Gemini

Gemini, the sign of the Twins, closes the spring. It inclines toward curiosity, quickness, wit and the pleasure of exchange — news, questions, languages, the people next door. It likes to keep options open and to see a matter from two sides. At its best it connects people and ideas; its challenge is often depth and staying power, since there is always something else interesting to look at.

Element, mode and polarity

Gemini is an Air sign of the mutable mode. Air gives it a mental, social and communicative cast; the mutable mode makes it adaptable, the sign that carries one season into the next. It is masculine (active) and diurnal. Its fellow Air signs are Libra and Aquarius; its fellow mutable signs are Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces.

Rulership and dignities

• Domicile: Mercury, the day house of Mercury (Virgo is the other).
• Exaltation: no traditional planet is exalted in Gemini.
• Detriment: Jupiter, whose home Sagittarius lies opposite.
• Fall: none in the traditional scheme.

Mercury rules Gemini in both the traditional and the modern schools.

In a chart

Planets in Gemini tend to express themselves through words, movement and variety. The Moon here may need to talk feelings through to understand them; Venus often enjoys flirtation, conversation and lightness in love; Mars may fight with arguments rather than force. Jupiter, in detriment, can scatter its wish for meaning across too many interests. The house with Gemini on its cusp is often where a person learns, writes, travels short distances and gathers information. With Gemini on the Ascendant, Mercury becomes the chart ruler, and the person often comes across as lively, youthful and talkative.

The tradition

Ptolemy counts Gemini among the four bicorporeal (double-bodied) signs, which close a season and share the qualities of the one ending and the one beginning. Lilly calls it "aerial, hot, moyst, sanguine, diurnal, common or double-bodied", a human sign, the diurnal house of Mercury, of the airy triplicity, Western and masculine. It governs the arms, shoulders and hands. Its places are panelled and plastered rooms and the walls of houses, halls and places where games are played, hills and mountains, barns, storehouses, coffers and chests. Lilly describes an upright, tall, straight body, a good piercing hazel eye, and one "judicious in worldly affairs". Its colour is white mixed with red; among its cities Lilly names London. The Air triplicity is ruled by Saturn by day and Mercury by night.

In the tarot

The Golden Dawn's correspondences, which most English-language decks follow.

Major Arcana: The Lovers

Its three decans: Eight of Swords (Jupiter, 0°–10°), Nine of Swords (Mars, 10°–20°), Ten of Swords (Sun, 20°–30°)

Suit: Swords (Air)

Related

• Sagittarius, the opposite sign
• Mercury, its ruler
• Third House, its natural house
• Air · Mutable