The zodiac man: Gemini
general summary of the zodiac man's body assignment for Gemini, for a strong placement there (the Sun, the Ascendant, the Moon, Venus, Mars, or the eighth house cusp)
What the tradition reads
The old zodiac man, homo signorum, assigns one region of the body to each of the twelve signs in descending order, and Gemini, third of the twelve, is given the shoulders, extended in most tellings to the arms, the hands and the fingers, along with the lungs and the nervous system, the region just below Taurus's neck and throat as the descent continues down the upper body. Manilius set the scheme out in the first century, in the second book of his Astronomica, and Gemini's twin figure, doubled where every other sign is single, suits a zone that is itself doubled, a matching pair of shoulders and arms rather than one central part. The tradition reads this literally in medical astrology: an affliction to a planet standing in Gemini, or to the sign's own ruler, Mercury, is read as a weakness showing first in the shoulders, the arms or the hands, in shortness of breath, or in the nerves, while a well aspected Gemini is read as dexterity, quick and coordinated movement, and an ease of gesture that matches the sign's own reputation for quick, restless communication. Zones are drawn from several points, the Sun, the rising sign, Venus, Mars, the Moon and the cusp of the eighth house, so Gemini recurring among them doubles the emphasis the tradition places on this one paired region.
The story
The medieval and Renaissance zodiac man outlived Manilius by well over a thousand years because it answered a practical medical question rather than a decorative one: European medicine, from the late Middle Ages until well into the early modern period, held that a physician should avoid cutting, bleeding or purging a body part while the Moon transited the sign that governed it, on the reasoning that the Moon's presence there made the zone unusually sensitive to interference. Gemini's place in the descent, third after Aries and Taurus, is fixed in every surviving copy of the standing human figure ringed by the twelve signs that appears across the medieval era in calendars, devotional Books of Hours and treatises on philosophy, astrology and medicine, surviving copies running from a fifteenth century Welsh manuscript to a woodcut in a 1702 almanac, each sign drawn with a line running to its zone on the body. A rotating paper volvelle, often bound alongside the diagram, let its owner find the Moon's current sign without calculation, and physicians across Europe were, in this period, required by law to calculate the Moon's position before treating a patient or undertaking any procedure, so the rule that followed, do not cut, bleed or purge the zone the Moon currently occupies, held as more than an old superstition kept on the side.
Written from
- Wikipedia, Zodiac man
- Manilius, Astronomica II.453 to 465
Corpus key body-zone:Gemini.