If you’re still working on Taurus Rising or have more questions on Taurus, please continue.
When you’re ready for Gemini Rising, begin reading, pp.45-60.
Gemini Rising: Mutable Air. Instinctual Ruler, Mercury, esoteric Ruler, Venus.
We leave Taurus, grounded, resourceful Fixed Earth for changeable Gemini Rising, Mutable Air. It’s a big shift. The Ruling planet is associated with mental, rather than physical or emotional instincts.
While the Taurus persona is like a rock, solid, implacable and loyal, Gemini usually comes across as a light spring breeze. While Taurus continues moving in the same direction and usually perseveres, Gemini is more likely to have a short attention span. While Taurus is often called the Immovable Object, flexible Gemini is sometimes called wishy-washy. Unless of course, Saturn, Pluto or one of the other outer planets makes a close contact to the Rising Sign degree, is in the First House, or contacts Mercury, the instinctual ruler.
This chameleon-like Rising Sign is the most versatile of all. Gemini could wear almost any Mask comfortably, which confuses school career counselors. “She could do X, but she could also do Y, Z, and A, B. or C. She has so much potential!”
Ruled by Mercury, aka precocious Hermes, (Trickster or Prankster), Gemini Rising is quick to adopt the vocabulary of many different fields. And like Hermes, Gemini Rising is very convincing. With very little formal education, Gemini can pass for a credentialed professional, hanging out his shingle for awhile and persuading people he’s both qualified and experienced, when he’s not. He enjoys word games and verbal sparring contests, but seldom holds a grudge when he doesn’t win.
In youth, this Rising Sign resembles C.G. Jung’s puer or puella, Peter Pan and Tinkerbelle. We think of Gemini as the Twins (like Castor and Pollux, or Romulus and Remus.) Multi-taskers, they easily juggle more than two tasks, roles, or Masks at a time. Like Hermes, Gemini is mentally agile and inventive. A chatterbox rather than a listener, he’s full of curiosity and prone to gossip.
In the first half of life, many seem to be late Bloomers, who, like George Bernard Shaw, take a long time to “create themselves.” (See the quote from GBS, p.45, on inventing his personality.)
In the second half of life, happy, stable relationships seem to get easier for Gemini.
Discussion Questions 1-4
Please read the Element, the Mode, the Instinctual and Esoteric Rulers, pp. 48-59.
Venus-Aphrodite is the spiritual Ruler of Gemini. How does Venus, as a symbol for Jung’s “Feeling Function,” aid Mercury, when Mercury is viewed as a symbol for Jung’s “Thinking Function?
Might integrating the spiritual Ruler help the personality appear warmer, more likeable, and/or help Gemini Rising sustain relationships over time?
Early environment (childhood and youth) put G.B. Shaw in touch with Venus through music and the arts. Do you think getting in touch with Venus first (before Mercury) helped Shaw, even though he chose a “Mercury career?” Mira Alfassa Richard also loved to draw as a child and wanted to be surrounded by beauty.
Aphrodite has a daughter named Harmonia. Might developing the spiritual Ruler through the arts bring harmony, sensitivity, kindness and tolerance? Soften the tone of Mercury’s message?
For Advanced Students:
Discussion topic 5:
Please read the list of quotes for Henry Kissinger, Mira Richard, GBS, Luigi Pirandello (the “values playwright”) and Marianne Williamson on p. 45. Next, match the five Gemini Rising examples to the list, below:
a) Venus/ Sun aligned; Neptune in a challenging contact to the Ascendant, Neptune and Mercury in easy contact to each other in the Water Element
b) Venus /Sun aligned, makes a challenging contact to the Ascendant; Mercury-in- Aquarius makes an easy contact to the Ascendant in Air, Pluto in loose contact to the Ascendant from the Twelfth House.
c) Mars on the Ascendant; a challenging Uranus/Ascendant contact, and Venus makes an easy contact to Pluto.
d) Neptune makes an easy contact to the Ascendant in the Air Element. Mercury is aligned with Pluto; Venus/ Uranus/ Sun aligned.
e) Venus on the Ascendant, Neptune in easy aspect to the Ascendant, Moon exalted in Taurus.
A Treasure Story with a Twist: Wily Hermes in Old Age
Please read, “Good Advice,” pp. 61-66.
Discussion Question 6: Is the instinctual ruler sometimes as important as the esoteric ruler?
The Hermes Negotiator:
Recently, a woman with Gemini Rising told me she identified with the Italian family in the story, “Good Advice.” In her mid 70s during the Great Recession, she and her family found themselves in a struggle with their bank. In fact, they nearly lost their home. Viewing the bank as a modern “priest-landlord,” she used Hermes’ wiles to convince her “landlord” it was better for them that her family occupy the house than have it vacant, moldy or vandalized. In fact, who could they find better than her family, who’d lived there for years, loved the house and kept it up beautifully? They’d keep the grass mowed and put up the hurricane shutters when needed. The bank could do a lot worse! Tenants would be risky; younger people were losing their jobs. Her family, however, had a fixed income. In the end, the bank modified her loan and she kept the house.
An esoteric Gemini Rising person, who greatly prefers peaceful Venus to Mars' battles, she found this situation stressful. But in the end, she was happy to discover, “I still had it in me to do that.”
Perhaps you know an older person, or an older couple, with a similar story of Hermes’ ingenuity?
Or,you may know someone with Gemini Rising who cleared away two problems at once, as happened in the tale, “Good Advice.” The peasant rid himself of both the landlord and the box of thugs at the same time.
Or perhaps you know of a situation like Shaw’s, where “GBS the critic” made time for “GBS the playwright” to finish his play. Wearing his critic’s Mask, GBS reviewed a flop, praising it to the skies, so that people would rush to see it. The bad play was held over for 6 weeks, long enough for Shaw to revise his own play for the same theater.)
Discussion Question 7:
Please read the progressions for Gemini Rising
Erika Jong wrote Fear of Fifty around the time her progressed Mask changed from Cancer to Leo. How would this new Mask work with Natal Gemini Rising? Might it help with her fear of fifty, and if so, how?
Discussion Question 8: Relationships
Many Gemini Rising clients have told me that marriage became easier for them after midlife; they were quite content after 50. Some, like Erika Jong, were married several times by their late 40s, while others, like GBS, waited until fifty to marry for the first time.
How might 2 cycles of progressed Ascendant changes make marriage seem easier? (Clue, what changes occur on the 7th House cusp?)
Discussion Question 9:
The Times, They are a’Changin.’
Do you think it’s an advantage or a disadvantage to have a Mutable Rising Sign in the 21st Century? Why or why not?
Discussion Question 9-10:
From June 2012 to June 2013 Jupiter will be in Gemini. If you have Gemini Rising, this will affect your persona. If you don’t, what House will it impact in your horoscope? (Which one has Gemini on the cusp?) What would you everyone like to do with the “Mercury year?”
Jupiter is in Detriment in Gemini. Do you see that as good, bad, or neutral?
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