The cusp of Gemini barely at our backs, it’s hard not to think about thresholds, margins and in-between spaces, since sign ruler Mercury (Hermes in Greek myth) is the messenger, the go-between, the slipster, the one breezing in and out of the doorways from here to there, all backwards sometimes, upside down, inside out.
Gemini is sometimes written off as the chipper trickster, the perfect party-goer, the motormouth or chatterbox or data bank who can catalogue and spit back astounding amounts of seemingly useless information, from restaurant menus to the latest e-gadget specs to the most crucial words needed to get around town in a dozen different foreign cities.
But lying beneath all the motion, the movement, the hyperactivity is just that: the need to get around town, to be the pen connecting the dots between various points on the map, to be not just the mover of news and information, but the agent of exchange, the one whose vast knowledge of places and people and pieces can move a coin from one person’s hand and into another’s, and a bag of spices back in the other direction.
Hermes is the consummate traveler, the guide of souls from life in this world to the world beyond, the underworld where everything was upside-down and not at all as it seemed. He is Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit hole, the Little Prince who questioned with simple words the old man set in his ways, the Peter Pan in each of us who refuses to grow up and so is unafraid of death, of risk, of taking off out a window in the wild faithful flight of the young.
Hermes is also the patron of commerce and thieves, who rely on the movement of hands to trade and grasp and take — yes, even thieves; Hermes is not, like Jupiter/Zeus, concerned with what’s right, with moral context or human righteousness. Like Mercury and Gemini, Hermes is an amoral energy — a facilitator, an agent, a gatekeeper, not a judge. He is the messenger, not the decider. It’s not the content of the message that’s important, it’s the fact of being the messenger, of being the agent of exchange, the carrier of information, the connector. The glue along the edges.
Hermes can span the margin between two people to create a momentary connection, an exchange, a circulation of energy from one to the other and back and beyond. When the breath moves in and out of the nose, stopping briefly at the top of the inhale before making its quick descent, its release back out into the world, that is a Hermes task. We take in, we give back, we take in, we give back. It’s exchange; it’s one for one; it’s tit for tat. There is no judgment — no thought, even, really, to speak of. It just is.
It’s not that Hermes, Mercury, Gemini are thoughtless, it’s more that there are so many thoughts that require circulation, there is little time to stop and think about each one, no life energy allocated to differentiating one from the other. That’s not Gemini’s job. It’s someone else’s job: the recipient, perhaps; the person or people affected. Gemini, appropriately symbolized by twins, by two, spans the margins between two people, provides the pathways for exchange, lives in the margins around the boundaries of each of us, connects them up with other people’s margins, creates doorways where none had before existed, in order to help each of us travel between worlds from which we would otherwise isolate, retreat or shy away.
Ironically, Gemini — a sign so brimming with information — is often quite misunderstood. It is not lightheaded or fizzy. Its currency, though often invisible, is the currency of life. It is astounding and crucial and encompassing.
And, yes, it can be a lot of fun at parties.
doorway breath
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