I went to a baby shower today. Observing the cooing & cawing among women, I felt strangely detached, a person who doesn’t speak the ritual customs of the baby mama club. I mentioned to my girlfriend that I wanted a baby about as bad as I wanted my wisdom teeth pulled. Seeing my husband with his wisdom teeth pulled just this week, and being on nurse duty since, a baby just seems like another mouth to look after. I ponder this duality between mom & not mom, I make mental notes as I introduce myself to others- I’m a stepmother, yes, I do still enjoy Sex & the City,  I’m an astrologer and writer, and getting ready to go on another overseas trip. As I introduce my self to the Baby Mamas, I’m shocked to discover I’m not only an obliquely Geminian character, a person whose whole is made up of very distinct parts, but that some of them don’t even overlap. My stepkids will never see me dancing burlesque; my single friends have never integrated into my married life; the people I meet at my book talks, or in Italy, Vienna, Egypt, Syria and Spain will know a part of me. Will one ever know the other? Will the circle complete?

~Gemini New Moon, June 12, 2010, 4:15 AM PDT~

I’m no Gemini, but I do get this: the search for wholeness involves a goodly amount of sorting through opposites, fragmentation & multiplicity. It will complete, though not in a tied up neat way, but in the way everything comes to completion through coming back around, full circle.

I remember once, in my early 20’s (clearly, a running around in circles and scattered Gemini-Mercury time of life) looking frantically for the piece of the puzzle that would make me whole. I tried a little of this and some of that, went from one extreme to another. Every time I had a new revelation about who I was, I felt I had an answer. The Answer. By the way, that’s a very Gemini thing to do. As I proceeded to plan my life around the new and improved me of the moment, there was a problem: the Universe didn’t take me as literally as I took myself. Gemini rules my Ninth House, and as I tried to find the ‘meaning of life’ through my education I pulled a trickster maneuver.; I would reconcile the polarities of rational and intuitive that I was so desperately seeking by majoring in both art and business. Against the advice of my Saturn in Gemini advisor who prophetically warned: have you ever heard the expression, Jack of all trades and the master of none? I graduated with a Gemini degree in breadth, not depth. Upon graduating with that, ahem degree, I learned the Universe speaks the language of paradox far more fluently than I.

Gemini is not the middle way of Libra. Gemini goes to extremes. One or the other. What happens when you’re supposed to choose one, but would rather have two? I’ll answer that: your life becomes the movie Sliding Doors…your own parallel universe  of what if I’d done that, not this? I had this happen in my twenties, too. I fell in love with a faraway land (9th house) and lived there mentally for two years before physically moving there. I was the living legend of Castor & Pollux, two Twins, one earthbound, the other spiritually skybound, co-existing in worlds separate from the other. I created a convenient double life in Hawaii because the one I was in just didn’t fit me. It took moving to Hawaii to figure out what I was missing back home. At that time, this return to wholeness could only be gotten by going to extremes.

There’s danger in fantasizing about a double life. Mentally living two lives can hold up the other from flourishing. In some rare cases, one can actually consume the other. Not so long ago, a mystic said he saw me in a recently new life, however a big tree was blocking me from fully inhabiting it. The tree symbolized a past dead life, and he said, it’s uprooting would come easily to me, the tree would effortlessly give way to my pull, but uprooting was required. When I did uproot it, mushrooms would dance all around my feet, smiling (the mushrooms signified earthy happiness). Immediately I understood this was about my recent yearning for certain aspects of my single life I’d left behind when I got married. To me, it wasn’t so simple as shoving off that dead tree: I wanted certain things from that life that were missing in this one, so sent that request into the Universe- and into my marriage. I felt that dead tree give way.

Recently, the yearning for another life, one that has yet to be defined, beckon me toward longings I’m still trying to understand. Life. Just when you’re in the thick of something straightforward, a job, a career, a relationship, an alternative route is placed in front of you. A side road, a road less traveled, a ‘what if…?’. Might I follow? Our curiosities have life in them. They are food for the part of us that is breathing, alive. I no longer think that we can parse pieces of our self into either/or sentences. I do believe the whole enchilada of becoming whole is to explore duality within our selves and stitch those pieces back together. I am not either/or. I am both/and.

