Saturn in Gemini Comprehensive Analysis
Saturn in Gemini Issues
If you were born with Saturn in Gemini, the issues during your Saturn Return may be about siblings, mental illness, restlessness, sleeplessness, indecision and choices, communication, networking, noise pollution, asthma or hearing loss, and city living.
In past lives you have worn your mind out to a frazzle by collecting information, data, facts, statistics, discrete bits of information in other words. Like the wizard’s apprentice in the Disney cartoon, you attempted to empty the sea with a teaspoon. In this lifetime it is positively imperative that you begin to turn information into knowledge. It’s imperative for peace of mind and spiritual development. Saturn in Gemini seeks context, the thing that contains the facts. The thing that makes them into a meaningful pattern, something predictable, something that goes somewhere.
Even the concept of progress needs developing for you. History, evolution, symbolism, foreign cultures, and languages can act like a salve that keep the data from overloading the processing system. What you are looking for this time is the “truth,” and there really is such a thing underneath all the hype, sound bites, video clips, and snippets of information. Sigmund Freud is a good example of the brilliant theories that can result when this placement is well used. The information is gathered and then synthesized into a working theory.
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An extreme case of overload
On the opposite side of the spectrum, overload can result in mental illness. Bobby Fisher demonstrated from an early age his chess aptitude. He was born into poverty to an unstable Jewish mother (mental illness can go back generations with this placement). After winning several world chess championships, he spent 20 years in isolation. Then emerged as an mentally ill emigre with anti-Semitic, anti-American, and anti-Israel statements. Eventually he sought asylum in Iceland. This is an extreme example of how an afflicted Gemini placement can play out.
Data overload can come from many things, including too much noise and pollution (sound and air) in the city. Easily vexed by crowded conditions and their legion of issues — the clamor, lack of privacy, and prying eyes and minds of those around you — you may become irritable and lose peace of mind. This makes it impossible to set priorities; either you try to crowd too much into one day or make everything of equal importance. In this lifetime, it is imperative to establish priorities and figure out how to calm the mind. Meditation is an excellent antidote for the hyperactive Saturn in Gemini person, as preached so effectively by native Alan Watts.
An aversion to urbanization?
Those born under this transit who fail to come to terms with the negative aspects of city life can become outright hostile to urbanization. Ted Kaczynski was a mathematical genius who entered Harvard at 16. After earning his PhD, he became an assistant professor at Berkeley. Kaczynski resigned after a couple of years. Then he moved to a remote cabin in Montana where he practiced survival skills. He began living as a recluse. Several years later, after seeing much of the wild land around his homestead destroyed, he began a campaign of mail bombs. Kaczynski wrote a manifesto which he demanded be published by major newspapers (in exchange for a promise to stop the bombs). He attempted in writing to justify his violent actions. Ted saw these actions as necessary to draw attention to the damage that modern technologies had done to the human condition.
Communication is key for Saturn in Gemini
Communication is another thing that will be key in your life. And it’s not unusual for Saturn in Gemini people to become involved in serious misunderstandings. Not uncommon to be involved in scandals that boil down to miscommunication. Robert DeNiro’s flirtation with an anti-vaccination film at his film festival is a good example. Another example is King George’s continued follies with the American colonists. Nothing creates more confusion than poor communication.
Saturn in Gemini may also implicate issues around culture, race, creed, or economic situation. Sometimes people with the placement are born into a situation that makes them different somehow. They are not rebels or revolutionaries seeking to over throw the establishment or break free from their caste. Instead, they just go about their daily routines, subject to scrutiny and curiosity from others, while not returning the favor of being really the least bit interested in anyone else, though they may feel obligated to be.
Famous People with Saturn in Gemini
Political folk heros Andrew Jackson and Harry Truman, known for their lack of refinement in political circles, were born with this placement. Also Arthur Ashe, whose skin color got him plenty of scrutiny from other tennis players for many years. And Billie Jean King, one of the first athletes to be openly gay. Imagine how out of place Jesse Owens must have felt at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. The most successful athlete at the games, Owens discredited Hitler’s race theories with his success as a black man. But he wasn’t invited to meet the President at the White House when he returned to the States. He was an outsider abroad and at home, despite amazing accomplishments. These days, Omarosa endures her share of scrutiny and curiosity as part of the Trump administration.
