Photo by Arun Kale.

By Eric Francis

Dear Gemini Friend and Reader:

It would be easy to sum up Gemini birthdays this year as beginning the time of completion of Pluto in Sagittarius, a transit that has been a profound influence in your life the past dozen years. That, however, is mostly in the background, for our purposes today -- save for those born the last half-week of Gemini, and those born with the last five or so degrees of Gemini rising. For you, Pluto is still very active, and a time of completion is indeed upon you. Yet we need to bear in mind that Pluto will be changing houses in your solar chart and every other solar chart through 2008 and 2009.

For most Gemini children, Pluto has become something that at least feels normal, and to which you have become more or less accustomed. The astrology of the coming four seasons is best described by your ruling planet, Mercury, moving first through your birth sign (where it currently is) and then taking a retrograde in your 2nd solar house, Cancer. I will go through the stages of this cycle week by week, and propose how they will play out as solar return (birthday) readings, but in general, we have a situation that looks a little like this.

Relationships are intense, particularly if they mean something to us, and often even when we think they do not. Mainly, they serve to teach us about ourselves, or they do if we're the least bit willing to learn. Yet you're discovering a whole new kind of learning, which involves raising how you feel about yourself to a high level of awareness. I've noticed that for most people, self-consciousness is distinctly uncomfortable, but with Mercury so active at the time of your solar return, diving into Cancer and then going retrograde there, such awareness will be both necessary and a driving force in the decisions you make this year. The first decision is how you feel about yourself.

To sum up, you may have thought that your life was predominantly about someone else, or the quest for someone else. Yet at the end of this educational process, we get a message that your life is about a far more complex relationship, you to yourself. The better this relationship goes, the easier it is to accept how meaningful it is. I would say it's going pretty well right now, so this would be a great time to remember that how you feel about yourself is basically the one decision that mediates all the rest of your reality, from how much money you have, to whether your relationships are satisfying, to whether you get to spend your days doing at least some of what you really want to do.

The opportunities are with you now. Life is coming toward you and at many points this year, offering itself to you. Yet in many ways life is receptor mediated: we can only have as much of it as we can accept.

The Basic Astrology

When the Sun went into Gemini this week, Mercury was in your sign and Venus was in Cancer, your 2nd solar house. The two were in a parallel aspect. Jupiter is in Sagittarius most of the year, your opposite sign. Pluto is close to the Galactic Core in Sagittarius, and late in the year there is a quadruple conjunction of Mercury, Jupiter, the Sun and the Galactic Core. Much of the year, Vesta is in your opposite sign Sagittarius, close to a point called the Great Attractor. For the Gemini annual report in the Spiral Door, please see this link.

The solar return dates below are approximate. Several of the installments may relate to your experience. The themes can recur in original ways for you -- use your imagination.

May 21-28 (Mercury in Gemini phase, Moon waxing, Venus in Cancer, Mercury opposite Pluto).

Events of this year may seem to be a throwback to a much earlier time in your life, when you had less focus, less sense of your influence in the world, and seemed to be more at the mercy of external factors. Yet it is not that earlier time -- it is now. There is likely to be a confrontation involved, but one that you initiate for your own clarity rather than something that just happens to you.

More to the point, there have been many times in the past when you were more likely to be of two minds about things, and long years of experience taught you to basically work with one primary opinion. Events of the coming seasons will remind you of that learning process, and serve as a kind of review for getting back in contact with yourself as a unified rather than as a divided individual.

What you may have avoided in the past, you are likely to be seeking by decision. This gives you the unusual strength -- I dare say power, and a measure of control -- that comes with taking initiative in a situation. Taking initiative implies that you trust yourself enough to do so.

If you feel pretty good about yourself, this is easier. In case you haven't noticed, this is available: at the very least, you can trust what you know, and it's relatively easy to trust what you feel is important to you. This information is more likely to be conveyed emotionally or intuitively than it is by conscious recognition. It's also likely that at the point where you put your sense of strength to work, you will just simply do so by instinct or necessity, rather than have a long intellectual process precede it.

Here is the catch. What you get into which at first seems like a simple or natural process, particularly in a relationship with someone you perceive as more powerful than you, is likely to lead to a long and unexpected process of growth and discovery. In other words, you may not know what you're getting into. You may never have gotten into it if you did know. However, though time and experience will be demanded of you, along with going through some deep personal changes, I trust that you'll decide you did the right thing.

Let this all be a reminder that you cannot jump ahead of your growth; which is a reminder that this is a rare opportunity, available only now. Stick with your process. You have a lot to learn about coexisting with those you perceive as having power over you, particularly sexual or financial power, and what knowledge and experience you develop from the relationship will prove to be truly valuable in the next few years.

Can you have fun while you're doing this? But of course -- if you like to play with fire, you'll have a lot of fun. If you like to sharpen your wits against those of people who in prior times may have intimidated you to the point of silence, this is a great time to learn to speak, to listen and to feel. And I suggest you bear in mind that the events of the immediate moment are here to prepare you for a deeper, more complex story that evolves later in the year. Rather than concerning yourself with the future, consider what you are doing now, and how it benefits you as a learning experience.

