Why I Launched My Substack During Gemini Season
Time for a little deep-dive on one of my special interests: Astrology
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If you’re looking for more info on my books, you can find them all here on my website. I also created a bunch of free herb profiles as a part of my work as an herbalist. You can find those here!
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It’s Gemini season, and as a person with an overabundance of Gemini placements I want to talk about astrology and how I used it on deciding when to finally launch my Substack (which I just did last week). I would not consider myself an astrologer, but it’s definitely one of things I’m most interested in right now.
This post is going to get weird. And in-depth. And very astrology focused, so buckle up. If you’re looking for a good, quick primer on astrology, definitely check out You Were Born for This by Chani Nicholas.
My Personal Astrology
I have a Gemini stellium1 and some other fun things in Gemini. I also have a lot of challenging things in my chart—squares2 and oppositions3 because so many of my planets are in mutable4 signs (like my Sagittarius moon and my mars in Pisces and my Virgo rising).
But today we’re focusing on the Gemini of it all. Gemini is a mutable air sign. As a mutable sign, it’s all about flexibility / adaptability / shape shifting. That’s because mutable signs take place as we’re shifting from one season to the next—dispersing the energy of spring into summer (Gemini), summer into fall (Virgo), fall into winter (Sagittarius), winter into spring (Pisces).
Because Gemini is an air sign, we’re talking ideas / communication / intellect.
As a mutable sign, then, Geminis are dispersing ideas. They’re communicating. They’re very likely writing. For me, my Gemini is in the part of my chart related to public roles and career (my 10th house5). Is it any wonder that I’m an author?
Here’s the breakdown of my Gemini placements:
My sun is in Gemini. Your sun is how you shine, how you live out your life’s purpose. As a Gemini sun, I am collecting and then dispersing ideas. Because my sun is in my tenth house, I’m putting those ideas out in a very public way (hello novels, hello Substack).
My chart ruler (Mercury) is in Gemini. I’m a Virgo rising, which means the planet that rules my chart is Mercury. Your chart ruler is essentially the main character planet that represents you in the chart, so it informs your identity and purpose. Mercury is the messenger. It’s the planet of communication, and it’s at home in Gemini. Meaning not only is my chart ruler very comfortable here and able to thrive, but I have a lot of energy directed related to communication in my birth chart. And again, all of that is in my 10th house—my career, my public-facing self.
My Venus is in Gemini. Venus is how you connect—it’s associated with beauty and relationships. In my 10th house, it means being connected to the public is a big priority for me. It also means my varied interests (astrology being one them) is a huge part of my aesthetic.
My Chiron is in Gemini. Chiron is the wounded healer, and where it is in your chart is how and where you find healing. Once again in words. Once again in my career. If you don’t know this about me already, writing is a huge part of my healing process. My books are one of the ways I alchemize my pain into something new (my first published novel, In the Shadow Garden, literally had a garden that grew magical fruits and vegetables from pain fed into the soil). Writing is a way I can heal myself and others.
My Midheaven is in Gemini. Your midheaven is the highest and most public point in your birth chart—your career path and your most successful endeavors. It usually falls in your 10th house, though occasionally it’s in your 9th or 11th. So again, we’re talking about dispersing information in a very public way.
So why did I launch my Substack in Gemini season?
If you thought we’d done a deep dive on astrology, it’s about to get deeper. Everything above is where the sky was at the moment of my birth. My decision to launch my Substack in Gemini season this year isn’t only related to my natal chart, but to what is happening in the sky right now (or last week, to be precise).
I launched on May 25th, the day before the new moon in Gemini. I did this because I wanted to pull in all of my own Gemini energy I mentioned above. But that’s not all. On May 25th, Mercury moved into Gemini—where it thrives—basically amplifying anything related to communications (hello, Substack!).
That wasn’t the only good thing happening in the sky for those of us with Gemini placements. Jupiter has been in Gemini for the past year. Now Jupiter doesn’t do super well in Gemini (it’s in what we call its detriment6), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s the planet of good fortune. I wanted to harness its power of abundance before it leaves Gemini on June 9th. Jupiter is the planet of good fortune, but it struggles in Gemini (the sign of its detriment).
Then, on May 26th, we had a new moon in Gemini. New moons providing wonderful energy for planting new seeds, launching new endeavors. And in Gemini? Excellent for word/communication-related projects! But this wasn’t any ordinary new moon in Gemini. You see, Neptune has been in Pisces since 2011—Pisces, squares Gemini (and vice versa), meaning they challenge the energy of the planets and luminaries that are in their signs at the same time. Neptune is a planet of illusion and sometimes delusions, which can put a damper on that whole new moon energy. But, but Neptune FINALLY moved out of Pisces on March 30, so this was our first Gemini new moon without the challenge of Neptune in over a decade.
TLDR; we had the sun, the moon, mercury, and Jupiter all in Gemini working together.
Which brings me to the other part of my original point: I’ve been thinking about breaking out. I really, really want Witches of Honeysuckle House to be the one. The book that people recognize. The one they buy for their friends. The one that hits a list. All those big author goals and dreams. So, I launched a Substack in Gemini season—leveraging that new moon in Gemini with Jupiter and Mercury co-present—to pull from the energy of the stars to amplify my communications, writing, and all things related to my career (10th house).
Will starting a Substack (and keeping up with that Substack) make that happen? Probably not by itself. But I’ll never know unless I try.
Until next time…
If you made it all the way to the end of this post, hello! Thank you for reading. Here’s a little sneak peek of the cat who is featured in Witches of Honeysuckle House. Here’s a link to all of my books, and here’s a link to my Spotify playlists for all my books. If you want to hear from me more often, I'm always on Instagram and TikTok, frequently on Threads, slowly migrating to BlueSky, and I share all my plant and herb content on Pinterest.
Wishing you healing wherever you may need it.
xo
Liz
Stellium: Three or more planets/luminaries in the same house. In my case, it’s my sun, mercury, and venus.
Square: Planets that are three signs away from each other (or around 90°). Squares cause tension between the planets that are squaring each other.
Opposition: Planets that are six signs away from each other (around 180°). In looking at an astrological chart, they’re directly opposite each other on the wheel. They are literally in opposition to each other, so we have to find balance between them. (My sun and moon are in opposition, for example).
Mutable: Mutable is one of the modalities of an astrological sign—the four mutable signs are Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces. The modalities include cardinal, fixed, and mutable. Cardinal signs happen at the start of the season, fixed signs sustain the current season, and mutable signs finish a season and prepare us for the coming season.
Houses: There are twelve houses in astrology, and they represent different areas of your life—the self, your resources, creativity, work, public life, etc. Here is a great resource that breaks these down.
Detriment: Detriment means a planet is not super comfortable in a sign and has to work harder to do what it does best, which gives us a chance to grow in new ways.
Love this abundance of Gemini energy!