Aime Cesaire
Saturn in Gemini native Aime Cesaire, born and raised in the Caribbean, was a key player in developing negritude, a literary and philosophical movement developed by French speakers which celebrated a common African heritage and culture among colonized people. After completing his formal education in Paris, Cesaire returned home to St. Martinique to teach school. He worked at the most prestigious lycee on the island where his students included Franz Fanon who went on to write the very influential Wretched of the Earth, an indictment of colonialism that examines race, class, and violence, and the relationship between the three. I’m not sure how many more Saturn in Gemini issues you can pack into one lifetime (though I’m not aware he had any issue with his siblings — I guess you can’t hit them all in one incarnation).
Interestingly, Albert Camus, another writer associated with the French colonial period, was also born during this transit. How appropriate his great works explore alienation, a la The Stranger. Frank Kafka, another Saturn in Gemini native, also wrote about this theme in his famous works The Trial and Metamorphosis, two pieces that depict the displacement and absurdity someone can feel when trying to navigate life in a big city.
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Advice for those who get overloaded by cities
If the city overstimulates you, consider relocating to some place more homogenous or even just quieter can be quite soothing. Don’t stay put because you have too much fear to leave. It’s possible that your curiosity and friendliness were thwarted at some point. Perhaps a parent had Black Forest Syndrome (“Don’t leave the village, there are wolves out there lurking!”). Your task in life, then, is to become involved in the world around you and to discover a path through it that empowers you, gives you friendship and camaraderie, and allows you to explore the inner recesses of your own mind without fear. Don’t be afraid to go look for such a place if you were not born into one. There’s a close association between mental and physical health for you. If your health is suffering especially, it is time to make that geographical move.
Isolation is not uncommon with Saturn in Gemini
It’s not unusual for people with this placement to have periods of isolation or exile. From Bobby Fisher, to Oscar Wilde, to Ted Kaczynski, to Isabel Allende. From Julia Child, to Aime Cesaire, there are periods of time when the native is removed from his or her “home.” This is part of the karmic direction for Saturn in Gemini. For these folks must experience the world around them. This can be a physical, mental, or even spiritual wandering. Oscar Wilde explained it as wanting “to eat of the fruit of all the trees in the garden of the world.” It can be literal or metaphorical.
Despite proclivities for the philosophical and poetic, Saturn in Gemini folk are forced to dwell among human beings who have much to offer. But who are also distracting, noisy, curious, infuriating, and difficult. You must try to keep others in perspective and not get too irritated by them. Also, you may have a fascination with the mechanisms of ordinary, day-to-day relationships, even as they infuriate you. Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera, and Sasha Baron Cohen are good examples of this dynamic. They mix it up with the lower classes (usually), witnessing (or even stoking at times) the drama. Also witnessing the tragedy, comedy, and catastrophe of modern life unfolding. It’s as if they just can’t figure it all out.
The biggest puzzle to Saturn in Gemini
Strangers are one thing, but those closest to you will always be the biggest puzzle, and by closest I mean close in proximity, in age, in blood relation, or work situation. One of the biggest favors you could do for yourself is to give up the pretense of caring about their comings and goings. Don’t fret over the inner thoughts of your friends, neighbors, and siblings. You are happiest when alone, reading, listening to music, walking, musing, contemplating.
The here and now is a distraction to you, and any attempt to come to terms with it mentally is not productive. I could compare this to trying to eat soup with a fork. Your mind just doesn’t work that way. You love your people under universal principles of daily bonding, but you will never really understand them, nor they you. Don’t spend your life trying to squeeze a square through a round hole. It’s okay to let your mind wander and forget your surroundings. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars,” wrote native Oscar Wilde.
The legacy of former lifetimes
In former lifetimes you spent many hours putting people under the microscope. Much as a sociologist does, or a behavioral psychologist. This time around you are trying to fit what you have observed into a much larger scheme of things. To revisit that territory too much or too often or too soon brings confusion, disorientation, and madness. There may also have been some very conflicting viewpoints held between parents and relatives that you feel you must reconcile. Don’t take their issues on as your own.
