Wood Wide Web

Image: Nathan Dumlao

Post by Jane Lewis

Questions, questions, questions!  Gemini, the sign of The Twins, raises lots of them but essentially it speaks to us about the duality of life.  The Ancients thought in terms of “as above so below” whereas modern man thinks more about relativity theories.  But either way, Gemini is about inter-connectedness even though everything has an opposite that defines it. 

The duality of Heaven and Earth is the very stuff of spiritual astrology.

Question: if we think of the first sign Aries, in which the Sun is exalted, as representing Spirit and the Heaven World, and of the second sign Taurus, in which the Moon is exalted, as representing Earth, then what does Gemini, the third sign tell us? 

Answer:  that mankind is the bridge linking Heaven and Earth by using our Minds (the root word comes from the Sanskrit ‘manas’ meaning Mind), sustained by the breath.

Image: Emile Perron

Gemini is about language, signs, symbols and communication of all kinds, especially between the unseen world of Spirit and the manifest physical world.  It is about channels, vehicles, carriers, conduits and instruments that enable things to be transported from one place to another, and things to change from one thing into another, fundamentally the elements fire, earth, air, water and ether.  In all its diversity, everything is linked together in a gigantic web.   In the mundane world we see Gemini as words, books, schools, and as trains, cars and roads, all of which are connected to much deeper meanings.

The earliest language systems were oral, and knowledge and wisdom were circulated verbally, the highest forms being prophecy and divinely inspired poetic utterances.  Human knowledge was acquired by observing the skies above and the natural world below, with trees in particular being honoured as holders of practical information and higher wisdom.  The Celtic tree language Ogham (pronounced Oh-am) is a type of alphabet with a symbol for each tree carved onto wooden staves resembling branches growing from a trunk.  Each has a particular meaning, or kenning, which goes deep, like roots, and reaches high into the air of divine inspiration, so linking man with the world of nature and with the gods and higher realms.

Image: Nasa

Mercury, the ruler of Gemini, is the Winged Messenger who enables our lower self to communicate with our Higher Self within the constellation of our own being.  In order to understand what on earth life is all about we constantly ask questions.  The question mark symbol is thought to come from the ancient sacred staff of augury, the lituus, a straight stick with a curved wave-form end.  Like water, the wave represents the mysterious, unknown liminal area between the spiritual and material worlds, that is, between the realm of possibility and what actually exists.  The dot, or bindhu, below it symbolises the seed potential, or actual reality.  The curved line represents uncertainty but the dot shows that the questioner contains the answer within themselves.  Astrology acts as a mysterious channel that beats pathways through the liminal area within ourselves, with the astrologer mediating between a client’s uncertainty about something in their lower mind and their knowledge of the answer all along deep within.  These pathways are not simply linear but circular and weblike, like ivy that spirals its way up, around, between, across and through, thereby linking disparate and seemingly opposite parts.

As human language and wisdom grew out of our communion with trees, we can today re-member that forgotten knowledge.  If we get bogged down with too many facts and figures we can easily lose sight of the overarching truths and lose our innate ability to see the wood for the trees.  Wood is itself a geminian word, containing two doubles: double ‘u’ and double ‘o’.  Like a pair of eyes oo  allows us to read and understand the open book of nature through climbing the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

Image: Flash Dantz

Gemini and Mercury relate astrologically to all organs of speech and communication – the tongue and hands – our digits. Some cultures gesticulate a lot and really use their hands, arms and faces to express themselves. Mercury also governs lungs and breathing apparatus.  Speech, indeed life itself, depends upon the breath, upon the air we inhale and exhale.  We are utterly dependent upon trees for the oxygen we take in and for absorbing the waste product, carbon dioxide, we expel.

Trees rarely stand alone but grow in woodland communities.  It has become clear that the Aquarian Age has been slowly manifesting through digital languages with the advent of computers which are essentially binary.  The internet has done much to bring peoples all over the world together in communities, some local and real, others distant or virtual.  No surprise then that the inventor of the world-wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, is a Gemini.  As his time of birth is unknown I’ve cast a noon chart given his huge influence on the world.  His Sun is widely conjunct the moon’s south node which itself conjoins Mercury in Gemini.  This suggests that he’s likely to have done this kind of thing before and may have come back to Earth this time to do something similar again, but with some revisions since Mercury is retrograde.  When he invented the WWW in 1989 his secondary progressed converse Mars was 16 Gemini conjunct his radix Sun.  In his natal chart fixed star Rigel is zodiacally conjunct his Sun, indicating a mission to bring knowledge to others.  Betelgeuse and Polaris conjoin Mercury which marks him out as someone who can succeed in showing others the way.  It is interesting to note his Jupiter-Uranus conjunction.

Prof. Suzanne Simard, Canadian scientist and Professor in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia has in more recent years re-discovered the ‘wood wide web’, showing how trees really do live in communities with the ability to communicate and support one another via an underground mycorrhizal network.  The Aquarian age of science and technology really is starting to give scientific proof to ancient knowledge, demonstrating that trees really do speak to one another and have much to tell us about how to live together in supportive communities.