Gemini season and the illusion of duality

                                                                   Photo by Charlotte May

According to the western astrology of the northern hemisphere, today marks the beginning of Gemini.

It’s also a fascinating coincidence that yesterday, the 20th, was the pseudo-romantic day for Chinese, since its numerals beautifully mirrors the phrase I love you:

我 can be substituted for 五，爱 for 二，and 你 for 零 . 五二零 becomes then a shadow of 我爱你 ，520 becomes then a sort of unofficial yearly declaration of romanticism.

Gemini, in the same vein, is the birth of two sides of the same coin. A perfect couple, if you will, the twin flames and the twosome that are deeply, profoundly in love. In essence, Gemini can be viewed as a variation of ‘siblings’ as well, two identities coming out together from the same womb. The womb might as well be a metaphor of a source, from which two souls came from. The question is, whether these two separate entities recognize one another upon first contact, and upon said encounter of spirit and mind, would they remain or diverge?

Here, Gemini introduces not only harmony, but also conflict. It is the first sign in the cycle of the zodiac that brings two separate bodies into physical existence. Gemini is also the third sign in the sequence. It is beyond the singularity of Aries and the duality of Taurus, it is the awareness of duality being dual and, upon its realization, splits into two like a cell duplicating itself.

Gemini is where the illusion of ‘other’ and otherness begins. In life, we learn to individualize ourselves from youth, to see things from our perspective alone, hold dear our favorite things, shape our personalities, and try really hard to distinguish ourselves in the best ways possible. We are encouraged by school and society to be special. In fact, the whole trajectory of life becomes a display of successes and failures of our ‘self’, a construct of thoughts and experiences uniquely tied to us. We were applauded to create our own signature, to honor our singular character and distance ourselves from any other imitation.

If we happen to make friends or fall in love and encounter similar affinities in life, we often see it as a happy coincidence. But deep down, we would likely prefer to remain absolutely individual and original.

This, is but an illusion of self and ego that Gemini tricks us into but also aims at teaching us.

All manners with which we struggle to achieve originality fades when we face the illusion, and in doing so, we realize the oneness we share with one another. The gender roles we function through, the names we are given, the social construct our environment expects us to conform with and exercise suddenly opaques, and that fractured piece of soul of ours step forward.

Duality, the aim to be different, individualistic and unique feeds our ego, and without ego we can’t survive as humans. A degree of healthy ego is necessary in life, to be able to say and recognize the ‘I’, from ‘you’, and ‘them’. But excess of it blinds our eyesight into eschewing the world and life as a game of struggle, a painful struggle to prove one’s authenticity, a game of life and death. Me versus you, me versus nature, me versus the world.

The victim syndrome is born out of this mentality that thinks of life and people and the world, all of it, as a force of malice that is trying to destroy ‘you’. You start to live life in constant fear, the constructed ‘ego’ is too fragile to withstand judgements from the outside world, and so we become either too stern or too closed, too proud or too arrogant. This is a survival mechanism, it’s the only way to push away the ‘other’ from ‘you’ in the comfort zone, the ‘rest of the world’ means nothing but difference, and difference is dangerous according to this attitude.

This happens because you believed in the illusion of separation. Gemini comes to teach us otherwise.

Gemini is also the last sign in the spring season. It is called a mutable sign, Mutable signs are the gate of farewell of a season and the beginning of a new one. In this case, the sun escalates even higher in the sky, reaching its maximum escalation with the sign of Cancer, which ultimately will be the sun’s highest throne before it begins descending back. Gemini shifts our understanding of community by carrying the heavy burden of the sun’s sole journey in the universe. Instead of one individual’s pair of hands, now we can have four, and six, and eight and more hands, and they’re all united in helping the sun achieve its sublime ascension.

Like a duplicating cell, the community helps itself in turn to remain focused and united, not only by recognizing that now, instead of one, there are plenty, but also that the plenty themself are but one. They are not different because they exist outside of each other, they are only a different version, a different face of the same power, of same energy and that same will.

Only in this act of selfless kindness, and in this glorious duty can Gemini help the sun reach its next destination to the full heat of summer. Here in this new understanding of selfless unison, there is no room for resentment between character A and character B, there is no separation, there is no what ‘’I like, and what ‘’you like’’, there is only one purpose, regardless of the shapes of hands, their skin color, their arms’ strength or their length, we become united in this grand trip of the cosmos.

How? Simply by thinking, and realizing it, because all ideas all truths stem from the mind.

Gemini’s planet ruler is Mercury, the closest planet to the sun and the quickest. Modern mainstream astrologers would have you think of Gemini as a restless over-thinker, sharp-minded in a good day or ADHD-addled individuals that can’t dwell on a thought. Decreeing you into an abyss of mental agony, an endless suffering…where in fact, Mercury here honors the mental capacities of recognition.

It all starts in the mind, the beginning and the end of the illusion of duality and separation, it is also in the mind where acceptance of oneness starts to fold and lay its seeds.

Happy Gemini season.