The third sign
Gemini
Gemini is air that moves. It is curious, quick and clever, and it sees two sides of almost everything.
- Dates
- 21 May to 20 June
- Element
- Air
- Quality
- Mutable
- Symbol
- The Twins
- Ruled by
- Mercury
- Tarot card
- The Lovers
- Natural house
- Third house
What the sign is like
Gemini is the mind on the move. It picks up a subject fast, sees how things connect, and can explain it back more clearly than the person who taught it.
Because Gemini and its ruler Mercury take on the colour of whatever is near them, the older books said you rarely meet a pure Gemini. Every other planet in the chart changes it.
The gift is range. The challenge is focus. A mind this busy can scatter itself across ten things and finish none, and it can win an argument without getting any closer to the truth.
With other people
Gemini is easy, bright company. It is pleasant to live and work with, and it rarely holds a grudge.
Deeper-feeling signs sometimes read its cool head as a cool heart. Gemini often feels more than it shows. Letting people see the warmth matters as much as the wit.
The older books paired Gemini with the other air signs, Libra and Aquarius. With Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces they said Gemini should stay kind and firm, and not bend so far to please that it stops being itself.
How it was read before
The older books pictured Gemini as wandering air, a mind that takes the colour of each new thing it meets.
They read the Twins as the two halves of thinking. Reason on its own keeps splitting things into this or that. They believed a deeper kind of knowing sits underneath, where the two come back together.
They wrote that the right training and a strong sense of right and wrong turn Gemini's cleverness into real wisdom.
Its tarot card
The card most decks pair with Gemini is The Lovers. The 1927 book I draw on names no card for this sign, so I follow the Golden Dawn's pairing, the one printed on most decks.
To me The Lovers is about choosing from the heart. For a sign that can always see both sides, that is the lesson: at some point you choose, and you choose with your heart as well as your head.
Sit with this
Your mind is a beautiful instrument. Let it rest sometimes.
Sit with this: which of your many interests feels most like you? Give that one a little more of your time this week.