Dissing Gemini

This is a short pamphlet on astrology, written by Manly P Hall, an American esotericist with ideas broadly similar to those of Theosophy. It's not clear to me when this short text was written. The pamphlet mentions Hitler and Mussolini, and by implication Mussolini's death, but Pluto had not yet become the ruler of Scorpio. Perhaps it was written shortly after World War II? The current edition is from 1982. A Kindle edition also exists, but lacks the illustrations.

Hall's pamphlet is pretty basic astrology 101. It's interesting only in the sense that it establishes Hall's own belief in a fairly modern interpretation of natal astrology. While there are 12 basic personality types corresponding to the sun signs, Hall does believe that a person can change with hard work and determination. All signs have both negative and positive qualities. The pamphlet emphasizes the negative ones, the author at one point saying that he doesn't want to be too indulgent to the readers (more specifically, readers born in Cancer!). His interpretations of the various signs are more or less the standard ones. I won't reveal what interesting insights I might have gleaned even from this little work. ;-)

However, I feel I just have to share the author's “dissing” of Gemini . Here goes!

“It is from the ranks of the neo-intellectuals that we develop our parlor socialists, our “modernists” in poetry and letters, and those arm-chair anarchists who have theoretical explanations for every circumstance of living. (…) We are forced to remind the reader that Gemini is unusually conspicuous in the annals of certain types of crime. In the lower scale, Gemini, ruling the fingers, bestows a certain lightness upon them, resulting in pickpockets and forgers. Truthfulness in particular is difficult to Gemini people.”

For the record, I'm not a Gemini, while Hall was (of course) a Piscean! While “Psychoanalyzing the Twelve Zodiacal Types” isn't very deep as astrology goes (you will find more information in many commercial and glossy volumes on the birth signs), it feels somewhat unfair to give it two stars, so therefore I give it three. After all, even an “initiate” like Hall had to explain the basics sometimes…