May 29-June 5 (Mercury in Cancer, aspecting the Aries Point; Moon in full phase; Venus ingresses Leo; Sun in Gemini opposite Jupiter; Sun in Gemini square Uranus).

You seem to be leading two lives, natural enough territory for you -- but these days there is a special color to the dichotomy. The Sun making many aspects around the time of your solar return suggests that you are seeking a time of adventure, learning, and creating new experience for yourself. Yet Mercury in Cancer suggests a deep time of self re-evaluation.

Whatever may happen in "the world," your experience of life is in many respects dictated by your opinion of your experience. This I encourage you to indulge. Rather than looking for a seemingly objective position, consider how you feel about what you live through and let that lead the way. I'm not saying that only your opinion matters; I am saying that your experience is your starting point. What happens to you is in many respects about you. The more you are able to affirm your feelings, the more you will exist in the world around you on equal terms with others.

For a while, it's reasonable to allow your feelings, your ideas and your values to entirely dominate your reality. If others need to get through to you, they will do so, so you don't need to worry about bowling anyone over or being seen as self-centered. Indeed, the whole point of the current astrology is to give you the chance to center on yourself, no matter how emotional, irrational or intuitive you may become in the process. If others can't relate to you, so be it; sooner or later, you will be able to make contact with others regarding the discoveries you make now. This is to say, your way of relating is shifting, though I would propose that this is a step along the way to something else.

What is that something else? Well, if you can fully experience your reaction or response to a situation and really possess that as your own, it's safer to accept someone else for who they are. The deeper you go into yourself, according to this theory, the deeper you will be able to experience the people you care about. And there is plenty going on in their lives that is not only fascinating and compelling, but which is also something you have earned with many years of conscious learning in relationships.

Rather than your partners and close friends feeling that your emotional journey is somehow alienating, I trust that they will welcome your ability to relate exclusively from your experience. The high-powered types that you typically draw to you in your relationships would love nothing more than for you to be the master of your experiences and opinions, and for you to end the debate about what is right and wrong and delve into what is so.

Any opportunity to do something new, or go someplace new, on your own or with someone you care about, is totally worth considering. What may have been a long, somewhat vague list of places to go is likely to have boiled down to a few specific destinations, for specific reasons -- keep them in mind, and particularly as winter approaches, do your best to minimize your commitments so that you're actually free to move around the planet. Events of the late summer will remind you of the temporary nature of this thing called place. You live where you are in any moment, and your home is portable, not a fixed location.

June 6-June 15 (Mercury in echo phase; waning Moon into New Moon; Sun opposes Jupiter, then squares Uranus).

Try not to be too picky about whether you're making progress. It's not necessarily possible to distinguish whether you're going forward or backward. Progress is not the theme of the moment: re-evaluation is. Now is the time to question all the unquestioned assumptions of the past. What are they? Well, you don't really know -- by definition, you have not encountered them yet.

I would say that most people feel their values are original. But if you listen to what marketing people tell us, for example, that if you grew up in a Comet household rather than an Ajax household you're more likely to stick to your ancestral scouring powder, you may wonder.

I would also say that most people feel that either their early childhood didn't really affect them so much, or that it did so in ways that are not accessible and don't really matter. (Either that, or we're so fucked up we'd better not think about it at all.) I suggest that if you have even a hint of this, allow your assumption questioning to begin here.

Quite often, the past is the present. If we want to find the real present, we need explore the past first. It won't be necessary to write a bestselling autobiography (though you may want to); however, journaling your observations will set you ahead in this journey. See if you remember how you experienced life as a child. Go as far back as you can. Try to remember all the interesting things that adults told you about "the way the world is" and about what is really important. See if you can remember what they told you about you. Make a list. It may be scary. If you were lucky, somebody read you Dr. Seuss. However, he had a reason for existence: he knew about all the weird things that adults say. He knew they will inadvertently (or go out of their way to) set limits on young people.

The movement of your planet, Mercury, through the early degrees of Cancer presents you with an opportunity to get a clear sense of what went on in the past and how it shaped your awareness. However, this is something you will need to look for consciously in order to see. Though you may be followed by a sense of déjà vu, you will still need to notice it and not be dismissive of the experience. Remember that we don't always want to find out what limits us, as if knowing would make it worse. I don't think it will; to the contrary, the more you know about what hangs you up, the more you will be able to free yourself from it. Merely being aware (awareness is never "mere," but you get the idea) will go a long way to set you free.

If you explore the current world with the perception of a child, you will discover a newer world than the one you found as a child. To do this well, you may want to crawl around on your hands and knees. Hang out with little kids under the age of four. Stay late at work, and circumnavigate your office crawling. Walk around the world with no plan for some time every day, and see what you just happen to bump into or where you end up. Try getting lost somewhere. If possible, visit your old neighborhood. Take some notes on what you remember, or take pictures.

If you have kids, listen to the things you say to them. You may want to set a news alert for the things that you tell them that your parents told you. Often this happens automatically -- but what you're looking for now is the gateway out of all that old material. The Sun's aspects to Jupiter and Uranus represent a bold moment of leaping into a new set of ideas about life. You may feel so confined by ancient wisdom or the lack thereof that creating new ideas will feel like breathing after holding your breath.

