Gist of the Gemini

Astrology means the study of the stars. Astronomy means the naming of the stars. Astrology is a word linguistically similar to ecology or biology or archeology. Those are all respected sciences and astrology has come to be seen as a kind of carney act. Part of the problem here is that astrology isn't really the study of the stars and it never was. Astrology is the study of how nearby heavenly bodies that share our solar system impact life here on Earth via gravity. Historically, the planets visible to the naked eye were called wandering stars. So people studying the night sky didn't initially have a mental framework for distinguishing planets from stars. They were all just points of light in the nighttime sky. It was only after we invented telescopes that we began making a clear distinction between planets and stars. Astrological charts are gravity maps of important bodies within our solar system. The only star they really study is the one Earth revolves around: Our Sun.

The name of this site is from an album  I was gifted as a teenager entirely because I was born under the Sun Sign Gemini.  I had not previously heard of the artist, Gino Vannelli, and it wasn't a genre of music I was into or anything like that. I did end up liking the album.  At least in theory I'm a Gemini. My understanding is the constellations are no longer in line with our astrological Sun sign "calendars," so that may be inaccurate and perhaps should be investigated and updated, much like other calendars were inaccurate historically and had to be updated. When you actually do the math and hand cast charts like I did in my youth, you calculate sidereal or star time for the time and place in question. This includes accounting for latitude and longitude of the place of birth.  So a brief history of man's relationship to time: Historically, it was noon when the Sun was directly overhead. If you had a local clock tower in your town -- because clockworks were huge...

I did a post recently elsewhere about a female comedian and her very intentionally quirky clothing style. I'm guessing she likely has Jupiter or Uranus or related influences on her Rising Sign or first house. She dresses like a Kibbe Flamboyant Gamine and sometimes has crazy outfits that actually work anyway, but I think she could have a more flattering haircut. Flamboyant Gamine does better with an asymmetrical haircut. I have Uranus strongly aspecting my Rising Sign and I do better with an asymmetrical haircut (I'm a Soft Dramatic, not a Flamboyant Gamine). I have wavy hair except for one straighter patch somewhere and an asymmetrical haircut helps cover that quirk. My face isn't perfectly symmetrical. One eyebrow is a little more arched and pointy than the other and I typically part my hair over that eyebrow if I'm parting it. Uranus is associated with asymmetrical stuff and with eccentricity or the unusual. See also: Aquarius and Uranus Understanding the Planets   ...

From a high cliff, Papillon observes a cove where he realizes the waves are powerful enough to carry a man out to sea and to the nearby mainland. That's from the Wikipedia article for  Papillon , a 1973 film based on a true story. Papillon is French for butterfly and it's the nickname of the main character who has a large butterfly tattoo.  He's a safe cracker wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in a harsh prison system in French Guiana. At some point, he's transferred to a facility on an island.  Others have built rafts to try to escape and have all been washed back to the base of the cliffs by strong waves, breaking up their rafts and probably killing them. Papillon spends substantial time observing the waves and concludes there's a pattern. My recollection is he says there is a pattern of seven waves which repeats.  He believes if he leaves at the right time, he can get out. He does successfully escape. A reasonable use of astrology ...

The Planets by Holst is described by Wikipedia thusly: The Planets, Op. 32, is a seven-movement orchestral suite by the English composer Gustav Holst, written between 1914 and 1917. In the last movement the orchestra is joined by a wordless female chorus. Each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the Solar System and reflects its character according to astrology.  I would say it's seven "songs" from an album I had in my teens. So it's music that is supposed to capture the character of each of seven planets in our solar system. Historically, a drummer helped soldiers march in step and rowers row in sync. They used a fairly large drum with a deep tone. Sound is vibration and you not only hear a deep tone like that, you feel it. This means it serves as troop coordination even over the din of war. Deep tones can travel long distances and both whales and elephants use deep tones to communicate with others of their species very far away. Because sound is vibra...

So you read my last post  and you're an astrologer and want to start doing this one day-at-time Sun Sign astrology. Where to start? How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.   Don't make any big dramatic announcements. If you have a website, Twitter account or other online channel for publishing stuff, start where you are and come up with a schedule that makes sense to you. If you Tweet DAILY, do "Today's birthday..." If you blog once a week, do "This week's birthday kids." Ideally, then ADD at least the date and approximate degree of X sign to a CHART for people to consult. In the future when you write about things like transits, make sure you give exact degrees rather than hand wavy generalizations.  Start saying over and over "IF you have your Natal Chart, any heavenly body at THIS degree of ANY sign will feel some sort of impact. If you don't have your custom chart, look up your birthday on this work-in-progress chart of Sun positi...

So someone using a program to cast charts may not be qualified to help space agencies or space companies figure out how to use astrological charts as gravity maps to improve space navigation. That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't worth paying for life advice, which is what most people want out of it. I have a lot of criticisms of popular or sun sign  astrology, such as: Canned astrology   A Foggy Memory of my Rulerships Hypotheses   The Secret Sauce   Earth, The Final Frontier   I LIKE astrology. I found   it useful to help me figure out me. I would like to see it return to being a respected source of good advice like it once was. Some areas I wish we would work on: 1. Update Rulerships and base it on something more substantive than whatever it's currently based on. 2. Rename or rebrand it because it never was the study of the stars. It was the study of the wandering stars -- planets visible to the naked eye without use of a telescope --  and othe...