, and I am happy to believe her, I quote:

 

“Philosophers of the classical period were concerned with neat, balanced and philosophically pleasing schemes, particularly in the case of aligning planets to sects, an issue with sets the astrology in Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos apart from the more ancient texts of star lore” 

 

Basically the problem was that the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn were considered diurnal planets, and the Moon, Venus and Mars nocturnal. How could Venus, a nocturnal planet, rejoice in the 10th house, above the horizon, in broad daylight? And how could Saturn, a diurnal planet, rejoice in the 4th, in the middle of the night? 

 

As a modern astrologer, I have been having a chronic existential crisis due to the return to fashion of traditional astrology. How could we be so naive, they say, and so lazy, with our oversimplified system of correspondences between houses and signs?

Mars, Aries, First House, Venus, Taurus, Second House and so on. Pure betrayal of the ancient beauty! 

 

Reading about Venus and Saturn being displaced and told to rejoice somewhere else makes me feel better about modern notions like that of natural rulership. 

 

Systems and cultures evolve. That’s my point. 

 

If we believe there was, once upon a time, a pure original system of absolute astrology made of unchangeable rules expressing the eternal will of God, that’s just a belief. We don’t know of such a system. 

Listening to Chris Brennan’s Astrology Podcast, I learned that the concept of houses originated in texts belonging to the Hermetica – Texts attributed to the legendary sage Hermes Trismegistus. 

 

In the Renaissance, they believed Hermes Trismegistus was a very ancient guy who lived at the time of Moses or even before. The idea was that the more ancient something was, the closer to the original and undiluted Truth. Hermes Trismegistus was thought to be the three times Great one who had understood it all and passed sacred knowledge of magic, astrology and alchemy to his disciples. It’s not clear whether he had been a man or was the God Hermes or Thoth himself. 

Later on, historians demonstrated that texts attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were actually written in Hellenistic times. Historians can argue about the extent to which the ideas contained in the Hermetica are influenced by Greek thought or by Egyptian tradition. The zodiac comes from Babylon, the Egyptians had their own system, with more emphasis on the daily cycle. In Hellenistic times, the Egyptians were not their own masters anymore. The mixture, aka syncretism that happened as a result of Greek domination would nowadays be called “cultural appropriation” by a certain brand of activism. 

 

As you see, the astrology of the Ancients is not as clear-cut as we may have wished. 

 

Systems, cultures and traditions evolve. 

 

If we use cards for divination, we can decide on a system. We can say: The First card I’ll draw will describe the present, the second will be about the future and the third the past. Or we may say: the first will be the past, the second the present and the third the future. 

 

We make the rules, and then we draw the cards according to our conventions. I believe cultures do the same thing, collectively. 

 

Once upon a time, Venus was rejoicing in the 10th house and Saturn in the 4th. Later on, it was established that Venus rejoiced in the 5th and Saturn in the 12th. And now the moderns see Venus as the natural ruler of the 7th house, and also of the 2nd. There is some truth in all views…

 

Actually I prefer to think of “natural association” than “natural rulership”. There are common threads of meaning, that’s all it means. 

 

If I was looking at a horary chart with a precise question about a partner, I would take the ruler of the sign on the cusp of the 7th house as significator or this partner, and not Venus (unless Libra or Taurus are on the 7th house cusp indeed). 

 

But if I am looking at a natal chart for someone wondering why their marriage has been such a mess throughout the years, I would look at the 7th house indeed, and also at Venus, and at a few other indicators in the context of the whole, looking for indications of conflicts between psychological drives. 

 

Traditional astrologers attribute death to the 8th house, and also issues that bring, according to William Lilly , “Fear and anguish of mind”. Then they blame modern astrologers for connecting sexuality and the 8th house. Sure all of us would prefer our sexuality to be exclusively a 5th house affair, as the way not only to bring about children, but also to have fun and enjoy, to love and be loved. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy… 

 

In her critique of this modern connection of the 8th house with sexuality, Deborah Houlding gives the example – that could be funny weren’t the potential suffering involved – of using astrology to choose the best possible time to have sex and electing a time with 8th house emphasis. But modern astrologers focus more, as far as I understood Liz Greene, Howard Sasportas or Stephen Arroyo, in understanding people to help them come to terms with their issues. 

 

Life is multilayered enough to be looked at through various lenses. 

The moderns have been inspired in their own style.

 

The symbols of astrology, the zodiac signs, the planets and the stars, the rising sun, the phases of the moon… are there for us to contemplate with our own living eyes and hearts, when the time is now. 

Jean-Marc Pierson 

Saturn rules over Capricorn, which is an Earth sign, and over Aquarius, associated with the element Air. However these two signs have Water as part of their symbolism. How come?

The symbol for Capricorn is a Sea-Goat. The front is goat, the back is fishtail. This suggests a transition from fish to goat, from sea to mountain, from Water to Earth. It’s a story of becoming dry.

