AN AQUARIAN ERA FOR GEMINI | BY ERIC FRANCIS
Download PDF: A4 / US Letter
Visions for self, for life and humanity are not usually handed to people like those imaginary golden tablets whereon the Book of Mormon was allegedly written. There is nothing automatic about leadership. Learning, and teaching, are both a long process of trial and error. Yet you are about to have help — a lot of help. One message of this set of placements is that you will learn through teaching; you will learn leadership by taking leadership.
Have you been wondering how it is that people get so much power over you? Have you been wondering what to do about it?
This has been such a persistent theme in recent years, you might think there is no escape. It has influenced every aspect of your life. You may have pondered or grappled with the question above and may have even come to some observations or points of decision.
This is a matter you will want to study, now that the “people having power over you” era of your life is coming to an end. However, it will not end automatically.
It will end because of your understanding of your nature, and your choice to be in agreement with yourself. This topic mostly encompasses relationships where sex and money are exchanged, or are a factor simultaneously. Where there is only one of those factors, you’re likely to be in a different house than the one I’m describing — the 8th. But where both are present at once, you end up in special territory, that can be exceedingly complex, and where there are many people involved who don’t necessarily belong there.
This is in Capricorn, which has been quite the scene for the past few years, and particularly in 2020. For you this is the zone of agreements — contracts, sacred contracts, partnerships, investments, marriage contracts — all the big ones. These are the areas of life where humans have the most trouble and where they tend to get hung up. Another problem with the 8th is the in-laws getting involved, crowding the bedroom.
One thing to bear in mind with Capricorn is that this sign always drags in matters of family, and the way they get there is by some form of dowry, bride price, or the last will and testament. In social and legalistic terms, that is the source of their power. However, the marital contract is unusual in that when you sign this thing, which is one page and costs $25 most places, you’re signing half of the law library.
You do not need a fancy concept of God, or of theology. Ultimately, you are a humanist. We know this from your being born under the first “human sign” — a sign that depicts people, not a critter. Once you understand this, you will have a much better sense of your orientation on Earth as it relates to your cosmic orientation.
The bottom line lesson of the past three years — or 12 years, depending on how you measure — is to focus on agreements, because that is where power is transacted. It’s where you gain or lose power; sell yourself out, give yourself away, or merge with others in a way that creates a synergistic effect. The ideal state of the 8th house would be that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But humans tend not to be good at win-win situations.
You, however, are capable of considering such a possibility on a much wider scale than most people. Yet for that to happen, it’s essential that you divest yourself from situations where the theme is “every man for himself,” or any situation where one person can take possession or ownership of another.
These are crucial matters to fully encounter, work through and resolve before one can move on to the greater adventures of life. You may notice how much time, energy and money you’ve invested in the affairs of this house, as there has been such intense emphasis here going back many years, though especially since late 2017.
Now, new adventures are calling you. Do what you can to bring your 8th house matters to closure. You don’t want to take them with you on the next phase of your journey. Rather, you want what you learned from these experiences, because you earned it, you paid for it, and you don’t want to have to go through all of that again.
Your God Concept: The Intelligence of Humanity
Everyone has a God concept. Whether it’s innate in the human experience, the product of long conditioning, or both, it’s a manifestation of individual and collective experience. Even when people are imposed on by religion, they can be in possession of an idea about the truth that is untouched by orthodox dogma. Most people call this spirituality, as distinct from religion. Spirituality is the part that belongs to you and to nobody else.
For you, one place this is found is in the sign Aquarius, the 9th place from your Sun or ascendant. The 9th place or house, in times past, focused primarily on religion. However, in contemporary times, the 9th embraces ideas such as one’s personal relationship to the creator, the notion of the higher self, and the exploration of the world that could lead one to direct spiritual experiences.
The sign and conditions of the 9th describe the nature of the quest. This is about to get interesting — really interesting — as first Jupiter, then Saturn, then Pluto enter this house. First, though, let’s consider the presence of Aquarius without the influence of planets.
