He ain’t Heavy—Sun in Gemini—May 21st —June 21st
The road is long, with many of winding turns
That lead us to (who knows) where, who knows where?
But I’m strong, strong enough to carry him—yeah
He ain’t heavy—he’s my brother—The Hollies
Maya Angelou once said, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”
Working at it can be a Herculean labour that may erode our energy, gnaw at our resolution to untie the knots that keep us bound in conflict or rivalry. Yet, whether we’re twinned, a resourceful only child, a pioneering first born, a cossetted baby, or the lost child in a family too big or too poor to give nurture, we’re engaged with the mythic story of The Twins as the Sun moves into Gemini on May 21st.
Gemini is a metaphor for separation. Through Gemini we encounter the power of two, the conundrum of choice. Gemini is the kindred spirit whom we love with all our heart, or the bitter rival we hate with a hatred that curls like ivy around our broken heart.
Beneath the popular astrological descriptions of the Gemini as talkative, fun-loving and fickle, lies a story of loss and longing, a life-long search for something or someone from which we feel separated. A story that’s so often punctuated with long stretches of aloneness. A story that stumbles into the sinkhole misunderstanding. of A story that so often ends with nothing more left to say.
Siblings betray one another, they lie, and they steal, and they envy. Siblings love one another with a love that is different from the love we have for our parents. Brenna Yovanoff writes so poignantly, “I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.”
Brothers and sisters have soared like bright stars in sport and entertainment, often scattering star dust as they crashed and burned, or staying bonded in public while enacting childhood rivalries in private—the Gallagher brothers of the band Oasis, the Hemingway sisters, the Everly Brothers, the Carpenters, the Bee Gees—enacted these painful rivalries. Their birth charts depict the complicated bonds that kept them frustratingly tied, longing to be free. “Some things, however are true no matter how hard you might try to block them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told. Some doors, once they’re opened, can never be closed again, just as some trust, once its been lost, can never be won back,” writes Alice Hoffman.
As the Sun moves into Gemini on May 21st, a cazimi Mercury, also in Gemini, becomes supercharged at a quicksilver zero degrees. This is a signature for new beginnings, new connections, new choices that may become apparent after the New Gemini Moon on June 3rd. If our Gemini planets are not weighed down by the earnestness of Saturn, dissolved by Neptune’s salty tears, overwhelmed by Pluto’s dark power, or transmitting an Uranian idea from the collective cloud, we’ll draw the energy of the Gemini archetype into our lungs, bloodstream and bones, feeling the energy of our environment, communicating through words and perhaps juggling our multiple interests with dexterity and lightness of being.
Mercury in Gemini aids our ingenuity, eases communication, he also swoops into the stillness of our lives with messages, sounds, communications, that like wailing sirens, pierce our stillness, shatter our calm.
If Mercury in Gemini is the wind that shakes the barley. The Sun in Gemini is the Light and the Dark Twin. Brexit-backing Boris Johnson (Gemini Sun, Mercury, Venus and Mars) has taken a political stance in direct opposition to that of his younger sister, journalist and television presenter, Rachel Johnson. She’s adamant Britain should remain in the EU and is quoted as saying she does not want to see Brexit “rubbing out my children’s prospects and chances of living and travelling and working in Europe.”
Gemini is a Mercurial sign, as changeable as the wind, as restless as our minds that dart and dance, waking us from our much-needed sleep, calling us from our meditation. As we read, watch television, or flick through Instagram, as we crave more and more stimulation, more learning, more data gathering, we feast on the words, the ideas, of Gemini. In our obsession with social media, we gorge on gossip, we witness, we observe, and we choose. Spiritual teacher, Caroline Myss’ Gemini Moon conveys the archetype of the Storyteller, the Data Gatherer. She writes, “the challenge is for us to decide whether to make choices that enhance our spirit or drain our power.”
