Music: Gemini vs. Capricorn (Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

Musings About Music
(from "Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrology 9/56)

Thoroughbred Geminians are whistlers, hummers, foot-tappers and finger-drummers, in response to their inborn instinct for melody and rhythm. In fact, that oft-quoted poem by Roman writer Manilius harps on the subject of the musical predilection of natives of this constellation. In old star maps the figures of the Twins are often shown holding a lyre as well as a club, and while the Bible gives the credit to Jubal, mythology holds that none other than Mercury himself invented the instrument.

The only other department of the zodiac traditionally associated with music is Capricorn, the connection evidently stemming from the belief that satyrs were the original "go-go-go" men. It's peculiar, unless approached from the "depth" standpoint, that there should be any Saturnian overtones in the subject of music, but after all, in the vernacular of the day, if you play well, you're cool, and if you play excellently, man, you're frozen solid!

When we learned that the harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler was born under Sidereal Capricorn we began to appreciate the significance of the original symbol of the Pipes of Pan! And, with Pan's Pipes still in mind, remember that the most celebrated organist in the world is the good Dr. Albert Schweitzer. This symbol motif point up a noticeable difference between the musical associations of Capricorn and Gemini, Capricorns are predominantly instrumentalists, while Geminians excel in vocalizing, composition and popular forms. The world's finest violinists and pianists are Capricorn born, e.g., Fritz Kreisler, Mischa Etman, Jascha Heifetz, Josef Hofmann and Artur Rubenstein. As for Capricorn singing, well. . . Tallulah handles "Bye Bye Blackbird" all right, I guess, and the way Ethel Merman blows you out of the third balcony is utterly charming. Jimmy Durante, Eddie Cantor, Danny Kaye and Gypsy Rose Lee are noted Capricorn performers with vocal backgrounds to their offerings. Capricorn is not all nerve and gravel, though, as witness sweet-toned Hildegarde, Kathryn Grayson, James Melton and Mario Lanza.

Although not traditionally connected with music, the constellation Aries boasts a significant excess of singers and composers. We have no straight doctrinal explanation for it, but would like to point out the odd circumstance of Aries-Gemini parallelism. In statistical tabulations, for some reason, Aries tends to copy the trends of Gemini categories, so that if Gemini rates higher than normal for a trait, Aries follows suit, and if Gemini has a low incidence of a characteristic, Aries very likely registers on the low side, too. Strangely the emulation is one-sided, for Gemini does not reflect the strictly Arian patterns.

Gemini's musical contributions to the world include the priceless vocal chords of Kirsten Flagstad, Madame Ernestine Schumann-Heink, Ebe Stignani, Frieda Hempel, John McCormack, Richard Crooks, Jeannette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Ilona Massey, Byron Palmer, even Gertrude Lawrence. Other representative musical personalities: Alec Templeton, Phil Harris, Guy Lombardo, Kay Kyser, Louis Armstrong, Jerry Gray, Lena Horne, Gary Crosby (father Bing is Aries), etc. Show biz names born under Gemini not ordinarily classed as singers none the less must not be overlooked, as for instance, George Murphy, Bob Hope, Milton Berle, James Cagney, Jane Russell, and Susan Hayward. Mercurial Leslie Caron and Gower Champion are Geminian dancers of note. In the composing and song writing fields, Geminians are tops, for both Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (dig that Geminian "II"!) are natives of this constellation, as are (were) Edward Grieg, Charles Gounod, Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan, Igor Stravinsky, Frank Loesser and John Golden.

Perhaps the reader has observed the tendency toward pairs where Gemini is concerned, such as Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Apart from music, note that the best known couple of our time, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, are Sidereal Gemini natives whom a whole empire could not prevent standing side by side! We don't know the birthdates of their partners, but mull this over: P.T. Barnum, Gower Champion, Stan Laurel and Peter Lind Hayes are Gemini-born people whose names are popularly linked, in the same breath with others in the tradition of "Castor and Pollux" (Bailey, Marge, Hardy and Healy).