Saturn in Gemini also implicates issues of communication with words and writing, as well as music. The generation that made rock n’ roll — at first considered “black” music — mainstream is largely composed of people with this astrological placement. Three members of the Beatles — Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, have this placement. Two of the Rolling Stones — Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — do, as well. Additionally, Jimmy Page, Roger Waters, Brian Wilson, Roger Daltry, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix. They were all born under this transit. So were Mick Fleetwood, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, and Joni Mitchell.
Saturn in Gemini’s relationship with the “truth”
While artistic expression allows for a great deal of freedom of speech, Saturn in Gemini can indicate a troublesome relationship. This troublesome relationship is with “the truth.” It takes various guises. An example is the libel trial of the man who called Oscar Wilde a homosexual. The man was the father of Wilde’s younger lover. This was a trial that Oscar Wilde called for. It ultimately spelled the writer’s undoing and brought to public light Wilde’s habits of seeing male prostitutes and consorting with younger men. The charge of libel was not sustained as the accused was able to prove that Wilde was indeed a “sodomite.” And this led, in turn, to Wilde’s own trial on a charge of public indecency.
Wilde’s defense
In attempting to defend himself, Wilde gave eloquent testimony when asked to define “the love that dare not speak its name”:
Wilde elaborated, “The love that dare not speak its name” in this century is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. And it dictates and pervades great works of art, like those of Shakespeare and Michelangelo…
It is in this century misunderstood, so much misunderstood that it may be described as “the love that dare not speak its name,” and on that account of it I am placed where I am now. It’s beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an older and a younger man, when the older man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so, the world does not understand. The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.
A more eloquent defense of homosexuality may not exist, but Wilde still landed in jail, feeling misunderstood and exiled, then brutalized. “The world does not understand” says the Saturn in Gemini person.
Examples of complicated relationships with the truth
Other examples of complicated relationships with the truth for Saturn in Gemini people include Lance Armstrong, who famously concealed his steroid use until he finally confessed it, and Julian Assange, who made it possible for leakers to publish government secrets and now finds himself confined to the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where he’s been since 2012 (there’s that period of exile again!). There’s also Monica Lewinsky, whose secret was made public by a false friend (the false friend can be a real problem for people with this placement, too).
Rachel Maddow
Rachel Maddow was outed by a college newspaper which printed an interview with her before she could let her parents know she was gay:
The mistake I made was that I had not come out to my parents. I told the paper, “I will do this on the condition that you will not run the piece until after this weekend, because I will go home this weekend to tell my parents, and I want them to hear it from me instead of reading it in the paper.” And they ran it before the weekend, and indeed some anonymous person helpfully clipped the article and mailed it to my parents—and that’s how my parents found out that I was gay.
They would have had a hard time with me coming out anyway, but this was a particularly nasty way for them to find out. They’re wonderful now, and couldn’t be more supportive, but they took it poorly at first, which I don’t fault them for. They were shocked and upset and hurt. First of all, they were having to deal with the fact that I’m gay. Second of all, they were having to deal with the fact that I’m gay in the newspaper. And third of all, they were having to deal with the fact that they’ve raised some sort of horrific, callous rug rat who would tell the student paper before telling her family.
Saturn in Gemini people often know more about how communication can hurt and confuse than about how it can help and heal. This can be a very painful issue.
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Benefits of Gemini energy
Due to the nimbleness of Gemini energy and the facility that it brings for change, the Saturn Return for those born under a Saturn in Gemini transit rarely brings crisis.
One thing that can happen is that a key colleague enters or leaves your life. Martin Scorcese and Robert DeNiro, both with Saturn in Gemini, began their long, successful collaboration during their first Returns. During Freud’s first Saturn Return, he had just completed his formal education as a doctor. Then he went to study in Paris with Jean-Martin Charcot. Charcot was pivotal in changing the direction of Freud’s career. (Charcot influenced Freud towards a vocation involving psychopathology rather than neurological work.) At Freud’s second Saturn Return, Carl Jung formally completed the split from his mentor. This was a split that had been deepening for a few years between the two men.
