Second Decan of Gemini (10°–20°)

Mars sharpening the middle of Gemini

The second decan of Gemini runs from 10° to 20° of the sign. Mars follows Jupiter in the Chaldean order, so it takes this face. The triplicity scheme gives the second face of an air sign to the second air sign, Libra, and so to Venus. Mars has no other dignity in Gemini, and holding the face gives it a small base of its own in a sign that otherwise treats it as a guest. Mercury, the sign's ruler, stands behind both.

Mars brings heat, speed and a taste for contest. Gemini turns those into words: debate, satire, quick decisions, a mind that cuts through a problem. Venus, through Libra, adds charm and a sense of fairness, so this face can argue well and still be liked. Planets here think fast and speak sharply. When the energy has a task, it solves it; when it has none, it can turn on itself as worry or on others as cutting talk. The middle face of Gemini is its most combative.

The piper and the man who digs

Agrippa, using the Arabic image lists carried into Latin by the Picatrix, gives the second face of Gemini two figures: a man with a pipe, and another bent over, digging the ground. He reads them as a disreputable kind of nimbleness, the skill of jesters and jugglers, and also as hard labour and painful searching.

The two figures split the decan between them. The piper is the performer, quick, entertaining, able to change tune for any audience, a Mercurial figure with Venus's charm. The digger is Mars at work, searching hard for something buried and not stopping until he finds it. Put together, they describe a mind that can dazzle and that also cannot leave a question alone. The Golden Dawn title for the face's card, Lord of Despair and Cruelty, shows where the digging leads when it turns inward and the mind keeps unearthing reasons to suffer.

Hour stars with knives

The Egyptian decans began as thirty-six stars that marked the night hours, each for about ten days, listed on coffin lids from around 2100 BCE. In later centuries they took on a harder character. Late Period and Ptolemaic texts link them with the messengers of Sekhmet, the lion goddess of plague, and some temple figures of the decans carry knives. Each decan, ruling its ten days, was thought able to send illness or hold it back. Specialists still debate how close that link was.

A face ruled by Mars and carded with the Nine of Swords inherits some of that edge. The Hellenistic astrologers who placed the decans under the zodiac kept their reputation as powers that could help or harm. The particular star behind this face is not securely known, and it is not named here. The page on the Egyptian decan gods covers the decans' dangerous side.

The Nine of Swords, Lord of Despair and Cruelty

In the Golden Dawn system the Nine of Swords is Mars in Gemini, the middle decan of the mutable air sign, and Book T calls it the Lord of Despair and Cruelty. Behind it stand The Tower for Mars and The Lovers for Gemini.

In the Rider-Waite image a figure sits up in bed at night with their face in their hands, nine swords hanging in a row on the dark wall. The quilt is patterned with roses and astrological signs, and the carving on the bed shows one figure striking down another. Nobody is in the room except the sleeper. Read through this decan, the card shows Mars's fight with nowhere to go but the mind: arguments replayed, worst cases rehearsed, cruel words remembered. Its counsel is that the swords are on the wall, not in the body. The same sharpness that keeps this face awake can be pointed at a real problem in daylight.

A Sun or several planets in the second decan of Gemini

A Sun here belongs to people born in roughly the first ten days of June. You tend to be quick, witty and willing to argue, often for the pleasure of a good exchange. You can be persuasive and entertaining, and you go after answers with real persistence. When you lack a challenge, your mind may produce one, in the form of worry, sleepless rehearsal or a quarrel you did not need.

Several planets in this face give a chart a sharp intellect and a competitive way with words. These charts suit debate, journalism, comedy, law and investigation, as tendencies. The common difficulty is words used as weapons, against others or against yourself. Check Mars and Venus in your chart: Mars shows how much fight this face carries, Venus how gracefully it is spent.

Working with the second face of Gemini

Give your mind a fair fight every day, a hard puzzle, a debate, a problem at work, so it does not invent one at night. Keep a notebook by the bed and write the circling thought down, then leave it there until morning. Before you send a sharp message, read it aloud and ask whether it serves the point or only the win. Use physical exercise to burn off Mars, especially fast games with quick decisions. When you search, set a stopping point.