How the Planets Show Up in Your Love Life

Venus is about to enter Libra and love is on my mind. I wanted to share how each planetary archetype can show up in your love life. Venus and the Moon are the primary focus when starting to delineate what a chart has to say about romantic relationships. And that is completely fair, as the Moon and Venus tend to show up quite loudly in interpersonal relationships. But each of the planets can play a key function in describing the quality of your relationships, how you show up in them, what you desire, etc. You have all of the planets in your chart, after all, and you are bringing ALL of who you are into a relationship too. This archetypal briefer is also good for getting a grapple on the sign these planets happen to be in for you. For example, do you have Venus in Gemini? Then the archetypes of Mercury can play a large role in your romantic relationships, as Mercury rules Gemini. Even more, we all have a 7th house in our charts, the house that describes one-on-one relationships. If you have Saturn in the 7th house, looking only to the placements of your Moon or Venus, which may not be in your 7th house, can keep from you crucial information about how Saturn shows up in love. Let’s get into each planet, the traditional 7 first, rounded out with our 3 modern planets.

Sun: The Sun describes how we can feel seen in relationships. The Sun in your love life may ask that your relationships allow independent growth, that your partner even encourage this growth. These relationships provide and require nourishment for both individuals to go off and be their most authentic selves. In relationship, the Sun plays a role in understanding the self through the other and incorporating all that you experience into the refinement of your character. The Sun wants you to find someone who spotlights your spark.

Moon: The Moon describes our inner most and sometimes subconscious needs for comfort and security. The Moon in your love life shows up as automatic impulses to protect and nourish the feeling body and foster emotional wellbeing. In relationship, the Moon seeks to get these foundational needs met through the other, and through the bond of the relationship itself. The Moon also describes the instinct we have about others, and the sometimes-magical leap of logic it takes it fall in love or get swept off your feet. The Moon wants you to find someone who sees the true you, and who nourishes it.

Mercury: Mercury describes our cerebral processing, our communication style, and how we mentally organize our way through life. Mercury in your love life can show communication style, the topics that matter to you, and the most basic perceptual way you see the world. In relationship, Mercury wants to plan, to bounce ideas off of people, to feel understood and uniquely intelligent, and to banter in ways that support conflict-resolution and connection. Mercury wants you to find someone who can meet your mind.

Venus: Venus describes what we find attractive, what we value, the style of relating we have, and the temperament behind your social self. Venus in your love life obviously shows you what you love, not only in another person, but what you love in a relationship, in courting, in flirting, etc. Venus also shows what you love in yourself, what needs to be valued and cherished by the other person. In relationship, Venus describes how we relate to others—if we need space, if we need gifts or if we need physical affection. Venus wants you to find someone who truly loves and values exactly what you bring to the table. 

Mars: Mars describes passion, how we actually put action behind what we value and desire, how we find it. Mars in your love life can show what activates you, what triggers a need to chase or be around a person. Maybe it is their mind, maybe it is how they interact with children, maybe it’s purely sexual. Mars galvanizes us into action. In relationship, it can show us why excitement waxes or wanes, what angers someone, our comfort-level with danger or spontaneity, and/or the physical component of attraction. Mars wants you to find someone who makes you feel alive.

Jupiter: Jupiter describes our high mind, faith systems and beliefs. It also shows us where we like to feel expanded, perhaps where we have a talent, or what we need in order to stoke joy and awe. In relationship, Jupiter wants to grow, to take up space, to share worldviews and culture. Jupiter as a planet associated with philosophy can also show us the worldviews we vibe with in another, and Jupiter as a planet of academia can show up as partners who share a similar educational background. Jupiter seeks wisdom through partnerships and requires a teachability in us. Jupiter wants you to find someone who you can learn from and with.

Saturn: Saturn describes our relationship to discipline, long-term planning, and the ability to withstand challenge and lack. In relationship, Saturn seeks reliability. Saturn is called relationship glue. It is a planet that enjoys firm foundations, of which no relationship worth its salt is ever without. Saturn is also the planet of boundaries and respect, of long-term viability, and monogamy. Saturn wants you to find someone who sticks with you through thick and thin, and respect your needs.

Uranus: Uranus describes excitability and fascination with the other. Uranus is akin to Cupid’s bow—out of nowhere, you have become lovestruck. Conversely, Uranus can also describe our desire for space, autonomy, and cooler more informal bonds. In relationship, Uranus requires a long leash, either in physical spaces, or in mental ones—Uranus loves a radical idea and the forward momentum of thought. Uranus wants you to find someone that lets you color outside the lines.

Neptune: Neptune describes our ideals, our imagination, and our personal fairytale and fantasy. If you relate, Neptune is the planet that dreams of marriage far before it’s ever a viable option. Neptune is a planet that dissolves, requiring a sense of merging and devotion in relationships, whether sexually, emotionally, or spiritually. Neptune heals and can look for healing in others which is sublime when it works out. Other times, Neptune enters in as a sense of distorted reality, or as the victim-savior complex. This is where those Saturn boundaries act as antidote. Neptune wants you to find someone who reminds you of the magic in the world.

Pluto: Pluto is a planet of control, transformative experiences, and crisis-induced regeneration. In relationship, Pluto is first and foremost looking for intensity, the kind that penetrates the soul, the bone marrow. Pluto brings in a type of all-or-nothing attitude that can both acquaint the relationship to its own strength or destroy the relationship all-together. Pluto requires unapologetic honesty and tends to draw out the ugly parts of the individuals in the relationship. Those focused and willing to transform these ugly bits together are rewarded with life-changing intimacy. Pluto wants you to find someone who will hold your hand to hell and back.