You do not need a fancy concept of God, or of theology. Ultimately, you are a humanist. We know this from your being born under the first “human sign” — a sign that depicts people, not a critter. Once you understand this, you will have a much better sense of your orientation on Earth as it relates to your cosmic orientation.
But you do need to trust people. This can take a lifetime of learning, if it does not come intuitively. Trusting people starts with learning how to trust yourself, because you need to trust the choices and the decisions that you make. Essential to this process is learning how to be your own friend and ally rather than your own adversary. For many, whose faith in themselves has been damaged, that is more easily said than accomplished.
Hold that thought. We will come back to it, as it is central to your experience of life.
Where Power is Everything: Capricorn in the 8th House
In the collective sense, Capricorn is the sign of institutional and arbitrary power: that held by corporations, governments, executives, emperors and their cohorts. It is the power of what we call “plutocracy” or “oligarchy” or in contemporary terms, the 1%. The power of Capricorn is the kind where “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That is why you want to be cautious of it.
We have seen this play out through human history. Caesar Augustus was born with the Capricorn Moon, and had his sign placed on his coinage as a symbol of his power. He then attempted to remove it, not wanting people to know that he possessed this attribute.
Since 2008, Pluto has been in Capricorn, which has inflamed the authority of certain individuals and global institutions. This new era commenced starting with the financial crisis that immediately followed Pluto’s ingress into this sign in January of that year, and lasts to the present global crisis, which is happening under the most powerful Capricorn aspects in many years. (The 1993 Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Capricorn may be seen as a precursor to current events. Chiron in Capricorn from 2001-2005 is also a precursor and in some ways bellwether of our current time.)
You have this sign in your 8th place, as described above. This makes it extremely personal for you, particularly in relationships where money, sex and legacy (wills, trusts, etc.) play a role.
What you do not get is the ability to “play the game” as usual, which is good, because we are in unusual times. We are in times that demand imaginative and creative approaches that you will be very good at. These are also times that are being quietly dominated by the Neptune influence that has the property of being invisible to most, and inducing of delusion, denial and deceptiveness in many.
The 8th is where power is often leveraged over individuals, no matter what the sign involved. But with Capricorn there, you may seek power in these institutions, and you can also succumb to it. This is usually by some form of agreement, contract, partnership or corporate affiliation. Over the past 13 years, you’ve seen how this can work out for you. The solution may have seemed, for a while, to “become more powerful” in your own affairs. However, I would propose that you need a whole new concept of power, of influence and of leadership.
I suggest you conduct a careful assessment of what you’re left with in terms of the old model. Take an inventory of who you are associated with; who you are invested in; who is invested in you; and of all debts, whether owed to you or by you. As you move into a new phase of your life, you will want to have a clear accounting of all that is pending or outstanding now. In a sense, I am suggesting you conduct an audit, both of your finances, and your involvements.
The reason for this is so that you do not take any compromises with you, and so that lingering ideas do not contribute to your new worldview in an unconscious way. It is essential to take what you have learned in the past era of your life, and own it fully. One of the essential messages of the 8th is claiming back your power, which translates to knowing how not to give it away. Here is the secret of the 8th: it seems to be about forces outside of our control. But very often it’s about what we have directly agreed to, whether openly or tacitly.
Comment on Neptune in Pisces
Since 2011 and for the foreseeable future, Neptune is in Pisces, your 10th solar house if you are Gemini Sun, and your 10th whole sign house, if you are Gemini rising. The 10th is about authority, influence and reputation. The 10th is somewhere we look for people’s ideas of aspiration, leadership, and success.
With Pisces here, you have some original perspectives and a somewhat laid-back view of these concepts. Pisces sees the big picture — that is, the biggest and most encompassing. It’s capable of imagining what nothing else can. However, it’s a source of confusion in that the material world does not play by the ideas of the imagination, but rather, by domination.
