The Healing Power of Redefinition

Full moon at 4° of Gemini

Space fungi by Taehyoung Jeon

On the morning of November 27th at 1:16am PST, the moon peaks in fullness at 4° of Gemini - that’s the degree of two twos, in the sign of twoness, and Twins, and the cosmic Lovers. Mystically speaking, Gemini is an archetype of separation and unification; wholes dividing into parts, entering the world of drama and complexity and conflict and longing, then finding their way back into transformed wholes, and then multiplying again — giving birth to new states. On a personal development level, Gemini is responsible for evolving our self-definitions and self-expressions through connection and interaction with others and our immediate world. It’s extremely fluid and inquisitive, seeking new and distinct experiences to distraction. It sees all knowledge as provisional, and rejects fixed positions and simplicity, including polarization and either/or-ness. It thinks it’s possible to integrate it all and exist as a gorgeous paradox. Gemini is ruled by Mercury, so take its advice with a grain of trickster salt, but its advice is this: curiosity and wonder are agents of healing. If our old definitions stop working, we can let them go, and start seeking new ones. By keeping our language, especially, curious and flexible, we can ensure our minds stay learning and evolving for the better, and through our minds, the world.

Full moons are culminating and releasing. A current of manifestation that started back on the new moon in Gemini on June 17th is peaking and coming to a close, in the season of its opposite sign Sagittarius. It’s a bit of wisdom that all currents of manifestation flower during times of opposition, when the sun is shining on that current’s complement or shadow. When something is only imagined potential, only a longing or idea, it’s in a kind of pure state. As it comes into being, that potential is shaped and compromised by reality; it becomes something limited and imperfect, but real. By the time of the full moon six months later, we celebrate what has happened and formed, but also honor what clearly isn’t working, what needs to be reformed and refined, what needs to go. Then a current of liberation begins. So something has been growing and evolving in the part of our charts led by Gemini, and now it’s up for this kind of review and recognition, both of how far we’ve come and what needs healing and changing.

Gemini normally loves the celebration and initiation of change on its full moon, but this one is happening under very stressful astrological conditions. Mars just joined the Sun in Sagittarius, heating up the tension between the part of us that wants to stay loose and playful and learning in its immediate environment (Gemini), and the part of us that wants to see the big picture and stay fired up about the important fight unfolding there (Sagittarius). Both Gemini and Sagittarius are active, mutable signs, so they like expressing and doing and acting. But Sagittarius insists those actions have purpose and vision, a single and supreme throughline of meaning and Truth. Gemini wants to stay in process, forever finding new perspectives, new aspects of truth, never forced to stop and arrive at a conclusion. These opposite sides of us are meant to find ways to harmonize over time, Sagittarius deepening Gemini’s breadth, Gemini keeping Sagittarius from dogmatic rigidity. But Mars is not known for harmonious cooperation. And, Saturn in Pisces is squaring all of it, highlighting the limits of the situation we are in, and all of our individual efforts. A Saturn Mars square to a full moon is an astrology of harsh, humbling realities.

So if the lead up to this full moon has been especially difficult; if you’ve been heroically stretched yourself too thin over the disaster of the world; if you’ve been feeling the very real limits of your physical body and energy, and even the limits of your spiritual beliefs and practices, to guide you through this time in your life, or this time in the world, take a breath. Take several breaths, on purpose. Gemini operates on the breath. Breathe in the permission you need to be in a process, and to change in the ways you want to and need to change. Breathe out the pressure you are putting on yourself to have it all figured out. Breathe in the wisdom of limits and sufficiency. Breathe out the belief that you are not enough. This is a moment where self-compassion will go a long way. So not just curiosity and wonder, but compassionate curiosity, compassionate wonder. If this Gemini full moon can bring anything positive to the foreground in this moment, it’s that. And the reminder that we get to define and redefine things for ourselves, and that the way we define ourselves and the world has self-fulfilling potency. We are here to do our best with the information we have now. As we gain knowledge and hindsight, it’s easy to see where we were mistaken, to want to rewrite the past. Since we cannot do that, we need to concentrate our efforts on writing a different kind of future. What painful or confining definition is it time let go of? Once you do, what new possibilities are on the tip of your tongue?

Holiday Shop Open

Just in case it’s helpful to you during this season of gift giving, I have opened the gift shop page on my site and added a gift session option. If you want to give (or receive*) a one-on-one session with me, for a birth chart reading or one of the other modalities I provide professionally, they are available for a limited time at thecultofmindy.com or by going directly to this purchase link.

While I am fresh out of physical copies of my books, you can visit either of my publishers Write Bloody or Moon Tide Press and buy from them directly, including my poetry collections Sleepyhead Assassins, Rise of the Trust Fall, and Open Your Mouth Like a Bell, and my how-to book on writing poetry Glitter in the Blood. You can also still get copies of Amber Tamblyn’s collections of essays on intuition, Listening in the Dark, which includes an essay of mine.

And! You can buy someone you love a gift subscription to this newsletter, In the River of What's Happening Now at this gift subscription link. Paid subscribers get additional content every month and the opportunity to enter drawings for free birth chart readings from Mindy (there’s one coming up in December, for the solstice, for use in the new year!) Subscriptions are also a gift to me, they help me make more time to write , so thank you to all of you who are already paid subscribers.

Finally, if you love these space mushrooms by Taehyoung Jeon (Maria), find more of them on their Instagram @marimarijeon or buy prints at their online shop!

Ritual and Creative Writing Prompts for the Gemini Full Moon

(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Just potential seeds. Play with what sounds good to you, adapt in any way you see fit, follow your own instincts.)