Reframing Gemini: The Sign That Yearns Most for Love

(I started looking at the archetypes of the signs and reframing how we have come to view them as strictly this or strictly that. I've come to find a lot of wiggle room and nuance in them. This time, I talk about Gemini, the archetype of orphan and why they are the ultimate lovers of the zodiac. Check out my reframing of Capricorn and Aquarius!)

Gemini has earned a contentious reputation in modern Astrology as the sign of backstabbers and face dancers. At best, they are social butterflies, the jack of all trades but master of none. At worst, they are fake, two-faced, and devious. In more evolutionary and studied terms, they are wordsmiths, purveyors of information and communicators, flitting back and forth between ideas and beliefs, never quite settling on a firm ideology. Gemini as mutable air in a society that prefers black and whites, this or thats, yes or nos—is threatening. The perceived duplicitousness of this sign is not done in malice, but rather in aversion to absolutes. But beyond notions of gray matter and gab, beyond tricksters and hipsters, the heart of Gemini has more or less eluded people. As mutable air would, the more soulful and loving core of Gemini has become a ghost, imperceptible, but always lurking if you’d dare coax it. So, allow me to briefly resurrect.

The myth of Gemini involves Castor and Pollux, Greek demigods and twin sons of Zeus (or Jupiter!). They were so inseparable, so close that when one of them died, the other asked to be immortalized in the sky right next to him. As such, they came to represent the duality between life and death, between Hades and Mt. Olympus. This introduces us to the archetype of the divine twin, opposites that come to represent the whole. Gemini as bridge between spectrums, a connector. In an evolutionary theory of the zodiac, where Aries is the burst of life, and Taurus is life crystallized, Gemini enters as curiosity, a spark of awareness. Gemini is the soul seeking to understand itself through thought. And it is in this stage that Gemini is introduced to the other, that there are other sparks of awareness sparking with awareness. We can see this in the fact that Gemini is the first sign to have humans as representation, two humans, where Aries and Taurus are both personified animals. This is where the existence of relationship is born—with Gemini.

Contextualizing Gemini within the inception of human relationship is integral in reframing this sign, modernly seen as flippant and unable to commit, a collector of human interactions versus a wholehearted participant in them. In fact, the soul of the Gemini yearns deeply to connect, because without the other, Gemini simply doesn’t exist. It is here that the twin nature of Gemini need not only represent the solo swims between polarities, but also, or rather*,* the search for the other. It is through a mirror that we come into full understanding of self. The Gemini is searching for someone to relate to (etymology of relationship contains ‘relate’), and thus this spark is the birth of primordial love—because with Gemini, there is no life without another, without understanding and relating to another. Could it be that the apparent socialness and chattiness of this sign is this search for other in action? Gemini is indeed guided by a restlessness for interaction that can be informed by this deep need for relationship, whether they are conscious of that or not. Could it also be that the boredom associated with this sign is merely the absence of true connection, of true soul stimulation?

Back to the myth, Castor and Pollux demonstrated profound brotherly love and sacrifice to be with one another. As demigods of friendship, whenever their stars were bright in the sky, ancient Romans knew they had cosmic favor on their side. Gemini orients to the world through this same fraternity and compassion. In the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck, Gemini is illustrated as the lovers. Though steeped in controversial religion and dogma that I will not indulge, this card can be seen as two individuals, perhaps Adam and Eve, God’s first human creations, reaching out to each other over the backdrop of Taurus splendor, perhaps the Garden of Eden. Adam was lonely, and thus Eve was created for him. So inherent to the Gemini is this resounding need for company.

That brings us to the archetype of the orphan child. Gemini is often described alongside the character of Peter Pan. Gemini is swift, childlike, silly, full of “lovely wonderful thoughts,” and never wants to grow up. But there is a dark origin story here. In some renderings of the tale, Pan left an orphanage to embark on a series of adventures, later locating his parents only to find that they’d replaced him with another child. He becomes leader of The Lost Boys, a group of misfits all abandoned by their parents. That makes the soul ache. In even darker origin stories, Pan actually kidnapped children from their mothers, desperate for connection and friendship. The confluence between Peter Pan and Gemini is no accident, and I firmly believe that the archetypal resonance between Gemini and Pan is cosmically fact-checked by the tale of Castor and Pollux, cemented centuries before. Both stories simply show the intense desire for relationship, to be seen and heard by the other, to be with the other. Devoid of connection, the Gemini is rendered an orphan child.

A person with strong Gemini in their chart can somehow feel they don’t fit in with their family of origin. This can be because of religious differences, ideological differences, and other jarring differences in worldview than can make the Gemini feel alone, like an orphan. Even the insidious ways parents invalidate the Gemini spark, like forcing a career, or belittling personal taste and style, or burdening the child with adult tasks, can leave a person feeling untethered. In popular orphan child stories like Harry Potter and The Wizard of Oz, the protagonist only comes into full understanding and appreciation of self through others, unconsciously creating familial bonds with people along the way. So too does the Gemini. They demonstrate a powerful drive to connect with others. It is fundamental to the Gemini that they be mirrored, that they be seen, that they be loved. While perhaps picking up many beliefs and ideas, friends and partners along the way, the Gemini’s primary motivation is reunion with their twin. Modern spiritual musings corroborate this further with the invention of phrases like “twin flame” and “mirror soul”. Half-baked romanticisms like “you complete me” further exemplify this search for wholeness by bringing together two separate parts. Even NASA’s Project Gemini was named after a spacecraft built for only two. These are all concepts that are rooted in the myth of Gemini and in the archetype of Gemini.

Gemini offers more than what pop astrology has turned it into. I hope that this reframing has helped you make like a Gemini and change your mind about the Gemini’s in your life, and helps you come into a fuller understanding of the impenetrable soul bond offered by this sign.

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

-Walt Whitman, Gemini Sun