This captures my Gemini IC
I’m writing this from my parents’ home in Goa. I did think of writing it once I got back to Bangalore, but since this post is about the IC, I thought it was appropriate that I write it from my folks’ home, sitting in my old bedroom. They moved to this apartment when I had already left for university. But when I came home for holidays, this was my room. And for a while, I worked here and this was my room.
I’ve been having some major things happening with my IC-MC in my progressed chart. I’ve been looking at them with some dread. My progressed Mars is moving to conjunct my IC and my progressed MC is moving to oppose my Saturn. I just looked at my brothers’ charts, and one of them has progressed Saturn squaring his MC and the youngest has his progressed MC moving towards a conjunction with Pluto. Since Saturn and MC both rule the father, I’ve been worried about my dad. We found out a few days ago that he has Parkinson’s. Everyone except me has taken it well. My dad, the very personification of Saturn, is unabashed in the face of this diagnosis and carries on with unabated efficiency and sangfroid.
What can rock you more to your core than have your mother and father, your emotional bedrock, start to age or get ill? I’m not especially close to either of them, but I know they are there and all’s right with my world. I have Saturn in Cancer, a placement, I’m told that especially needs family security. It’s also, I’m learning at least in my case, the placement of the impotent worrier. My moon in Cancer brother is handling this really well, by being there for them, by helping them with little tasks, by counselling and loving. My sun in Capricorn brother flew down last month, when he heard my dad was in the hospital. I, on the other hand, haven’t done anything concrete or helpful. Worse, I stay up at night looking out into the darkness thinking about death and loss.
I wanted to write about the IC in this post. Mine is Gemini and its ruler is in Virgo in the sixth conjunct Venus and square Neptune. After the age of about seven till my mid-20s, my folks have changed homes about 10 times. Some moves were local, some just within the country and one was international. It meant constantly changing schools, constantly having to learn a new third language, constantly having to make new friends. I don’t think I hated it then, but looking back, it wasn’t an ideal way to grow up. I’m back now in a place where my folks have lived longest and I feel I don’t have any roots here. My closest friends have relocated and I have tenuous links with some others.
I’ve been talking to my brothers about what “home” means to them. For one, with Aries at IC and Mars in his seventh in Leo, the place where he stays with his wife is home. And for the youngest with Pisces at IC with Neptune conjunct Sun and Mercury in Sagittarius in the first, home is still Goa, where my Mom and Dad are. He also spent a large part of his childhood here and he feels connected to this place in a way that I do not. It grieves me enormously that no place in my own country is home to me. I live and work in Bangalore, in the heart of south India. As a north Indian, the culture and the language there are not mine own. But I don’t feel comfortable thinking about north India either, I’ve almost never lived there as a teenager or an adult. While Indians are all in a mad frenzy of buying a home, I shy away from the idea. “Life is too uncertain,” I say “to tie yourself down like that.” Or, “Who wants to take a loan and then be forced to work all one’s life to pay it off?” Other people create homes by lovingly acquiring beautiful furniture, buying plants, getting good china and taking care of their silver. The only plants we have are the ones my maid randomly plants in the few pots we have in our living room balcony. My moon on Gemini husband (his moon is right on my IC, by the way) just needs a place to keep his thousands of books.
I had a friend who hadn’t even turned 40 yet pass away from cancer a few weeks ago and this made me think about death a lot. Especially my own. IC also rules end of matters and the physical death, right? I don’t know where I’m going to die. I’m not very concerned about where I’m going to live, but about where it’s all going to end. Where is my home? Are you still reading? Perhaps this is too dark a trip to lay over anyone, so forgive me, but I just need to get this out of my system. To go back to the IC. Maybe what is bothering me is that I need those Gemini/neighborhood connections. Where the corner store man knows you and you know the people who live next door and when you come home you call up your friends and hang out with them. I don’t have that anymore and that is what makes this place not feel like home to me.