The best that life has to offer will come as something of a jolt to your awareness. Most hobbits like life to be the way that is comfortable, but I would propose this. What you were taught as a comfort zone is not actually so cozy; it is more confining. What you learn about this territory may be stunning. If so, that is likely to lead you to a new awareness that you may consciously use to change the direction of your life in ways that you may have considered radical yesterday, but which will seem healthy, sane and functional tomorrow.

June 16-21 (Moon is waxing toward first quarter; Mercury stations retrograde in Cancer; Moon occults Venus; Moon occults Saturn; Sun opposes Pluto, just one week till the last exact opposition of Saturn and Neptune).

The theme of reevaluating your past and values is redoubled for this phase of Gemini solar returns, as suggested by the retrograde of Mercury. Yet this takes on an eminently practical, real-world dimension. The deeper the re-evaluation, the more focused will be your ability to let go of what is really and truly finished. A wide variety of aspects speaks to your need to make some kind of total break with your past, or an important aspect of your past.

To do this, it's going to help a great deal to know your history. However, this is less likely to be your linear history and more your emotional history, your ancestry, the long family patterns that nobody really notices or admits, and finally, your embracing racial and ethnic heritage in a new way. You may want to uncover the story of how you actually came into being. It's probably different than you think, but you won't know until you find out.

Along the way, you will likely discover a lot about how you came to feel the way you do about yourself and about your existence. We tend to cling to our past opinions, but for you this is like being handcuffed to your chair. You may, actually, notice that this is how you feel, and you may want to use your other hand to call up dial-a-hacksaw and cut yourself free. You've known you needed to do this for a long time, and I trust that you know now is the time.

There are two occultations (exact conjunctions of a planet by the Moon) during your solar return phase. Occultations are like eclipses in that they represent tangible, even radical breaks in continuity. An extremely unusual coalescence of events may add up to decisions that seem equally unusual and daring. We might ask "what does it all mean?" yet we need to give events their meaning, rather than having that meaning imposed on us. It's a fine idea to remind yourself that events today don't mean what they meant in the past; that is the main difference between then and now.

Factors exist that are likely to take much of this re-evaluation into your most personal relationships. For this phase of Gemini solar returns, you are still well into the zone of Pluto opposing your Sun. This is considered one of the most challenging transits in astrology, because it compels so much awareness in relationships, and moreover, enhances their impact on our lives. This is why it will benefit you to stay in the moment and evaluate people and situations consciously and carefully. This is also a time to have no taboos, no sacred cows, and no secrets from yourself.

Because of our past attachments and values about sex, most of which are sentimental in nature (and tattooed into our brains by family and religion), we tend to miss the wide diversity of erotic experiences that are possible. We tend to project sex into the drama of one-on-one relationships that have "commitment" as a feature and (more significantly) some degree of social and family sanction -- and rarely deviate from this (if so, typically with the help of a lot of alcohol). However, at this point in your life, you seem willing to experiment with another sexual reality of some kind, perhaps one that is more transcendent; that is, something that takes you well beyond what has been familiar in the past.

Erotic doesn't necessarily apply to just sex; it is a viewpoint, an experience, an orientation. Anything can be experienced erotically, and you may recall a time in your life when this was distinctly true. Yet the concept most assuredly applies to sex, per se. It might be easier to describe potential properties of this new dimension.

- Willingness to drop your agenda and let the energy flow. This implies allowing a distinction between relationship values (the agenda) and your erotic experience.

- Being completely in the moment of an encounter and immersing yourself in another state of reality. This can mean encountering the power of others.

- Being willing to take a chance, to encounter the unknown, and to experience the "other side" of who you are. Everyone has desires they don't admit. Now may be the time to admit them and make them real.

- Feeling where erotic experience takes you -- beyond your "role" in life and into a new state of existence. You could call this the erotic priestess or Vesta consciousness: the power to bestow pleasure and to apply erotic energy as a healing experience, and taking pleasure to a new level by consciously dropping your inhibitions and guilt.

- Being creative with your experiences, which includes breaking some taboos. To do this, it's helpful to be willing to encounter uncomfortable situations, and to try again if something is not quite fulfilling. This is a time to take a few of your favorite fantasies and explore ways to make them into reality.

- Being radically honest with people about sex -- including the people you want and don't want.

- Encountering the mystical aspect of sex, which is if course easier said than done -- but it can be done, and the first ingredient is willingness to do so, and to embrace the moment you are in for all its strange beauty.

Your responses to your sexual experiences will be revealing of the whole nature of your life. Let these experiences change you. Don't miss the psychological miracle of standing up to your father and father figures (in the most pleasant and liberating way) that manifests in the process. In essence, the theme is that confrontation is really about being willing to live your life, to change and to at least experiment with freedom.

In an odd way, all of this is a means to an end. You are in a phase where you are going deep, and where one discovery will lead to another in some rather unexpected ways. One experience will lead to another; your past, and consequently your present life, will transform as a result, but there really is no predicting in what ways.

-- Written May 24, 2007

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