Mars in Gemini: Odyssey of the Mind
March 3, 2021
March 3 - April 23, 2021
James Joyce was most likely unaware of this, but his Gemini Mars was showing boldly throughout his modernist masterpiece, Ulysses. For starters, he chose for his setting a June day in 1904 when both the Sun and Mars happened to be in Gemini, lending themselves perfectly to the linguistic tour de force and labyrinthine plot. And then, writing with fearless mutability and reckless abandon, his stream of consciousness throws you into a relentless barrage of sentences that move and pulse in such a way that their rhythm starts to work you into some kind of near-shamanic trance or wild ecstasy. It’s brazen and brilliant—Mars in Gemini.
We follow our Irish Odysseus, Leopold Bloom, on his meandering hero’s progress through Dublin, and through the landscape of the Mercurial astrological houses: the local neighborhood and inner processing of the third house, and the day-in-the-life business of the sixth. His counterpart is Stephen Dedalus (Joyce’s alter ego—more doubling!), the young teacher whose name alludes to the smith and labyrinth-builder of Ancient Crete. His spiritual story of faith and identity is both foil and complement to the mundane earthliness of Bloom. Through their parallel lives, we are treated to a show of the epicurean, the emasculated, the scatological, the masturbatory, the artistic, the exiled, the bourgeois, the sympathetic, the grieving, the paternal, the Shakespearean, and the redemptive.
From a mythic perspective, Mars in Gemini depicts the hero’s journey of the Divine Twins. One version is that of Romulus and Remus, the wolf-raised sons of Mars himself, who speak to foundlings and founders, and whose downfall comes from their inability to settle a dispute. Another pair is Cain and Abel, the farmer versus the shepherd, who carry themes of competition, exile, fratricide, bad blood, and a house divided. And others may resonate with Castor and Pollux, the horsemen, helpers, healers and athletes of Greek myth. Their story tells of daring escapades, brothers-in-arms, survivor’s guilt, and soul contracts. In all cases, there is both likeness and the need to differentiate; both closeness and eventual separation. And through their juxtaposition, one is invariably eclipsed, or even sacrificed.
F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald both had their natal Mars in Gemini as well. His was with Neptune, and written into his poignant, elusive, alcohol-fueled prose; into duos like Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby—one mortal and one mythic; and into his own turbulent marriage. Zelda’s Mars was with Pluto, which cast her in the role of the dark twin—equally if not more gifted than her husband, but beset by deeper, shadowier battles of the soul that contributed to her untimely and tragic fiery end.
When Mars becomes the storyteller, we constellate the archetype of the hero-twins both within and without. Mars finds itself at cross-purposes between wanting to act for itself but being tied to its other half. But move forward it surely will. And so this transit may show up as a burst of mental energy in your Gemini house—whether that be worry and anxiety or creativity and curiosity. We become daredevils with words. Or, find ourselves amongst a cacophony of voices and thoughts; fighting boredom and seeking epic tales; spinning along one great long Joycean run-on sentence that propels us on our way, until the Red Planet reaches the quieter shores of Cancer in April, where a much different kind of adventure awaits.