This year and next, Pluto (the Dark avatar that destroys, corrupts and exposes corruption), Saturn (structure, authority and tyranny), and the South Node (a regressive pull to the past, limiting beliefs that keep us stuck and stagnant in an outmoded place of apparent comfort) are in conjunction in Capricorn (big business and government; authority issues in our own lives). 
As the old order crumbles, may we stay centred, resolute and calm. May we sink softly into the silence of understanding, may we begin to re-write our story, gathering cherished memories of that little hand we held so tightly that first day at school. The sandcastles we built, those holidays that stretched into the infinity of the bluest of summer skies. Gemini highlights our very first relationship between near-equals. Our brothers, our sisters, our twins. Kindred spirits that encircle us in that sweet spot of belonging. Those choices that enhance our spirit and nourish our hearts.
Let’s go hand in hand, not one before another.
William Shakespeare.
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There’s that defining moment. That softening in the belly. That strong, sure surge of love that expands our heart. That knowing, that welcomes us home to our natural rhythm, to where we belong. As the pulse-beat of nature’s rhythm of the seasons alters, and the Sun moves from the urgency of Aries into the slower, more deliberate cadence of Taurus, we may feel a renewed sense of Being as we join the circle of community at places of worship, as we visit friends and family and nourish ourselves with the sweet comfort of heartfelt connection.
On April 19th, a “blue moon” at the power-infused 29° point, illuminates those threads that still lie in disarray, those unresolved power struggles, those uncomfortable relationships we may have wrestled with at the Equinox on March 21st when the Full Moon was at 0° of Libra. This graceful Libran Moon may shine her light on a false belonging, a sterile psychic landscape, devoid of beauty and harmony, a place we have been lingering for far too long.
l, Marianne Williamson writes, “Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend not to use the power we have.”
It arrives suddenly, unannounced, concealed in a swirl of dry wind that scatters a shroud of ash over life as we knew it. It blinds us in the glare of a nuclear sky. Out of the blue, news that buckles our knees, shatters our world into shiny, sharp shards that embed themselves in our heart. At that moment, we know. Our life will never be the same again.
The Sun conjoins Chiron on Wednesday, a suggestion that the road ahead may not be easy. That stiff upper lips and stoicism was not what M Scott Peck had in mind when he said, “Life is difficult.” We may feel flawed; our flame of creativity and passion may be extinguished by worry or sorrow. We may not feel like Xena the Warrior. Chiron pierces through our illusions, our judgements, and in our pain, we may be emboldened by our courage, our inexhaustible vitality.
It takes great courage to submit to the call to visit those secret vulnerable places in our heart, to weep away the pretenses, to risk tenderness.
And now you’ll be telling stories
Most of us doggedly resist change, pay lip-service to diversity, avoid new beginnings. We’re hard-wired to take the path well-travelled. And yet, on some level, most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. Nothing and everything has changed.
Uranus remains in Taurus until 2026, shaking and jolting us from the steady rhythm of our cossetted lives, widening the fault lines in our relationships, swallowing the earth from under our feet. As we ricochet from our rut, Uranus may escort epiphanies that separate us from what we love and value, pushing us over the edge. Uranus destabilises, brings anarchy, chaos, revolution and rebellion. Uranus is the Sky god who brings innovation on winds of change.
When we’re shook up and shattered, on our knees, we may receive a flash of insight that directs us to a new bend in the road.
For those of us who like our lives anchored by certainty, the world may seem a precarious place right now. As our plans are sucked into the undertow, we may be cast adrift from the raft of our faith.
Chiron, in our birth chart, represents that place where we are maimed, irrevocably scarred, by the unfairness of life, where we discover that bad things do happen to extremely good people and that what goes around doesn’t always come around in any satisfactory or just kind of way.
In Pisces, Mercury drapes our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire. He withdraws from worldly concerns, submerged in fantasy, delighting in music, art or poetry. He aids emotive expression of our thoughts, our feelings, our heartfelt concerns. Yet, we can also be prey to delusion, confusion and misunderstandings in those deep and often murky waters where the two fish swim.