June 1 Solar Eclipse in Gemini: Capture the Howling Wind

by April Elliott Kent

An audio podcast of this essay is available here.

I spent part of this beautiful Memorial Day afternoon lounging on the back patio, watching my husband put the finishing touches on some wind chimes he’s been working on for the past month. First he had to find the right size pipe, then calculate which lengths to cut for the notes we’d decided upon, find the right string, the perfect striker. All that’s left is to find an appropriate cap from which to string the pipes; for now, they’re suspended from a scrap of old plywood.

But although they still look a little unfinished, they sound lovely. As I sat slouched in an old wicker chair, watching the wind play in the branches of a eucalyptus tree across the alley and savoring the music of the chimes, I noticed my husband suspending a string from the bottom of the striker and tying it onto a CD. “What the heck is that for?” I asked. “To catch the wind from more angles,” he explained. “It’s temporary. Kinda noisy. Still got to find something a little more substantial.”

Like the wind catcher dangling below the bottom of the chimes, it’s Gemini’s job to catch the winds of change and ideas from all angles and translate them into music, or words, or the whispering of a eucalyptus tree. Not all breezes – nor all ideas – are substantive. Some are light, a random gust on an otherwise still afternoon. Others are dancing and lyrical; still others are hard, reckless winds that threaten to pull down chimes and break tree branches. Gemini catches them all, translating them into words and symbols that can be universally understood.

Gemini: Capturing the Wind

It’s tempting astrological shorthand to describe Gemini as a flighty, inconsequential flibbertigibbet, a shiny yet flimsy wind catcher touching off a clanging racket instead of a mellow richness. That’s much more difficult to do so when you consider that the likes of Bob Dylan, John F. Kennedy, and Allen Ginsberg were born with the Sun in this sign. Forget Dylan’s religious eclecticism, Kennedy’s philandering, Ginsberg’s obscenity; in the 1960s, these Gemini voices captured the howling winds of a generation’s tumultuous change:

How does it feel to be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”

It’s pithy to say things like, “Words matter.” But let’s be honest – some words don’t matter at all. They’re like giant beach balls batted overhead at a stadium rock concert, merely entertaining diversions. Rhetorically, they’re breezes with barely enough power to propel a pinwheel.

But some words, such as the ones quoted above, matter a lot to a lot of people.  And when times are serious, words matter a great deal. As the Sabian Symbol for this New Moon/Solar Eclipse suggests, it is time to get serious:

12 Gemini: “A black slave-girl demands her rights of her mistress.”

New Moon trine Saturn: Take yourself seriously

I used to be puzzled by the Sabian Symbols. For instance, my natal Moon degree is precisely the same as this eclipse point, and I was never sure what to make of this particular image. Then Sabian specialist Lynda Hill taught me that the trick is not taking them too literally; that for any given person at any given moment, a different element of the Sabian Symbol may be more prominent than the others. I’m not black and have never been enslaved, nor have I ever been the mistress of servants. But born with the Moon in the 7th house, learning to demand my due and take myself seriously was the highest hurdle I had to pass on my way to being in a satisfying relationship. Too many of my youthful experiments in love were dangerously unequal. I shouldered the burdens of too many fractured, broken people and asked too little in return. In my naïvete, I politely waited for others to grant me respect instead of realizing that the respect I really needed was my own.

We don’t tend to think of Gemini as a demanding sign, or as one of strong convictions. But this New Moon’s Sabian Symbol offers a portrait of someone who refuses to be subservient and has courageously decided to take ownership over her own life. The same message can be seen in the Sun and Moon’s close trine to Saturn at this New Moon: it’s time to claim your authority and to speak up for things that matter. It’s time to take yourself seriously.

This eclipse and you

At this New Moon, this vivid Sabian Symbol is borne aloft on the howling wind of a Solar Eclipse. Is your own wind catcher pointed toward the slave girl demanding her rights? Are you more in tune with the “mistress,” surprised that those you assumed were content are suddenly demanding more from you? The house of your chart that contains 11.02 Gemini contains both these figures, as well as the fundamental tension of inequality that separates them– and the potential to reconcile them through your own assertiveness.

In the past few decades, eclipses have fallen close to this degree on May 31, 2003, June 4, 1993, and May 30, 1984. If your chart has a planet or angle (Ascendant/Descendant, Midheaven/IC) between about 4 and 15 degrees of Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Pisces, these years comprise pivotal chapters in an ongoing and important narrative. The current, unfolding chapter is called, “Taking Authority and Claiming What’s Yours.”

At this Solar Eclipse in Gemini, your words will matter – if you first believe that you do. Take yourself seriously; reclaim authority over your life.  Stand ready to capture both the gentlest breezes and the howling winds of change, and turn them into beautiful music.

© 2011 April Elliott Kent. All rights reserved.

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