The 2021 Solar Eclipse in Gemini, Told Through The Sign’s Pop Culture Goddesses

One June 10, the hellmouth opens as a solar eclipse in Gemini unleashes power, possibility, and rage long repressed. Over a three-minute crisis of transformation, the moon will pass directly in front of the sun, creating an Mordor-class “ring of fire,” which promises to sear away the stagnant facades of self to which you still cling.

In the revelation of this eclipse, the thematic duality of the Twins — the voice of the divine, the limits of the mortal body — builds to a showdown, as the moon, so indicative of our inner demands, shuts down the sun’s authority of our outer presentation. This particular eclipse cycle, between Sagittarius and Gemini, has raged since May 2020, and closes this December, forcing a negotiation between the personal and the political, the big-picture and the quotidian. For this round, it’s all personal, as the ramparts of self, long-decayed and rendered irrelevant by the changes of the last 15 months, finally cave in. To formulate any plan or ritual for this cosmic event would be a direct contradiction: You cannot set terms for your own death.

This Gemini season has initiated a rabid scramble to resume normal life. In the shadow of reunions and reopenings, a sinking dissatisfaction emerges, as we realize how much of our former lives were hollow, and how much of ourselves we had to compromise to stay afloat. The ring of fire will sear through our shallow attempts at a comeback. Through the dark portal of the moon comes the shadows of our underworld: the long-sublimated impulses, desires and demands of our soul, no longer barred entry into consciousness. The awakening goes down in three stages — rage, reclamation and reintegration — best personified by three essential Gemini avatars: Alanis Morissette, Naomi Campbell, and Robyn.

“Now that life has resumed some semblance of normalcy, are you really going to smile your way through smallness? How much more of this sh*t are you going to take?”

First comes the fury. Mars, planet of drive and ego, has been drowning in the enmeshed waters of Cancer, struggling to voice its individuality amid a Greek chorus of guilt and obligation. For the first ten days of June, Mars has faced down in an opposition with Pluto, planet of destruction and recreation. In Capricorn, Pluto sets fire to the power of the state — bringing us to terms with the ways we’ve subsumed who we are and what we want under the crushing expectations of our parents, our social order, and the impossible terms of our economy.

Now that life has resumed some semblance of normalcy, are you really going to smile your way through smallness? How much more of this sh*t are you going to take? And so comes the wrath of Alanis, whose lyrics and vocals shatter the gaslight, raising the primeval fury of Lilith, mesmerized, betrayed and finally galvanized by her exile from the Garden of Eden. This rage exhumes buried power from the depths, transmuting repression to ire to justice. Mars’ power in Cancer is finally realized: Now freed from the oppressive contracts of your old life, you’re not about to be dunked under again, and neither will your loved ones.

Meanwhile, the liberator and revolutionary, Uranus, forces an absolute reclamation of personal abundance. In Taurus, Uranus answers to the highest authority, the goddess herself, who through the bounty of nature secures to each of us our born entitlement. Enter Naomi Campbell, who has yet to compromise her integrity, confidence or divine right to the very best, for anyone, at any cost, ever. Uranus, which brings freedom through upheaval, will clash in a square with Saturn, the ruler of structure and control, currently in the humanitarian Aquarius, culminating on June 14. If an opposition sparks a dialogue between two planets, a square is an ambush, a backseat driver, a question, in which the archetypes of freedom and order will test each other’s mettle.

The battle will reveal the ways that many of us have submitted to devastating scarcity, while others have claimed far too much for themselves in the name of personal “liberty.” If you are of the former, and you are waiting for permission to claim power, Uranus will smack you down until you finally stand up, and ground yourself in something of value, which can’t be bent or blown away. In the order of Naomi, dignity is immortality.

Risen from the abyss and rooted in the earth, you can now look to the skies. The eclipse squares Neptune, generational keeper of the collective consciousness, planet of imagination, empathy and intoxication. Welcome to the diaphanous halls of Robyn, where through veils of linen and gossamer await a love — and pain — so pure that they can obliterate all traces of selfhood. In its oceanic kingdom of Pisces since 2008, Neptune has triggered resurgences in alternative spirituality, astrology, psychedelics and — often regrettably — wellness, opioid dependence and a collective crash into virtual worlds.

Though it lacks boundaries, and surges through in a typhoon, Neptune seeks to realign us with our highest creative and emotional powers, which come from beyond and cannot be branded or held to the standards of a capitalist order. As the ring of fire burns away our outer ego, and the moon filters in Neptune’s high consciousness frequency, it’s as if you are finally tuning in to a quantum transmission, and starting to look beyond the daily drama of your shtetl. It’s a new decade, in a new century, and you’re a part of it.

Through the three stages — rage, reclamation and reintegration — the eclipse will refine the terms of our relationality. Gemini season is defined by its mutability, by the way we react to the stimuli abounding around us. In this jagged shift of our inner landscape, the dead weight of our daily lives — people, routines, facades — must be cast into the tectonic cracks. If you try to cling to them, they’ll just be more fuel for the ring of fire. You’ve been answering to the small potatoes in your life for too long. What happens when you meet a higher calling?