The ultimate learning curve of Gemini is to skillfully master one’s own bi-polarity. For me, some of this is done by not believing my own hype; other times I just need to flow with my opposite for awhile, whatever that means at the moment. Or to spend time out of character, with my ‘Not Me’. See, even after saying I never wanted to have a baby, after hanging out with the Baby Mamas I realize I’m a mother – of sorts. The Baby Mama club may not be all of me, but by keeping one foot in that world, I find out that I also belong there. I never wanted my own children…and yet, lately, I love the way they embrace me. I loved it when Maggie asked her dad if he would please fit our family vacation plans around my schedule because she really wanted me to be there, too. I loved it when Sarah gave me an affectionate hug that had so much more than a hug in it. Am I crazy? Am I schizoid? Is this what it feels like to be a Gemini? I’m synthesizing, merging, integrating the human experience. I’m learning that ultimate Gemini lesson: there is no ultimate duality. In doing both, I complete. The two sides of the coin are one in the same.

Some Gemini factoids courtesy of the University of Gemini.:

Multiplicity Rules. Castor & Pollux were two Twins born to Zeus & Maia, the Goddess of Clouds or Illusion. When one Twin got in a scuttle and died, the other begged Zeus for his return. Zeus granted this on the condition that one always remain in the sky, the other on earth.

In our natal chart, the Gemini house, is the place where we experience duality & multiplicity. It is a point of integration through the inexplicable predicament in which we find our self with two careers, owning two homes, beholden to two loves, fascinated with two cultures or a double life. Onward, we must reconcile two- at the cost of none. Taking one side or the other won’t work. Here we learn to sit in the middle, be at peace with who we are at the moment. Here, ambiguity is our teacher.

Communication Rules. Mercury, Greek ruler for Gemini, was right hand man to the Gods. He ran back and forth like a modern Fed Ex Guy delivering divine messages. Yet Hermes was the Babylonian reflection of Mercury – a writer, logician, wordsmith, and keeper of Mysteries & Magical Arts – like astrology & alchemy. Literacy being rare, words and language were once sacred & writers were among the privileged few able to receive, transmit & record messages. As Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun, he transmitted the words and language of the Sun, or the Divine Source of Life (God). The Mind is a servant to the Source. This suggests trusting the Reasoning Mind (logic) alone, without Divine guidance, is a grave mistake.

Pollinate! Cross-Pollinate! Butterflies and bumble bees are Geminian. They fly from flower to flower dropping of a little somethin somethin from the last guy to the next guy. No this doesn’t describe the sexual habits of all Geminis (okay, just some); it does however describe our need for collaborative exchange – to distribute some of our own knowings to someone else. And pick up something for our self along the way.

Breathe Deeply. Variety is the spice of life. There’s no denying it. The area in which you find Gemini in your chart suggests where you need to consistently take in fresh air. Regularly. And deeply. The lungs in-spire life. The hands are meant to reach out into the world to touch, experience & taste. Both body parts belong to Gemini.

Grow Up. The shadow side of Gemini is the puer eternus, the eternal child, a creative narcissus boy who has no emotional or physical attachments. ‘Shallow’ is a shadow side of Gemini, too. The person who relies on logic in defense of feelings, or responsibility. A paranoid Gemini can think “someone” is out to get them (meanwhile “someone” is their other half, their unintegrated “evil” out-there Twin).

Physician Heal Thyself. The Cadaceus, the emblem of the medical profession, is a Mercury symbol. The word heal originates from the word whole. We make our selves whole through the process of understanding, connecting and integrating. There is no healer outside our very own self. We always heal, or become whole, by uniting the dualities within.

All material copyright by Jessica Shepherd 2007, 2010.