Third Decan of Gemini (20°–30°)

The Sun at the end of the air sign

The third decan of Gemini runs from 20° to 30° of the sign. The Sun follows Mars in the Chaldean order and takes this face. The triplicity scheme gives the third face of an air sign to Aquarius, and so to Saturn; modern astrologers add Uranus as Aquarius's co-ruler. Saturn also rules the air triplicity by day, so it has a second link to the decan. The face ends at the June solstice, the turning point of the year, where the Sun reaches its greatest declination and the sign gives way to Cancer.

The Sun brings a centre, a will and a sense of authority to the most scattered sign in the zodiac. Saturn adds structure and finality. After two faces of collecting ideas and arguing them, this one must decide what it thinks and own it. Planets here can be clear and authoritative, able to pull loose threads into a system. They also meet the end of a mental cycle, and sometimes that end comes as a crash before the clarity arrives.

The man seeking weapons and the fool with a bird

Agrippa, working from the Arabic image lists that the Picatrix made available in Latin, describes the third face of Gemini as a man seeking weapons, together with a fool who holds a bird in his right hand and a pipe in his left. He links the image with forgetfulness, anger, boldness, jokes, coarse talk and useless words.

It is an unflattering picture, and an honest one about the risks of the decan. The fool with the bird and pipe is Gemini's talk at its emptiest, noise and play that lead nowhere. The man looking for weapons is what happens when the talk turns angry and someone reaches for something sharper than words. The Sun as ruler asks this face to rise above both, to stop chattering and stop fighting and speak with the weight of a considered view. The Golden Dawn title of its card, Lord of Ruin, shows the end of a quarrel that went too far.

The last career of the decan stars

The decans started as thirty-six Egyptian stars that marked the night hours, each for about ten days, recorded on coffin lids from about 2100 BCE. Over two thousand years they went from hour stars to gods, from gods to the dangerous powers of late temple texts, and finally, in late antiquity, to demons. The Testament of Solomon presents the thirty-six as spirits bound by the king, each confessing the illness it brings.

That last turn, an old order reduced to a list of threats, suits the closing face of the first air sign and the card of ruin that goes with it. The Hellenistic astrologers had already fixed the decans to the zodiac, and this face fell at the solstice. Which Egyptian star stood behind it cannot be said with confidence. The page on the Egyptian decan gods traces the whole arc from star to demon.

The Ten of Swords, Lord of Ruin

The Golden Dawn assigned the Ten of Swords to the Sun in Gemini, the last decan of the mutable air sign, and Book T titles it the Lord of Ruin. Behind it stand The Sun and The Lovers.

The Rider-Waite card shows a man lying face down with ten swords in his back under a black sky. Along the horizon a yellow dawn is breaking over calm water. It is the most extreme image in the suit, and it is also an ending, since nothing more can be done to him. Read through this decan, the card shows a line of thought, a quarrel or a plan carried to its conclusion. The Sun as ruler is the dawn in the picture: after the ruin, a clear light and a new day. Saturn's share of the face says that endings are part of structure. Some ideas have to die completely before a better one can stand.

A Sun or several planets in the third decan of Gemini

A Sun here belongs to people born in roughly the ten days before the June solstice. The Sun rules this face, which gives it a minor dignity of its own in Gemini. You tend to be articulate and independent in your thinking, more interested in the whole system than in single facts. People may look to you for the final word. You can also push a debate past the point where it helps, or keep going on a plan that has already failed.

Several planets in this face give a chart a confident, systematic intelligence with an original streak from the Aquarian side. The common gift is the power to draw conclusions and stand behind them. The common difficulty is mental overload, or words that burn bridges in anger. Check the Sun and Saturn in your chart, the two rulers of this decan.

Working with the third face of Gemini

Summarise your view on a question in one paragraph and keep it; that is the Sun's job in this decan. Notice when an argument has stopped producing anything new, and end it. When a plan fails, write down what it taught you before you start the next one. Protect your mind from overload with quiet time and fewer inputs. Get up early once in a while and watch the light come back, the image the Ten of Swords holds out.