You know about the domination part from your placement of Capricorn and recent (currently ending) transits. However, the imagination part is difficult because it is so hard to manifest ideas in the world that are not specifically driven by profit and gain. Yet this is the challenge and the test of all visionaries.
There is always a headwind involved here. That’s how you know you’re really doing it. We live in a world of collecting likes, and building social credit. To actually be yourself flies in the face of those things, which is why so few people do it. To be yourself is to stand out, and experience the results of doing so. To be yourself is to make a decision on some basis other than being pressured to do so.
Neptune in Pisces redoubles this situation. And we could look at this a few ways. One is that Neptune makes it even more difficult to see clearly, think clearly, hold a vision, or relate to the world. The other is that it provides a kind of spiritual substance that you can draw from to manifest your visions, and to claim authority in a creative way. Memorize this concept: creative authority. Learn to work with it, and to test it out and experiment.
What you do not get is the ability to “play the game” as usual, which is good, because we are in unusual times. We are in times that demand imaginative and creative approaches that you will be very good at. These are also times that are being quietly dominated by the Neptune influence that has the property of being invisible to most, and inducing of delusion, denial and deceptiveness in many.
Yet at this time, Neptune is your superpower as we make the transition into the Aquarian era. If Aquarius is the sign of the Water Bearer, Pisces is the source of the water that makes her role in the human drama relevant.
The 9th House, and Aquarius on the 9th House: A New Vision for Your Life
The 9th is one of those houses where you can access your vision. One might say it contains a picture of your vision. By “your vision” I mean something important about your worldview: your ideas about the world, and where you fit into it.
Though it’s the house that describes one’s spirituality, and one’s religious leanings, one’s value of education, and one’s ideals, the 9th is the house of your personal vision. It’s also about long distance travel, and personal philosophy: hence, worldview.
The emphasis of the sky, beginning with Jupiter and Saturn, is moving into Aquarius, your 9th. This will be followed by Pluto arriving in 2022-2023. As for Jupiter and Saturn, you could hardly ask for anything more beautiful. Jupiter alone might be on the idealistic and impractical side. If it was just Saturn, perhaps a little narrow in scope. Jupiter and Saturn together, though, are enough to help you rethink your whole life.
There is so much in this combination of factors — Jupiter, Saturn, Aquarius, 9th house — that it deserves a book, though you’re the one who would write it, whether in your journal or an actual published work (the 9th is the house of publishing). But what I am describing is the book of your life: your concept of what your life is about, and why you are here.
Gemini is a sign about people, much more than about things or activities. It is the first human sign. If we look at the solar chart, we can find many exciting ideas about why people are so meaningful to you (see the section on Aries, below). Ultimately your spiritual path is about faith in humanity. This is a lot more challenging than believing in God. Humanity gives us lots of reasons not to believe in it, which is where the faith element comes in. Spirituality is about faith and not belief. This is the challenge. For you, spirituality is also about having a vision of something that others may not be able to see, and that may not yet exist.
Society is being reorganized under our feet right now. This is being done on the basis of terrifying people into complying and conforming. The fact that this is being done to “protect us” should not impress anyone; there could be no other excuse that could possibly go past people without raising their suspicions. The overwhelming tendency is to adapt. My favorite quote in the Declaration of Independence is this: “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Visions for self, for life and humanity are not usually handed to people like those imaginary golden tablets whereon the Book of Mormon was allegedly written. There is nothing automatic about leadership. Learning, and teaching, are both a long process of trial and error. Yet you are about to have help — a lot of help. One message of this set of placements is that you will learn through teaching; you will learn leadership by taking leadership.
So whatever this new vision is, you can be sure it’s going to involve some form of teaching, coordination, example-setting, and new forms of leadership that are not top-down or invested in ownership of others. This will be no easy task, though your way will be facilitated if you feel the calling and answer it, in all that you do. Just remember: all teaching is by example. It is the choices and actions you demonstrate that count.
