20 May Perfect Mind ~ New Moon in Gemini – May 22nd, 2020

But I am the mind of all and the rest of infinity. 

I am the knowledge of my inquiry, and the finding of those who seek after

…I am the one who is honored, and who is praised, and who is despised scornfully. 

…I am the substance and the one who has no substance…

-excerpt from The Thunder – Perfect Mind (Nag Hammadi manuscripts)

On May 22nd, the New Moon in Gemini will arrive initiating a fresh cycle of creative energy. New Moons occur when the Sun and the Moon conjoin, an intimate union of opposites that births new energy into the collective. With a rushing wind at your back, you will step bravely into a strange and surreal future.

The sign of the twins represents the dual hemispheres of the mind and their appetite for information. Thus, this New Moon in Gemini will influence the collective mind to expand in many directions at once, like a dandelion puff exploding into the air. In this way, the New Moon in Gemini serves as a gateway for knowledge, turning on a current of curiosity, voracious study and excitable conversations.

Mercury (ruler of Gemini) will be conjunct Venus Rx, stirring the desire to know the vast mutability and multiplicity of mind, to know the unity that underlies all things. Like the Oracle at Delphi, Mercury and Venus will be under the influence of Neptune’s hallucinatory vapors. Logic and reason will slip between the cracks, inviting your thoughts to flow into a symbolic stream that takes you deep into daydreams. 

Moved by the desire to know both sides of every equation, Gemini listens intently to the angel and the devil. As the mutable air sign, the nature of Gemini flies freely between worlds, inviting the cross-pollination of ideas, seeding unique synesthetic sensations into the atmosphere. 

As the consummate Gemini poet, Walt Whitman once said:

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

It is upon Gemini’s free-flowing cerebral hum that spontaneous adaptation and mutation occur, inviting the birth of true novelty. The mercurial nature of Gemini is diverse and nimble of mind, but struggles to see things only one way. And with the North Node in Gemini for the next 18 months, the collective mind will be flexing its powers of intellect, creating new neural pathways upon which to exchange vital knowledge. 

Thus, this New Moon represents a moment of great dissonance and struggle as it is a single narrative that seeks to create a global mono-culture of fear. Once again, the Information Age presents a brutal paradox: the more access to knowledge there is, the more conformity of thought and behavior is expected. As governments reveal their authoritarian intentions more brazenly by the day, the loss of livelihoods, civil rights, and the vital nectar of social connection are grinding everyone’s spirits down. The lusterless mind of the Borg seems to threaten like never before. 

At this New Moon, with the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus Rx and the North Node all fluttering through Gemini, the stasis of the global meta-narrative will be blown to smithereens. 

Over the next few weeks, as knowledge breaks free of its confinement, expect to encounter liberating paradigm-shifts and paradoxes that will demand a new flexibility of mind. Many will lament the swirling dust of misinformation. And many will resist the painful truths that are revealed. But true knowledge is a gift that you must be able to appreciate. 

In true Gemini fashion, you may find yourself pulled in both directions at the crossroads between light and dark, freedom and slavery, truth and deception. The only responsibility you have at this juncture is to think for yourself and question authority. It is through the stark duality of the hemispheres that Gemini reveals the nature of the mind, reflecting back and forth between binaries. As described in the ancient myth of Eden, the universe is split into duality, into the knowledge of good and evil, light and shadow, male and female. This tension between opposites seems to be the operational mechanism of manifest life. And the mechanism of life has a tendency to become quite mechanical, a computer program running in the background.

But as the Sun and Moon conjoin each month, a glimpse of transcendent union beyond duality is awakened. Something novel is born. An innate desire to experience spirit and matter as one returns. Moments of gnosis beyond the mechanical mind can emerge in everyone. The knowledge of duality eventually leads towards the mystery of original unity. It is this original unity that the Garden of Eden represents, that the Hindus call Brahma, and that ancient alchemists called the One or the All. 

Mystical cosmologies perceive unity as the root of all being, the center of the eternal flux that is rediscovered in transcendent unions between opposites. The underlying condition of unity is also perceived in synchronicity, the mysterious web that inexplicably weaves together vast stretches of time and space; above and below; internal and external. The experience of synchronicity reveals a reality beyond the mechanical realm of cause and effect. 

Ancient Hermeticists believed that a seed of divine light, born from original unity, was contained in all matter. Something that is holy is whole and unified. 

Thus, the work of alchemy was to liberate the light of the divine from the duality of matter. The first operation of alchemy, calcination, is devoted to burning away the dark matter that obscures and represses this divine light. From this initial breakthrough, the creative binaries of spirit and soul emerge, a polarity that coils together in alchemical union. This is the ultimate goal of Gemini, to break through the mechanical stagnation of mind, inviting the natural binaries within to braid together spirit and matter; light and shadow; emptiness and form.

Though the problems of 2020 are unique to the conditions created by globalization and information technology, the desire to break out of the confines of this polarized and mechanical world is as old as recorded history. 

Many ancient scriptures challenge humanity to break free of the world’s delusions and illusions. Believing that the world is a prison created by a mechanical intelligence is an ancient gnostic theme which has surfaced in lots of science fiction, most popularized in the 21st Century through the film, The Matrix. 

One particularly alluring gnostic text from the ancient world is a mysterious poem called The Thunder – Perfect Mind, which was discovered among the Gnostic manuscripts at Nag Hammadi. Thunder–Perfect Mind speaks in the voice of a divine feminine power that is beyond all opposites. 

“I am the incomprehensible silence and the much-remembered thought.

I am the voice of many sounds and the utterance of many forms.

I am the utterance of my name.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me

And hate those who love me?”

It is a poem of paradoxes, the divine voice associating itself with so many polarities that the rigid dualism of your mind begins to dissolve. Instead of identifying itself with single story or quality, it acknowledges the divine radiance in all aspects of life. This level of paradoxical association is not pleasant for the intellect, for it disintegrates the safe walls of logic and reason. But this disintegration is exactly the point, pushing you into a semi-psychedelic state.

If you believe that this ancient poem contains a glimmer of gnosis, of what lies beyond the beyond, then its aggravating use of paradox reveals the mechanical dualism of the mind, which has strangled humanity for so long. But from a gnostic perspective, the limitations of the senses and the internal battle of opposites can only be overcome by awakening the perfect mind. 

I am strength and I am fear.

I am war and peace.

Give heed to me.

I am the disgraced and the exalted one…

By affirming opposite qualities, the perfect mind establishes that divinity is beyond all such categories. Thus, this maddening paradox is meant to awaken a deeper level of consciousness that is beyond the mechanical quality of the dual hemispheres. Perceiving that there is unity beneath division, that there is connection within separation, is gnosis, which means to know.

“…I am the incomprehensible silence and the much-remembered thought.

I am the voice of many sounds and the utterance of many forms.

I am the utterance of my name…”

The perfect mind is like a chalice for divine inspiration, receiving all experience without hate or fear. And it is the highest calling of the sign of Gemini to align your mundane mind with this perfect mind: never disassociating, but forever associating with the original unity.

At this New Moon in Gemini, seek to experience the furious conflict in the world and the flurry of paradoxical information as an invitation to awaken a much deeper level of consciousness, one that remembers the original unity in all things.

Much Love,

Rachel