Everything is relative. The story may not be about becoming absolutely dry, but moving towards the dry end of the wet-dry spectrum.

Psychologically, this dryness is the dryness of the child growing up. In the beginning, in Cancer, the world is all emotional dependency, mother-child bond, the protection of the family. In the womb we were completely immersed in Water. When we were a baby, we were still swimming in very emotional waters… Growing up is somehow drying up! Like the goat we learn to climb our own mountain without being carried by mother and the flow. We learn to be self contained and pursue our own goals, in spite of the contrary moods…

Now, the rulership of Saturn over Aquarius, the Water Bearer, often representing Water pouring down, seems to contradict the idea of Saturn being dry, or drying. Aquarius is an Air sign.

Even without knowing Greek mythology it’s easy to connect the Air of Aquarius with the sky. In the air, the water bearers are the clouds. The ruler of the opposite sign, Leo, is the Sun – which, during daytime, can only be obscured by clouds. Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius, happens to be named after the God of the Sky.

Water in Air and pouring down is rain. Here, the action of Saturn is condensation. Saturn always increases density: with this energy, Water comes out of Air and Earth out of Water.

This is not modern physics! This is a language of symbols. Replace Air by “gaseous”, Water by “liquid” and Earth by “solid”, and think of Saturn as cold and pressure.

You may have heard about correspondences between the Major arcana of the Tarot and the symbols of astrology. We shouldn’t be dogmatic: a planet or a sign can have important themes in common with a particular Tarot Card, however two different symbols belonging to two different systems are not  the same. It’s not the style of the universe and not the style of the psyche! 

 

I have heard Claude Hagège – a famous French linguist – say that it is always possible to translate what is said in a language into another language. However, in some cases, one word will be sufficient in a language, but a whole sentence will be necessary to say the same thing in the other one. We can’t superimpose two languages, translate word for word and make sense. Research in linguistics has shown that speaking a second language makes you see the world differently. 

 

The same can only apply to symbolic languages like astrology and tarot. Two systems are two cultures. 

 

 

Saying, for instance, that the Arcana called “Strength” is the equivalent of the sign “Leo” is almost nonsense. Yes, there is a lion on the Tarot Card, and yes, strength and willpower, are key words for Leo. But they make sense only within the context of their natural habitat, the zodiac for one, the Tarot for the other. 

 

On the Tarot Card, the lion is not alone. The main character is actually a young maiden. She masters the lion, which, on the Marseille deck, is opening his mouth at that place where humans feel desire. Virgo and Scorpio themes are relevant to this card as well. 

In the Wheel of Fortune I see the Zodiac. This is not a dogma. Tomorrow, the Wheel of Fortune may represent something else. With symbols, we are swimming in a fluid world. For today, let’s see the Zodiac in the Wheel of Fortune.

 

Zodiac etymologically means “the wheel of animals”. On the card, animals are chained to the Wheel of Fortune. 

 

The Tarot Card is a teaching. Let’s take it as a teaching about astrology. Two animals, representing animal energies, desires, fears, emotions and instincts are going up and down as the wheel turns. We may think of the Moon as well. 

 

A sphinx is sitting above the wheel, undisturbed. 

 

 It has a crown and a sword, symbols of power and achievement. The sphinx is a symbol of mystery and mastery.

 

In the myths of Oedipus, the sphinx asks a riddle: “Which creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?” 

 

The answer is “man”. He walks on four legs in the morning of his life, when he crawls on his hands and knees as a baby. He walks on two legs in the middle of his life, and in the evening, when he is old, on three legs, his two plus a stick for help.

 

Nowadays, it would be politically correct to say “human being”. 

 

The riddle of the sphinx is a deep philosophical question in disguise: “What is man?” “What does being human mean?” 

An answer is suggested: it is to master the energies and sit, undisturbed, above the wheel rather than chained to it. 

 

The card shows it. It says: Aim at this! 

 

Become like the sphinx! Integrate and master the animal energies and become free from the ups and downs of Lady Fortune. The stars impel but do not compel. 

 

 

Jean-Marc

https://www.jeanmarcpierson.com/

 

 

What is most noticeable about twins is that they are the same.

I am stating the obvious, however this is essential. Have you read The Purloined Letter, by Edgar Alan Poe? In this story, detectives are searching a room for a letter that is hidden in plain sight… and they don’t find it! Similarly, the occult meanings of symbols are often too obvious to be noticed.

So look! The twins are two and they are the same. They can talk. They can understand very well what they mean. Twins sometimes develop a language that only them can understand. This is called cryptophasia.

There are jokes brothers and sisters can tell and be the only one to understand. There are jokes that make French people laugh, but not English, and vice versa. Fortunately we have enough in common to be able to appreciate a good deal of humour.