I know if I buy a home of my own, it will give me to a some extent a feeling of being rooted to a place. But a contrary thought intrudes, “Why do you want to tie yourself to a place? What if you want to move? You never know what’s around the corner!” I have a lot of fixity in my chart and I hate change, but my chart is also very mutable, so I can adapt to a new city, new country fairly easy. But right now, the need to thrown down roots is pretty strong. Or rather the thought is there.
I hope you will tell me about your IC and what “home” means to you in the comments. In the meantime, I’ve been walking around my folks’ home feeling, about my Gemini IC, “My roots don’t go deep.”
My IC is in Taurus. Venus is in Pisces in the first opposing Saturn. I grew up in a semi-rural area (city of 36,000). From the time I was 10 all I ever wanted to do was live in a city. And I emigrated to one at 21. Maybe it’s the Venus opposing Saturn, maybe it’s the Moon at the apex of at T-square involving Mercury and Pluto. Either way, I was happy to leave. And when my mother died, I was happy to get rid of pretty much everything. For all they talk about Taurus hanging on — and my Moon is in Taurus too — my childhood home was never my home. Been there, done that, burned the bridge.
Hi from upstate New York!
As I read your latest post, a small candle is burning on my stovetop, a 26 -hour “yahrzeit” candle. Here is what a traditional Jewish website states about this tradition:
“Despite the Germanic origin of the word yahrzeit, the designation of a special day and special observances to commemorate the anniversary of the death of parents was already discussed in the Talmud. This religious commemoration is recorded not as a fiat, but as a description of an instinctive sentiment of sadness, an annual rehearsing of tragedy, which impels one to avoid eating meat and drinking wine–symbols of festivity and joy, the very stuff of life.
Tradition regards this day as commemorative of both the enormous tragedy of death and the abiding glory of the parental heritage. It was a day set aside to contemplate the quality and life-style of the deceased, and to dwell earnestly upon its lessons. It is a day when one relives the moment of doom, perhaps even fasts to symbolize the unforgetable despair. It is a day conditioned by the need to honor one’s parent in death as in life, through study and charity and other deeds of kindness. It is also conditioned by the non-rational, but all-too-human feelings that it is the day itself which is tragic, one which might bring misfortune with every annual cycle, and for which reason one slows one’s activities and spends a good part of the day safely in the synagogue.
Yahrzeit may be observed for any relative or friend, but it is meant primarily for parents. Its observance takes place in three locations: the home, the synagogue and the cemetery.”
My Dad passed on last June. I have been subdued since then, and think it is okay to have less of an appetite for experience this year. It is currently Passover, and traditionally, a yahrzeit burns for one’s parents who have passed on, during the holiday.
I am observing that you are giving yourself a pretty hard time over your conditioned reaction to news of your dad’s diagnosis. Judging your reaction. Comparing your reaction to your brothers’. Not quite measuring up to some expectations you hold about what is acceptable, or okay, to feel, to do. The Buddhist in me thinks this is the surface ripple of something else that lies deeper within. Can you lean into your discomfort and whisper kindly and compassionately to the place from where it emanantes? Perhaps then the source of frustration will be confident enough to name its true fear.
Fascinating. I’m glad I don’t have to make you lie down on the couch and ask you what you think about in order to get you to open up.
My mentor in astrology had been doing astrology for fifty years, was a member of AFA, was never sure of her own chart. She said mine wasn’t right, that something was off, and — partly based on the timing of the loss of my parents — decided to give me a 6 Sag asc. It would have meant an alteration in my birth time of EXACTLY one hour. I later found out that the hospital in which I was born — a catholic hospital of all things — didn’t “believe” in daylight savings time around the time of my entrance to the world there.
Another astrologer I know said that I didn’t seem “like” a 6 Sag kinda guy, that she knew a few of ‘em, and I wasn’t exactly like the rest. Well I thought it odd that she would know a bunch of em and if I was among them that the possibilities that I might have been one of ‘em was like guilt by association or statistically improbable to be dislike the rest.