Chiron in Aries. Eris in Aries. The Gemini Birthday Party.
Once I went to a Gemini birthday party. It was a room filled with many of the Gemini people in the community, and it was one of the most easygoing, conversational spaces I’ve ever been in. One of the women who created the event, knowing I was the community astrologer, said, “Isn’t this great?” It was proof of concept of Gemini.
We could say this conversational quality is about Gemini being associated with Mercury. We could say it’s about Gemini being a human sign. But there is something else, something better, which is that Aries is your 11th sign. Said another way, Gemini has Aries on the 11th house, the most social, (and one of the most public) houses. In my view, what makes Gemini so social is about self-presence and confidence around people more than anything. Aries also describes a necessity — where one has Aries, one will tend to seek oneself. This is on the level of an evolutionary necessity.
Chiron is a long-term visitor to Aries (entering Taurus starting 2026), and Eris is more or less permanent (entering Taurus staring 2044, the same year Pluto enters Pisces). So both are factors for the foreseeable future, and they describe your social experience. This is more direct and tangible than Aquarius on the 9th house, though it’s related. It always helps when the practical has spiritual grounding.
You may not be able to turn the tide, or change the course of a river. But you can know where you stand with yourself. You can know what you have faith in is right, and why you have faith in that. You can take a stand for yourself and your family. And as significantly, you can take a stand among your friends, and set the example.
Aries has a stand-out quality; add Chiron and the effect is taken up an order of magnitude. Chiron also has a teaching property as well. Yet the teaching in this case comes through the actions and choices associated with the willingness to be different, meaning to be uncompromisingly yourself.
There is always a headwind involved here. That’s how you know you’re really doing it. We live in a world of collecting likes, and building social credit. To actually be yourself flies in the face of those things, which is why so few people do it. To be yourself is to stand out, and experience the results of doing so. To be yourself is to make a decision on some basis other than being pressured to do so.
The Religion of Technology
This is a reading about Aquarius. So far I’ve described the way this is related to your spiritual path: essentially you are humanitarian. That is your worldview and cosmology. It would be nice if that were true of everyone.
There is an additional dimension to Aquarius, which is its relationship to technology. In a sense, electrical technology is a spiritual parasite that has dominated the world. In times past this was about broadcast radio and TV. Currently it’s about the digital realm, which has crept in like a fog, a rising tide and a series of earthquakes over the past 25 years. We are now so swallowed by it that people take for granted that a “vaccination” is really a genetic modification device that alters the DNA in all of the recipient’s cells.
But that is what we need to talk about: a matter of the deepest ethics, and what it means to be human. There are currently a thousand versions of this in the works — actual patents for actual products that merge nanotechnology with the human body and the human species, from which there will be no turning back if they are implemented. Many people are doing somersaults about artificial “intelligence” and what is called transhumanism. Many are brimming with glee at the notion of a world populated by robots and cyborgs.
When new technologies are introduced, the purveyors take a “stop at nothing” approach, since generally they are driven by recovering their R&D costs, and then by making a profit. With that as the drive, there are no ethics possible. Many have pointed this out. Market capitalism does not support any notion of morality. And the cost is always to our collective and individual humanity.
You may not be able to turn the tide, or change the course of a river. But you can know where you stand with yourself. You can know what you have faith in is right, and why you have faith in that. You can take a stand for yourself and your family. And as significantly, you can take a stand among your friends, and set the example.
Your 9th house describes your personal religion, your spiritual connection, and your concept of God. In our times, technology is the “new God.” This is appealing in a kind of devilish way. Technology is seductive, and when it’s done being seductive, it becomes mandatory. And then it just is. We all remember that phrase from Star Trek: The Next Generation, related to the Borg: resistance is futile.
But is it? Captain Picard gets out with his life, and so can you. You just cannot take anything for granted.