You could read this chart almost purely from his Sun and Moon signs. Therefore, to give the greatest amount of information fastest, please read the standard interpretations:
Sun in Gemin:
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Moon in Taurus:
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Sun in Gemini centers on reason, play, and pluralism. Moon in Taurus is reflective, tender, and sensual.
I say you can read this primarily from his luminary signs because - from Gemini and Taurus alone - you'd expect his Mercury, Moon, and Venus needs to be strongest. Looking further, we find that (based on angularity and luminary aspects) the strongest needs are
also Mercury, Moon, and Venus - plus Saturn. (You have to add Saturn.)
In addition to Sun in Gemini, Mercury is rising within 0°14' (which alone puts it at 100% strength) and is in 1°49' mundane square to Moon.
Information needs are his strongest basic needs, including curiosity, needs to gain and share information, and to understand and demonstrate the relationships between facts.
So he's fundamentally an intellectual, an information mover, etc. As a Gemini-Taurus, he's "a Gemini with a Taurus style,"
i.e., a sensual intellectual. (At least, that's the way I describe a Gemini-Taurus friend of mine who has graduate degrees in three sciences, has worked in three independent fields of sciences, and in his personal life is an indulgent sensualist - if you can imagine someone wired and tense while resembling a cuddly stuffed bear.)
Besides Moon in Taurus (exactly at its exaltation degree, if that matters), Moon is only 2°02' from Midheaven. Moon in us is that which adapts and response - the neuroplastic ways that we adapt to our physical, psychological, and social habitats. While Gemini is mutable with enormous, shifting interests going off in many different directions, Moon is fluid and hungry, adapting itself to the contours of what it encounters and wanting to feed on it. (Men with angular Moons tend to seem
even more mercurial than their chart might otherwise suggest.)
Besides Moon in Taurus suggesting strong Venus needs, Venus is 5° from Midheaven and 2°00' from exact conjunction with Moon. (Moon-Venus conjunction in Taurus at Midheaven is a lot of Taurus!) This puts Venus' needs at about 96% of their maximum intensity. Venus' needs are
affection needs, the needs to love and be loved, give and receive nurturing, and to affiliate with others (including ideas like sex and shared play). Mercury and Venus needs may seem to be contradictory, but (at his age and given that he's successful at something) I'm pretty sure the person behind this chart has figured out how to have them coexist.
I suspect he's primarily a
connector. He feeds on intellectual and social exchange. He's terribly, terribly serious and terribly, terribly playful. He surely personally needs
engagement more than anything else to really
satisfy him that his life is great.
Finally, he has Saturn closely conjunct Sun (mundanely 0°22' wide). This conjunction also puts Saturn's needs at 100% strength, like Mercury. Saturn's needs are what psychologists call
materialistic needs, the needs to acquire, construct, order, conserve, and retain. They definitely include the self-preservation (survival) instincts. Since this is a Sun-Saturn conjunction in Gemini, this likely means ordering and forming structures regarding ideas - information organization - but it's wider than that. He may have a history of developmental blocks he had to overcome, and certainly (amidst being natural at play) has a
driven work ethic.
I'm not sure how those last elements come together. If this were my client, I'd have enough to start a conversation. Similar planet interweavings I've seen in my life are people who come from a place of fundamental scarcity, a sense that
we just don't have enough and have to somehow get more stuff to survive. (James, I bet you know the kind of Indiana farmers I'm talking about.) His Moon-Venus-Taurus culminating shows a sense of lush fulness of life, perhaps a real connection to nature and natural sciences (biology?), but this Sun-Saturn usually means an underlying sense of scarcity.
Saturn also is basic to the greatest tension - polarization - in his character. In addition to the exact Sun-Saturn conjunction, his fifth strongest planet - still foreground - is Pluto, just over 7° below Ascendant. This isn't strong compared to his Mercury, Moon, and Venus angularities, but seeing strong Saturn AND Pluto themes makes me think there is a
solitary streak, some kind of
isolation. However, it's hard to think of the rest of this chart as being solitary - I've already identified
connection and
engagement as some of the most important themes. So connection-isolation is some kind of basic theme for him that we'd have to talk about. We know that Gemini
needs its "other" and feels loneliness most strongly. But there is some important
solitary theme - within his psyche if not in the details of his life - some big part of him that feels cut off (or
needs to periodically cut himself off). - That would have to be sorted out in conversation (and probably would be more important to a younger man still trying to sort out his life).
From understanding the
essential template of his luminary signs and the relative strength and interweaving of his various needs, we can logically and empathically understand more or less anything else we need to know about him.
We can take a brief tour through some of the planets to see how they come out overall:
MOON is exalted in Taurus and 2° from MC. We've already identified it as enormously important. It's also well aspected, two of its three closest aspects being to benefics. Lunar themes (his emotions, early childhood, overall psychological health and ability to adapt to conditions of life, his relationship with his mother or primary maternal caregivers and how this generalized toward women overall) do really well. - In contrast to the weakly placed Sun exactly contacting Saturn, we can expect that his relationship with his mother was more positive than that to his father (but the father relationship, by its absence, severity, or strictness, had a powerful effect on shaping him).
SUN is in Gemini exactly conjunct Saturn. Two of its three closest aspects are to malefics (there is a 4° mundane square to Mars). In a predominantly pleasant and curious chart, this implies more early hardship than I would have otherwise expected. He's certainly able to work hard and achieve (but he
achieves mostly by work and effort). At the same time, Sun aspects the Moon-Venus - I may loop back to that in a minute.
MERCURY is exactly foreground, already identified as overwhelming everything else in the chart - ruling the Sun-sign, precisely angular, in < 2° square to Moon. It's closest aspect is an 0°08' sextile to Neptune. In a chart this hugely mercurial, it is hard to see how Neptune easily fits in - especially by a
soft aspect, no matter how close - except in the ways it shapes his patterns of thought. (Mercury is also in Cancer, which has more similarity to Neptune than we usually note.) I suppose this just keeps him from being the nearly
mechanically rigid facts-and-figures person the rest of the chart suggests, adding some fluidity and abstraction to his thoughts. (You did say he was a philosopher, yes?) Perhaps
mental enthrallment is the best way to interpret this - read the Mercury-Neptune standard interpretation for fine points. He's able to use imagination in service to his intellect, but likely still appears primarily as an intellectual. (I'm spending so many lines on this one aspect, it certainly would be a worthy subject to discuss in person. By now I suspect the doesn't see much difference between reason and unreason.)
VENUS is strong and important, his second strongest planet, his Moon sign ruler, etc. His need for affection, connection, pleasure is strong in him. Venus is in her home sign, foreground, with her two closest aspects being to luminaries. Beyond that, though, there is that solitude and isolation angle I mentioned before: Venus' next two closest aspects are a 2° mundane square to Pluto and 1° octile to Saturn. The easiest interpretation is that there has been loss of love defining important developmental (shaping) steps. He seems connected to the web of life with all that Taurus influence, and yet there is some sort of
desolation or shadow of loss that has shaped him.
MARS is in Aries, neither foreground nor background. With a Taurus Moon, Mars is less important in his psyche (unless something else pushes it there; and nothing does). Its closest aspects are to Neptune and Jupiter-Saturn so he is probably a zealot for his beliefs. Overall, Mars isn't all that important one way or the other.
JUPITER is in Leo and middleground. Its closest aspects are mostly malefics. The placement isn't particularly good for material prosperity (but, then, it's not all that bad).
(I should now go see if Wikipedia has anything about him to see how I did...)