Or something like that.
There’s something about being an astrologer that makes it easy to interpret the charts of others but — when faced with your own — you can simultaneously understand it, and yet not.
My mother was a Gemini. I thought I knew her, but — years after her death — I was still discovering things about her. If I do indeed have a 6 Sag Asc, then my Desc is 6 Gemini. So I’ve encountered some Gemini energy in my life. And there’s a reason the astrological glyph is the way it is. There’s two sides to Gemini. Two truths: theirs, and the one they tell you. Actually, I think it’s two mirrors: one, and another reflecting the reflected image back to the first. Is it the same as the original?
They say Gemini is a mental sign. I agree with that. And by mental I refer to that song that my mother loved so much: “They’re coming to take me away, ah ha, they’re coming to take me away …”
Yes, anyway.
Getting to my point.
Let’s test your Gemini I/C idea. The duality of Gemini on your I/C would mean … hmmm … could there be an aspect of your home life that “they didn’t tell you?” With Gemini here, your home would have to serve two purposes. Home and … what? Mercury: Book store? School? Being an air sign, Mercury is actually much less attached than your Cancerian Saturn to a place, so it has to perform double duty.
How can you present two images of the same thing and have them both be right? I don’t know too much, because my seventh house is empty, and the ruler is combust. But answer this question, figure out how it can be two things, and you might have your answer as well. Two in one. Mercury would understand that.
But — as they said on Monty Python — it makes “my brain hurt.”
I’m sorry you’re struggling with all of this Neeti, but I hope your journey helps you find your place in the world. I think it’s very courageous of you to share – I’m sure others will relate and take comfort in the fact that they’re not alone. I notice how natural you are in your communications online – you have so many friends, maybe for you home isn’t so much a physical place as it is a state of mind, a way of feeling nurtured through contact with a variety of people and experiences.
I wish you all the best as you adapt to the idea of your parents’, as well as your own vulnerability. I have Saturn in the 4th (in Sag), so for me my roots are a mixed blessing. They run deep, but were never easy. When my father died and I was left with the task of cleaning out my childhood home, it began a symbolic process of freeing myself from the tangled root system that had imprisoned me. Later, my mother passed and much as I loved her, I knew I was finally free.
Pluto has been transiting through my 4th for many years now, and my husband and I jokingly refer to ourselves as gypsies, since circumstances always seem to necessitate us moving. It’s good though, in that it’s forced me to let go of my attachment to the idea of permanence. Maybe that’s the whole point of having a mutable IC, adapting so we can thrive.
Hang in there, Neeti. I’m sure you have lots of people sending you love.
I could relate to the “confused” chart. I never needed to have roots in my life but yet I bought an appartment so that I have some place safe right now to come back to. So may I suggest this line of thought: I don’t know how it is in India but if you have to leave your current (own) home couldn’t you just sell the house or offer it for rent? It does not confine that much.
You have an amazing versatile personality and this must be the result of the extensive travel and relocation you had as a child. Certainly that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing. At least in my book.
I know how bad it feels to acknowledge the aging of your parents. Frankly I was thinking about this very same thing last night.
Lots of love
It must be sad when you begin to notice your parents slipping away. Mine both died pretty young, which has its own disadvantages; but I was spared that long, slow goodbye, at least. I will say that within six months of my mother’s death, I bought my first house, and I knew it was absolutely about getting back some sense of roots.
With Gemini on the IC, I imagine you most at home among curious people, most nourished by words, voices, ideas, descended from a long line of thinkers and seekers. When you wrote the other day about the comfort of hearing your family’s voices in the other room, my Gemini Moon sprang to attention; as a child, nothing comforted me as much as hearing my parents’ voices down the hall. As long as there are words, the Gemini IC/Moon person is never without a home.