Peak of mental acuity
It’s also possible that you might reach the peak of your mental acuity during this time. Throughout his first Saturn Return, Bobby Fisher was at the top of his game, confounding opponents with his dominance. In 1971, he began his “miraculous year in the history of chess,” defeating Russian chess opponent Mark Taimanov, a grandmaster, with a perfect score. “It is difficult to portray to non-chess players the magnitude of such a shutout,” lamented one professional chess player. Taimanov later explained, “When Grand Masters play, they see the logic of their opponent’s moves. One’s moves may be so powerful that the other may not be able to stop him, but the plan behind the moves will be clear. Not so with Fischer. His moves did not make sense…” That’s Saturn in Gemini for you. The long term plan may not even have been clear to Fisher!
A period of force convalescence
The Return may also be a period of forced or voluntary convalescence. Especially if you have been too frenetic or unable to set priorities. Gwyneth Paltrow‘s father died just as she was starting work on a film about Sylvia Plath’s life and suicide. After filming, Paltrow decided to take at least a year off. She said, “I worked so much in my 20s, and I really burned the candle at both ends and I wasn’t too picky about what I did.” She went onto to say, “I think the combination of losing my father, turning 30, taking a year off has completely shifted everything.” Note her mentioning the lack of priorities as contributing to her burn out.
Another possibility is some kind of major accomplishment in terms of communication. John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theories changed the way governments handle the boom and bust cycles of capitalism, had a stellium in Gemini in the 10th house, anchored by Saturn at 1 degree in the sign of the twins. In the year of his first Saturn Return, he was made editor of The Economic Journal and published his first book (Indian Currency and Finance).
He then rejoined the civil service to help Britain fight the first world war, working with the treasury. As Saturn danced into Gemini in October of 2000, Justin Trudeau gave a eulogy at his father’s state funeral. This speech heralded the beginning of the son’s political career. By the time Saturn had left the sign of Gemini in 2003, completing the Return, Trudeau had reconnected with a childhood friend. This friend would become his wife, Sophie Gregoire.
A smoking proclivity
Some of the personalities I’ve mentioned in this article died horrible deaths related to smoking. This is closely associated with a Gemini signature in the astrological chart. Freud began smoking at the age of 24. First cigarettes, then cigars. Despite warnings from colleagues, Freud remained a smoker throughout his life, believing it enhanced his ability to work. Eventually he contracted a cancer of the mouth as a result of his heavy smoking but still refused to quit. When the pain became too great, he requested a morphine dose heavy enough to kill him. This was administered in 1939. Jesse Owens smoked a pack a day for 35 years. He was hospitalized for lung cancer off and on beginning in 1979 and died of the disease in 1980, at the age of 66.
The actual smoking of the cigar or cigarette itself may be a distraction. Freud suggested addictions were substitutes for masturbation, the one great habit. However, the affliction of the lungs, which we use to breathe in and breathe out, signifies the larger issue of taking in and processing data, of making transitions. If you smoke and can use the Saturn Return to quit, there’s no better take away you can get from this article. Of course, you didn’t need to consult an astrologer to get that advice.
Final Instruction for Saturn in Gemini
So, there it is, Saturn in Gemini. That’s a lot of information to process. Are you taking it all in? Go slow. Remember to look for the big picture.
While you’re here assessing the seasons of your life, don’t forget to take stock of your mental and physical health and the relationship between the two. If the city is getting you down, don’t stay a month longer. Make the move. If you have too many conflicting responsibilities, go into exile until you establish your top three priorities. Write them down. Order your schedule accordingly.
Learn to meditate if you haven’t already. And be sure to choose your associates wisely. Everyone pretty much drives you crazy, so you’ll have to choose the ones who are worth the trouble. Beware strangers bearing gifts especially. Learn to discriminate and work with the worthy, and your professional life will be blessed indeed. Finally, be mindful and precise with your communication to the best of your ability. There may be some painful experiences there. You’ll have to work through them the best you can.
You may never get over that feeling of being different or odd. It’s okay. Think of it this way: The spiritual person is always in exile in this world. Look up at the stars and think of home, then look around you every now and then so you can taste the fruit of many gardens. Mix it up with the rest of us when you can bear it. Just don’t worry too much about what anyone else says or thinks. “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” So said Oscar Wilde. And there’s a guy who ought to know.
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