We’re in an eclipse season, between the intense Full Moon eclipse in Sagittarius on May 26 and our upcoming New Moon solar eclipse in Gemini on June 10, 2021, at 3:52 a.m. Pacific (6:52 ET).
If things feel a bit shaky and erratic, it may be because we have so many planets right now in mutable signs: the Sun and Mercury in Gemini, Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces. When the New Moon plugs into Gemini as well, we may feel like the figurative ground beneath us is not entirely solid.
Each of the 12 signs has one of the three “modes,” or ways of being. Cardinal signs have the qualities of being initiatory and even head-strong; fixed signs are persistent, stable, even stuck; mutable signs roll with the punches, can be fluctuating, uncertain. With five major planetary bodies in mutable signs at this New Moon, there is a lot of volatility in the air.
A solar (New Moon) eclipse occurs when the Moon catches up with the Sun, by exact degree, and when both the Sun and Moon are within a few degrees of the Moon’s lunar nodes (the intersecting points where the Moon’s path around the Earth crosses the Earth’s path around the Sun). An eclipse is a bolt of energy, felt individually and collectively. It’s a weird and even scary event above, in the sky. Weird and even scary events happen down here, below. The June 10 eclipse will be partial, like a ring of light around the Sun.
Gemini is the third sign in the zodiacal order. Its glyph (symbol) looks like the roman numeral II. It is known as the Twins, and it represents duality. This or that. Maybe yes or maybe no. Can’t make up your mind? The essence of Gemini is insatiable curiosity. No amount of information is enough. There are stories to be heard and told. There’s a reason behind Gemini’s seeming frivolity: air signs want to connect. In an undesirable manifestation, though, a vacillating Geminian personality can be two-faced, even duplicitous. When there’s too much information, much of it may not be true.
This New Moon in Gemini will have the Sun and Moon moving toward a square (an approximately 90 degree angle) with Neptune, which is in its long sojourn through Pisces, sign of dreams, visions — and also fantasies and delusions. If things seem cloudy, especially in the realms of ideas, information, communications, it’s the erratic nature of so many planetary bodies traveling through mutable Gemini and Pisces.
The square aspect in astrology is like two planes of reality, coming at each other and unable to move forward until and unless they make some kind of an accommodation, a settling. It is like two walls that meet in a corner and hold up a building. Mercury can be likened to verbal thought: words and even pictorial images in the mind. Neptune is closer to the wordless feeling tones that bubble up even before a thought or a word takes form.
That Mercury and Neptune are forming a square at this eclipse point may make us feel confused about our own thinking. Or, if we slow way, way down, we may feel the subtleties of some of the colorful feelings that drive our own mental story-making. When I’m confused about something, I like to do a journaling exercise in which I free-write an answer to a prompt: “What do I really think and feel about X?” I am often surprised at what comes up.
On June 10, Mercury, in its airy home sign of Gemini, will be just one degree past the eclipse point of 19 degrees of Gemini, and moving through one of its thrice-yearly retrograde periods. The usual advice is to check and double check anything you want to do in the realms of commerce, contracts, and communication. Don’t make any fast moves!
There’s a moment mid-way through each of Mercury’s backward motion periods when it reaches a fraction of a degree from the Sun. This moment has a magnificent name. It’s called cazimi, an Arabic term meaning “the heart of the Sun.” Mercury will fuse with the Sun later in the day on June 10 (on the West Coast).
This conjunction is the start of Mercury’s next cycle in its relatively quick orbit around the Sun. It’s like a new moon for Mercury, highlighting everything that is beneficial about Mercury’s retrograde periods: re-organizing, re-laxing from too much stress, recuperating and remembering. It’s a time to start over.
We enjoy a New Moon, obviously, every month, and Mercury meets up with the Sun three times a year. But rarely do these two events happen so close together, and it is even rarer that they happen in Mercury’s home sign of Gemini. This makes the time around thisJune 10 good for zeroing in on what’s in Mercury’s domain: reading, writing, listening, speaking, learning something new, maybe telling a joke. Curiosity and research are in order. When Mercury is in the heart of the Sun, you might imagine yourself receiving the light of refreshment of your own mental processes: not just what you think, but how you think.
You might find yourself on the receiving end of some bright and beautiful new ideas.
Blessings for the Gemini eclipse!
Sara
Sara R. Diamond, an astrologer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a life-long student and practitioner in several esoteric paths. Her style of astrology combines modern-psychological astrology with insights from traditional astrology. Sara is also an estate planning attorney. In addition, she has published four books on right-wing movements in the United States and earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. You are invited to contact Sara via her website at www.SaraDiamondAstrology.com.
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