Gemini-Cancer Threshold
Originally part of my letter series that goes out to my list. You can join it here. This letter was sent July 25 2022.
Inhale. Exhale. This is the tide going in and out. This is air. Both Gemini and Cancer are associated with the lungs.
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Cancer is life emerging. Cancer is ruled by the Moon, who transforms all celestial light into earthly manifestation. Luna is the maker. She is the witch-mother. The puller of the tides. Porphyry tell us “souls that descend from the heavens to become incarnate on Earth pass through the celestial gate of Cancer” (Rosenberg, 2012). Planets in Cancer are not given enough credit for their creative power to transmute.
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The Thema Mundi, the birth chart of the world, is a Cancer Ascendant chart. This rising sign makes good sense not only because Cancer is a sign of creation and life, but also because the crab is amphibious. The Ascendant is an in-between place on the boundary where sky and earth, soul and body meet. The crab skitters, scavenges, and burrows in such liminal places. Here too Mercury rejoices. Mercury, the ruler of Gemini, is happiest in meeting places that are neither-here-nor-there but betwixt, between.
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Manilius, my favorite ancient bardic weirdo, claims Mercury rules Cancer. A dubious assertion but I love an oddball theory that nearly works.
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Before the constellation was a Crab, it was a Tortoise. Mercury made the first lyre out of a tortoise shell. In the sky, one of the Twins holds a harp.
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Gemini is the sign of the Twins, Castor and Pollux. They are called the Dioscuri, which means "the boys of Zeus." But this name is as deceptive as the name “Twins.” Castor and Pollux don’t have the same father. Their true twins are their sisters. Their mother Leda, after Zeus’s swan trick, gave birth to two eggs. Out of one egg hatched the immortal children of Zeus, Pollux and Helen. From another egg, the two mortal children of Leda and her husband King Tyndareus were born: Castor and Clymestera. The Twins are always more than they seem and attract more twinning, even from birth.
Planets in the sign of the Twins divide, divine, create options, and fork paths. They double and double and double. Rather than accepting what is, planets in Gemini peel off into weedy wondering. They question the premise of the question. Rather than aiming for wholeness, planets in Gemini reach for more and more parts.
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To move into Cancer, a planet must pass the last decan of Gemini. Austin Coppock calls this last 10° of Gemini “The Executioner's Sword.” This decan marks the moment when Castor was killed (by his twin cousins, of course, twins are never far from the Twins). Pollux, in tremendous grief, offers one final division. He bargains with his father Zeus and splits his immortality between himself and his brother. To Pollux, “half of the gift [of immortality] will exceed the whole” (Ovid, 2000).
The Twins are still parted forever but with Pollux’s loving sacrifice, death mutates into life. At that moment, the Twins change the way they move. They had been on many adventures, running in so many directions, ever lateral. Now they move cyclically. While one is on Olympus, the other is in Hades. And they switch, and switch, and switch. This is the movement into Cancer.
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If you were a planet and you were going to travel between Gemini and Cancer, you could go on horseback. The Twins are superb horsemen. But I’d recommend going by ship. Poseidon made the Twins the patrons of sailors. Sailors would pray to the Twins for favorable winds. If you find yourself in a storm, you'll know the Dioscuri have arrived to calm the sea when brilliant blue-purple spindles of light appear, hissing and buzzing. This is a weather phenomenon called St. Elmo's fire. An electric discharge causes glowing lights to float on the masthead and ship rigging like neon fairies. It was considered an omen that the storm was about to end. It is the epiphany of the Twins.
Rainbow, Ivan Aivazovsky (1873)
Cancer is a place we come to from the high winds of Gemini. We arrive on the shore, drenched and salty — and here we are held in the dark. It is the place we long for when we pray to the Twins as the sea sends us sideways.
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Planets in Cancer must feel the fish hook pulling them back to open waters, to the branching possibilities of Gemini. They still know liminality and restlessness. Yet planets in Cancer eschew the endless twinning of the Twins, feeling a duty to cultivate and care differently. They know about choosing and they know about cyclical movement. At the water’s edge, we watch the tide come in and go out, over and over, as we feel deeply, as we tend and protect each other. Cancer births, nurtures, cultivates, mourns, and desires again.
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The Proto-Indo-European root for the word “nurture” is sna- which means “to swim, flow; to let flow, to suckle.” It is related to the Sanskrit snati "bathes," snauti "she drips, gives milk;" Avestan snayeite "washes, cleans;" Armenian nay "wet, liquid;" Greek notios "wet, damp," Greek nan "I flow.”
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Gemini is a weed, fluttering in a warm breeze, growing rapidly, branching and branching and branching. Cancer is a nautilus shell on the shore’s edge, revealing an infinite spiral of nurturer and nurtured.
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In traditional astrology, planets in signs that are next to each other like Gemini and Cancer are said to be "in aversion." They can't see each other. They are so near that it is as if they are in each other’s blind spots. I sometimes imagine it like they are in rooms with thick walls, side by side, perhaps hearing the other shuffling around but unable to see each other or exchange words.
Do planets in Gemini sense Cancer as they approach the edge of the sign boundary? As if there is something, they aren’t sure what, just around the corner? A feeling. What memory do planets in Cancer have of their voyage in Gemini? Does it feel like a strange dream?
Sea View by Moonlight, Ivan Aivazovsky (1878)
I'm fascinated by their ghostly intimacy. This invisible sensing. There’s something nocturnal about relying on affect, memory, and anticipation when illumination fails. We can be more mercurial and wonder about this place of neither-here-nor-there. We can be more lunar and acknowledge that cycles make a mess of clear delineations between backward and forward. Maybe these aversions reflect the parts of our lives that hold too-near resonances — deeply felt but unseen.
References
Ovid, Boyle, A. J., & Woodard, R. D. (2000). Fasti. Penguin: New York, NY.
Manilius & Goold, G. P. (1977). Astronomica. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
Ridder-Patrick, J. (2006). A Handbook of Medical Astrology. CrapApple Press: Edinburgh, Scotland.
Rosenberg, D. (2012). Secrets of the Ancients Skies, Volume 1. Ancient Skies Press: New York, NY.
Homer & Evelyn-White, H. (1914). Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, Epic Cycle, Homerica. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.