Funny, Neeti, I was just thinking about my IC last night. Actually it started with Virgo on the 5th, and the connection “work is fun” that I grew up with. Then I went to the IC, where Leo and Pluto reside. My mother was a single parent (my Sun sq Moon, Sat Rx) and sometimes she had a hard time making ends meet. So we would move suddenly to a new home or to stay with a relative for a while. Seldom were these luxurious environments, and I would nourish my Leo IC by tip-toeing into the dramatic adventure of the city at 4 a.m. to explore. The contrast of streetlights and dark shadows stirred my Pisces Moon sensibilities and produced poems. I would flit through the neighborhoods on the bus like a shadow, elusive and free. Leo there has always meant that my sense of self is firmly established in the home. Although I tend to be adaptable on the surface, visit my home and you will find me ruling the roost in an overstuffed chair- throne, tapping away at the computer keyboard.
Pluto there brought a mystery about my father… a dark, mysterious artist in the Merchant Marines. I recall walking in the desert early one morning as the sun was coming up, down a trench in which a little brook of oil sludged along underneath a thin veil of ice. I followed the oil to a huge lake of black goo studded with old garbage cans and half-submerged shopping carts. It stank of old memories, and I thought of my father, whom I had never met. To me it represented the dark abyss into which he had disappeared, never to return. I climbed up a ladder on the side of one of those huge pillbox oil tanks and looked down through a hatch at the blackness. Then I pulled off my ring and dropped it into the oil as a gift to my absent, unknown father, and slipped down the ladder toward home.
Another Leo IC here. I have Uranus in the 4th opposed moon in Aquarius (10th). Pluto is also in the 4th. Like “Misty day” I was constantly uprooted. I lost my mother when I was 11, because she had a nervous breakdown due to the stress of a husband that felt a need to wander, and having to raise children without his support. Even though he raised me for seven years, I have never been close to him. I have lived here in Miami for 35 years but, am not certain that it is really home despite the time spent here. I have moved so often in this city that I have never really been long in one place. Always a crisis precipitates an unexpected move. Two of these moves have been caused by the death of my partner. Presently, I am single although not by choice. The person I wish to be with has decided that they need to be free. For someone with a Scorpio dsc. letting them be isn’t easy. His mars is on the cusp of my dsc so I strongly suspect that the final note has yet to be played in this relationship.
I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your friend, and that your father has Parkinson’s, Neeti. I know Parkinson’s pretty well as my uncle had it… but he kept right on trucking no matter what, grilling meats for guests and keeping his social life alive, and I admired that.
I think you’re doing right in releasing everything in writing, which is so helpful in times like these. Just keep doing what is best for you, and believe in your father, that he’ll keep doing the best he can with what he’s got. It’s hard as hell. But he needs that support, and you can give that support… I know because I can read how you give it even in this post.
And I completely agree with you on the home ownership stuff. We feel the same way. Why rush into something we can’t afford, much less really keep around for life. We’re not guaranteed anything forever.
XOXO,
Debs
P.S. My IC’s in Aries. Home is where the crazy is
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Hi Neeti – I too have a Gemini IC. I am always flitting about and feel, most of the time, as though I have two homes. (One in Australia and one in Canada).
Definitely a shallow roots kind of placement!
K xx
Hi Neeti,
A truly moving and thoughtful post, beautifully shared.
I too have a Gemini IC, and have always moved moved moved, with no place I think of as home (though Seattle is getting there, and for a while, and still a bit, Munich was/is home).
