The New Moon in Gemini arrives tonight, ruled by Mercury also here in its home of the Twins.  This lunation poses both the Lights square to Neptune in Pisces, clarity met by a mild confusion, incisiveness somewhat interrupted by the potion and ‘strangedream’ of the syrupy sea-god planet.

The Sun is overarching narrative, the Moon our emotional / psychosomatic / environmental context, and Mercury the messenger.  With the Sun and Moon both in Gemini, and Mercury thus ruling them, we look to the swift planet for particulars on the nature of this lunation.  Mercury is loosely square to Saturn in Pisces, the latter stationing retrograde today.  With dynamic tension between the quick and slow (Mercury and Saturn), clear and obfuscated (Sun/Moon and Neptune), this New Moon pin-drops a curious narrative amidst some of the momentum Jupiter and the North Node in Taurus seemed to be seeding much of the past month.

Mercury and its yang home of Gemini have an affinity for the questioning, critico-rational dimensions of psyche, yet one supported by a pluralistic nature and sympathy for co-present inner contradictions.  This ‘many-ness’ can help Gemini to avoid derailment by the pitfalls of literalism, or the definitional dilemmas and downright existential crises of it; Gemini’s impish nature likes to poke at paradoxes and indulge multiplicity of truth.  As much as it harnesses the nuts and bolts of language and all tangible tools it can grasp, Gemini has an affinity for double occurrences and hidden meanings it can peel back layers on (gods bless attention span).  Square to Neptune in Pisces, there are likely some things lurking behind the veil if we listen.

At its worst perhaps, Gemini is particularly guilty of a shadow it draws attention to, or uses its opportunistic eye to take someone else’s idea or accomplishment and make like it was because of them.  All life is remix, and this might beg the question of what is truly original — but Gemini is masterful at re-contextualizing things.  Its ruling planet Mercury lends etymology to the word ‘merchant’, a dynamic going back to the earliest scenarios of taking goods from another land or town, and up-selling them in a new setting.  If you’ve ever haggled, or been hustled at a pawn shop, you’ll have seen this dynamic at work — the sliding scale is the sensibility of the person being sold to and what the seller knows they can get away with.  It’s similar to a pool hustler under-representing their ability to stake a race in their favor, or a political pulpit gaming their allegiance with bullshit.

At its best, Gemini can be like a shaman-artist that guides people from a to b, helping our swirling inner archetypes to find expression in externality and bridges of physical foothold.  Think of how Sir Christopher Lee and Sir Ian McKellen both ‘frothed to the top’ as the actors to portray Saruman and Gandalf in the film rendition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy — both born in the first decan of Gemini.  While it is an actor’s job to portray many different archetypal roles, one will often find the biggest, most central, or most recurring types of roles mirrored in the performer’s natal astrology in some way.  (Of course, there are far more detailed chart nuances to examine — I did a writeup on Christopher Lee eight years ago — but sun sign decans and casting are fun.)

With the New Moon in Gemini, a sign of communication, commerce, and co-present contradictions… square to Neptune in Pisces… it can be hard to know what’s real.  Neptune long in Pisces (Jupiter’s nocturnal home) highlights gravitation towards, or dissolution of, belief.  Neptune is the ‘willing Kool-Aid’, the ‘thrill clit cult’ dissolved, the fantasy whose lines with reality have become a bit blurred.  Something like Nicole Daedone turning herself in and Trump’s second arrest both falling within the same week.  Or the constant swirl of algorithms and weighted pitches to navigate.

Mercury also moves away from a sextile to Venus in Leo that exacted today, and following this new moon moves through the final days of its morning star phase as Gray Crawford speaks elegantly on.  This is a time of heightened synchronicity, one which places emphases on “incoming news, messages and signs” as Crawford writes.  I’m fond of looking at the zodiacal year as analogous to a breath, with Gemini being the end of a long inhalation before the held breath of summer — lungs filled up with restless potentiality of vernal life, bits of pollen, flora and wildfires intermixed.  Feeding on incoming items of symbol and meaning is an act of intellectual and spiritual communion amidst the fertile promise of spring yielding to summer.

For me, the peak ‘swift planet vs. slow planet’ Mercury in Gemini / Saturn in Pisces symbol wasn’t my Thursday flight out of Pittsburgh being delayed five times, to the point that I had to be put up in a Charlotte hotel for maybe three hours of sleep before the connection — it was probably Pittsburgh’s mayor posting a cheeky (and lame) IG frame about renaming Pittsburgh ‘Swiftsburgh’ for the weekend of her show, which makes little sense if you’ve ever witnessed a road there.  There are more pits than swift moments, trust.

Just some themes to look out for:

*communication, commerce, and co-present contradictions
*gravitation towards, or dissolution of, belief
*mixes of clarity and confusion
*quickness and quicksand
*ball-spin and spin artists
*information and misinformation
*double occurrences and hidden meanings
*shedding invisible shackles of illusion or held beliefs
*dialogue surrounding the arts, differences in opinion
*people coming together or diverging on matters of art, love, human relating
*difference in values being recognized or hard to recognize
*travel delays or unexpected hangups
*new or ongoing endeavors picking up pace, or encountering unexpected pitfalls
*having bought the wrong dream; having sold the wrong dream and waiting to atone

Swim well stargazers ~

—A.B.