Far and away the most interesting "twosomeness" re Gemini we've run across, however, is what appears to be author James Cain's fixation on duality. Geminian Cain, notable for his musical background, wrote "Double Indemnity" and "The Postman Always Rings Twice." We thought nothing about this two-ness until we learned that the original title for his finest work, the music saturated story now labeled "Serenade," was "Two Can Sing!"

ODDS AND ENDS. It was bound to happen sooner or later. After more than two hours of deliberation, judges of a major beauty contest just couldn't decide which of two luscious lasses should be be "Miss England." Outcome: the title was "divvied" up and for 1956 there are now two Miss Englands! Why mention this here: Because on the perplexing night of Friday, May 11, 1956, Venus was well into the constellation of Gemini. It's hard to think of a more appropriate astrological backdrop to the situation than this ensconcement of beauty-ruling Venus in the constellation eternally associated with twosomes.

[Jim Eshelman]

News Worthies
(from "Powwow Corner" by Garth Allen, American Astrology 2/61)

A favorite exercise of ours, long a habit, is to spot instances of the "coming true" of age-old symbols in news stories and passing incidents of everyday life around us. From time to time in the pages of this column we've cited examples of this remarkable phenomenon. Most examples prove nothing, of course, and are offered for their general-interest content. There are some that do clue us in to zodiacal realities, however, such as the fact that the demagogue Huey Long, familiarly called "The Kingfish," was born with the Sun in sidereal Leo and the Moon in sidereal Pisces - ergo, king and fish.

Then there were those aviation tragedies last autumn that were caused by birds, three accidents in a row while Mercury in sidereal Virgo (the winged constellation of the zodiac) was in square aspect to Saturn in Sagittarius (symbolized by a missile in flight and traditionally ascribed to be the constellation of long distance travel.

The most famous pair of hands in the country belong to sidereal Cancerian Ben Hogan; Aquarian reformer Anthony Comstock has A Thing about vases; the world's greatest harmonica virtuoso, Larry Adler, is Capricorn-born, recalling the pipes of Pan; the captain of the Los Angeles Rams has sidereal Aries on his Midheaven; and so on. Surely this tendency for fabled symbols to occasionally seem to come alive is one of the wonders of astrology.

Taking the cake for "living symbolism" is the recent case of the motion picture star who was accused of beating his dog. Deservedly acquitted of the charge after a trial lasting eleven ballyhooed days, the handsome young actor can justifiably "blame the stars" for his embarrassing plight.

Including the Strap
Born on a July 11th with the Sun in sidereal Gemini conjunct Sirius, the Dog Star, he had just entered a year of his life with a solar return showing Saturn in Sagittarius within one degree of exactly opposing Sirius. Almost incredibly he was plunged in to a career- damaging cycle of grief brought on by a dog! And the actual crisis came when Mars by transit bodily reached the degree holding Sirius; the Dog Star made a star of the star's dog. Doesn't that beat all?

As for the strictly zodiacal overtones, turn to Fagan's book Zodiacs Old and New and read the section dealing with the origins of the classical constellations. Under Gemini he writes: "....Crowned with the lofty double plumes of Amun he holds on high a flagellum in the act of striking. He was the Egyptian god of procreation. In Graeco-Roman astrology, the Sun-sign Sagittarius is portrayed as the trainer of fiery animals or the teacher of rebellious children (Gemini). It is a curious fact that more sadists and masochists are born during the Sun's passage of Sagittarius and Gemini, respectively, than at any other period of the year."

It's all there in the 1960 Hollywood drama, including a leather strap (the flagellum) and the reason for the actor's canine trouble. He had merely been training his unusually boisterous pet, in keeping with the rules and procedures recommended by professional animal trainers. But Gemini-born as he was, the Dog Trouble written in bold starlight across his horoscope for 1960, fate saw to it that suburban busybodies - who inherently have it in for bachelors anyway - preferred to see the old Egyptian scenario enacted through a fence that wasn't peek-proof enough. By the way, before this fuss about his dog was kicked up, the actor in question was famed for his two chief interests in life: horses and ice-skating. It is hard to think of two things more directly linked with the Sagittarius-Gemini motifs than these activities. But then some of you would insist upon calling the man a Cancerian.

[SteveS]

Garth Allen (Donald Bradley) wrote:

But then some of you would insist upon calling the man a Cancerian.