I’ve gone through a couple of dark passages where each time I’ve come to a ‘new’ understanding for myself of death and time and change, but the first was the longest, deepest, and most affecting for me; it happened as t Jupiter hit my IC and t Neptune squared my Sun/ Jupiter natal conjunction. I’ve read of Jupiter’s connection to death, and believe it–the ultimate expansion, the longest ‘trip’–and t Pluto was in my 9th, offering to take me on the most transformative of journeys. At the time I had a dream that I now think was a visit to ‘the other side’ where I was offered a chance to live in a very peaceful village and ‘rest’ for as long as I liked–and I was very tired then!–but chose not to, and so crossed back over the river my guide had taken me across–only to have a dream a couple of nights later where I was running from a tank, that overtook and crushed me–and the next day we were in a car accident that affected me for years–but in the midst of the accident I knew I wouldn’t die–because I had chosen to stay in that first dream. These events were preceded by months of fear and depression as I compulsively contemplated death (as Pluto crossed my NN).
I think these are ‘journeys’ every thoughtful person takes–it all only emphasizes to me that we must live in the ‘best’ (in all senses) way we know how while we’re here–and that we must trust that the Universe is ultimately a loving place to be (to believe otherwise is to be miserable and gain nothing from being alive).
I hope you will come out the other side stronger too, dear Neeti–and all the best to your parents, and especially your father, as they continue on their journey.
Love, jd
Great share I also have a Gemini IC. Thanks for passing an awesome post on Gemini IC. Nice share…!!
Hi Neeti and once again thanks for your openness. Pisces IC and Aries Sun in 4th have led me to an unsettled life too. Your post rings a bell as I recover from the latest house move with the stellium hitting all that 4th house stuff and Uranus messing with my Sun! I have to rent a home as I could not bear to be tied to one place, however nice (Sag Moon and Mars).
Kahlil Gibran says this:
‘ …..Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast.
It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breath lest walls should crack and fall down.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living.
And though of magnificence and splendour, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.’
Yes, for me home is wherever I can dream. Best wishes to you and your parents, know you will have the strength you need. Love, Morvah
Hi Morvah, thank you very much for the Gibran quote. I’m a big fan of this, but I hasn’t read this before.
And thank YOU for the sweetness you trail behind when you visit my blog.
Sending you love.
P.S. My folks will be visiting me soon. Oh, 4-10th house stuff
[...] I’ve been holding myself back from writing this but having just read Neeti Ray’s beautiful post I find words tumbling in my mind, urging me to set them [...]
Neei that was an amazing piece which has prompted me to write a post of my own on this subject.
I’m so sorry to hear you lost your friend and your Father is ill. I have also just found out my father has Parkison’s but my experience of family is very different from yours. I am glad you have people around you to love and support you through this difficult time.
One thing I didn’t answer in my own post is about home. With the IC in Libra – home for me is where love is. I don’t feel at home at all in my own country but when I am with the person I love, I’m home.
Very moving post, Neeti. Like your younger brother, I have Pisces on the IC. I spent the first 20 yrs living on our family farm, the next 20 moving every couple of years and then when I married, my husband & I bought my family’s old home and have lived here ever since. With a Moon-Neptune conjunction, I do feel a deep connection to the place I grew up.
Also remember very clearly the period in my early-mid forties when Saturn opp Saturn, Neptune sq Neptune & Uranus was squaring my Moon/Neptune. It was then I had to face my mother’s mortality even though she lived another 15+ yrs. She & I were always very close and it was tough. In retrospect I am very glad she openly acknowledged her illness (an odd cancer of the blood) and gave all of us time to come to terms with her mortality. Blessings come in many forms, often unrecognized initially . . .
BTW, my mom died when Uranus was transiting my fourth house and was exactly inconjunct my Moon.
xo diane~
Thank you for your writing! I have IC in Gemini. I have moved and moved, both with my family (I moved 10 times till the age of 9) and after I started my own independent life, I have moved and moved – I’m currently planning to move again!
For me moving again and again has never felt bad, maybe because of my Sun in the Aries. I remember dreaming as a teenager about a life, where I would have a home in multiple countries, not settling into a one place. I still dream of that! I think I could say I feel I have no roots anywhere, but I feel home everywhere, in every place. The whole world is my home.