We Need a Word For It

Dear Friend and Reader:

For language-obsessed Gemini-types everywhere, a beautiful book exists called There’s a Word For It. It’s a 300-page glossary of rarely-used and little-known words that stand for specific concepts.

I checked the book this morning and I don’t think there’s a word for what Thursday’s New Moon describes, though. Today at about 8:38 am, there was a conjunction between the Moon, Venus and the Sun in Gemini.

Artemis in her expression as Luna passed between the Earth and the Sun (the New Moon), just as Venus passed behind the Sun, forming what is called the exterior or superior conjunction. (The interior or inferior conjunction happens when Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun.)

For this event, the Sun in (theoretically) masculine Gemini was soaked in feminine energy — what you might think of as the solar feminine. Really, Gemini in any form is bivalent, whether it represents the brothers, the sisters or the lovers.

Whatever manifests in Gemini will multiply, and also insinuate its opposite. When Venus is involved, we have sensory input, and psychic sensitivity perched on the imaginary line between the mind and the feelings.

The word I’m looking for is something akin to “emotional intelligence,” however, that means many things to many people. I may end up coming back to this concept in some form, since it deserves some clarification and could be a useful concept.

There are Lots of Cool Words

We have a lot of highly specific words for feelings and emotional states in English, such as “hypnerotomachia,” or the struggle between sleep and sexual desire. There is “pantagamy,” which is the idea that every man in a community is married to every woman, and every woman is married to every man. We have “melolagnia,” or amorous feelings inspired by music. We have “philemalagnia,” or sexual excitement from kissing (is anyone still into this?).

We might get any of these with so much Venus and Moon in Gemini, though there is something else, something more holistic (embracing the holos, or the whole, in multiple dimensions). It’s related to inner awareness, rather than our current extreme emphasis on externals.

The chart contains the expression of the Sun through the mentally-oriented air-sign filter of Gemini (technically a masculine sign, though it has strong inner polarity, and its ruler Mercury is said to be androgynous). The Moon offers physicality and intuitive receptiveness; Venus emphasizes a sensory quality.

Understanding Beyond the Mental or Logical

The result feels like full-spectrum awareness that is both interior and environmental. If it describes understanding, it goes beyond a purely mental or logical comprehension and includes the truth of something felt as well as known.

But the emotional or sensory level is cooled by Gemini, and offers itself for accessible understanding.

Whatever this experience or feeling is, we would benefit from having a lot more of it: the kind of balanced thought form that encompasses many possibilities without contradiction.

The triple conjunction takes place in a degree associated with a youthful person evolving into a mature thinker. There is a touch of wisdom to the pattern, with both Mercury and Jupiter in Gemini as well.

The aspect has a touch of “sensus communus” to it — the idea behind the notion of common sense. This is a form of awareness that is fed by the shared territory of all of the senses. Something that possesses common sense is in alignment with direct input from the observable environment. That is the very thing that digital technology gets in the way of.

Whenever I describe this aspect pattern, it always comes back to a sensory experience. I’ve read that Gestalt therapy pioneer Fritz Perls once said, “Lose your mind and come to your senses.” That’s almost it, though here we have the senses informing the mind.

Square to Saturn, Cooler than Aries

While planets have gradually been collecting in Gemini, the sky has been hot lately — mostly from Mars setting off little (or big) concussions and combustions in Aries.

Last week and into the weekend, Mars met with the degree of the April 8 eclipse, as well as Chiron, followed by Eris. Mars in Aries tends to lack confidence, and these aspects have presented a significant test for many people. We are living in a whole new element here at the bottom of the digital ocean, and nobody is quite sure how to express their will, their desire or their intent.

This is a serious problem here in the surveillance state of the internet, where anything anyone says or does is subject to the whims of a potentially hostile and judgmental public response. We live in an environment where we are supposed to have some freedom of expression, and yet everyone is pushed to the brink of cancellation for being sincere (or making an error in judgment).

In the New Moon pattern, Saturn in Pisces offers a natural boundary. The New Moon pattern meets Saturn at 90 degrees, so there is some internal structure and also some containment, both of which are necessary for mature thought.

And though its presence deserves more reflection than I can offer here, Saturn is close to a conjunction with centaur Nessus, which is about both consequences and accountability. Nothing says “the buck stops here” like the Saturn-Nessus conjunction in Pisces.

Beyond the Desperate Quest for Survival

Part of what is driving the human experience right now is the sense that world systems are on the brink of collapse. One result is a struggle for having material needs met, though for many (such as those who have everything they need but are still fraught), this is an illusion.

What is calling for some reflection is the emotional desperation of the planet right now, the sense of a human void that cannot be filled. As digital effects distort previously accessible experiences into something that’s either a source of fear, or experienced as nonexistent, a frantic quality is setting in.

If it’s not addressed, it will take over, and by that I mean rage and aggression. The New Moon chart offers plenty of bandwidth to understand nearly anything. Yet that won’t always seem as accessible as it is now.

There are two aspect patterns that describe the edgy feeling many are experiencing and that seems to be coming from the external world. It’s really one pattern that involves Mars, Pluto, a centaur called Asbolus, and a deep space point.

Let’s start with something accessible, and then move into the slightly esoteric. Friday, Mars leaves Aries and enters Taurus. Taurus is a Venus-ruled sign; Mars is out of its element, though this will serve to heighten awareness (whereas Mars seems to disappear into Aries). The first thing it does is form a 90-degree aspect to Pluto. This can be about the quest for raw power. Its demanding quality is based on an internal imbalance and a distorted sense of needs.

With Mars in Taurus and Pluto in Aquarius, this could manifest as a false sense of individual needs conflicting with collective ones. But the result is likely to be something considered offensive rather than really being dangerous.

Then There’s Asbolus: Centaur of Carbon Dust

Also in the pattern is the centaur Asbolus, discovered in 1994. It’s in the Chiron class of planets, which always emphasize a healing crisis of some kind. The name means “carbon dust,” and I’ve long associated this centaur with strong survival instincts. But there is a touch of gloom to the centaur Asbolus of mythology, as he could foresee dark events.

While I don’t talk about Asbolus much, I cast it into nearly every chart I read. Asbolus is newly in Cancer, which gives it a lot of emphasis (conjunct the solstice point). And it’s making a long square (90-degrees, tense) aspect to a deep space point called M87. Described by Phil Sedgwick as signifying “the black hole personality,” M87 works well as one that gives a lot rather than takes a lot — though such is fairly rare.

This pattern is tricky because it will emphasize emotional survival (seemingly at all costs), and this is a dangerous state of being. Couple this with Mars and Pluto (right in the same pattern) and we need to be at our best as the weekend develops.

It’s sad that our society and most individuals seem to lack the thoughtful, introspective quality described by the Moon-Venus-Sun pattern in Gemini. There is exceedingly little sense of collective, or we’re in this together. Overexposure to digital technology is pushing nearly everyone to feel like they are an island, apart from all others, and sharing little in common with them.

One beneficial approach is to see what you have in common with others and to offer what you can, whenever you can. Any example of reversing the quest for power and the black hole desperation for emotional fulfillment will be a helpful example, and help keep your mind and feelings on a positive and life-affirming brainwave.

I guess the best idea we have for this now is emotional intelligence — that is, intelligence informed by the feeling body and the senses. A little would go a long way.

With love,