Gemini
Gemini is the third sign of the zodiac, and in the Persian solar calendar it is also the third month of the year — the borj called Jawzā. In this product the sign is the month, so the two are treated as one thing seen from two directions.
The sign at a glance
- Place in the zodiac
- 3
- Persian month
- Khordad
- Element
- Air
- Quality
- Mutable
The element and the quality are the classical groupings: every fourth sign shares an element, and every third shares a quality.
Gemini among the borj
The borj are the twelve zodiac signs as the Persian tradition received and named them. When the solar calendar was regularized, its months were cut to follow the signs, and the sign names travelled with them. Gemini stands third in that order, in the closing stretch of spring, after the sign of the bull and before the sign of the crab.
In Persian the borj is Jawzā, a name for a pair — the twins of the older zodiac. The Persian names remained in astronomical and astrological writing even where the calendar months came to be called by other names, and in the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar they are the month names still: there the third month of the year carries this borj's name outright, printed on documents and used in ordinary speech.
So the same word does two jobs. It names a stretch of sky, and it names a stretch of the year — the weeks when spring has fully arrived and is beginning to give way to summer heat.
What the tradition associates with this borj
In the tradition this borj belongs to the air element and is assigned to Mercury, and much of what the tradition reads into it follows from that pairing. Air is associated with speech, breath, and things that move between people; Mercury, in these writings, is the planet of language, learning, messages, and exchange. The tradition therefore links this borj with conversation and correspondence, with teaching and translation, with commerce carried out through words, and with the passing on of news.
The tradition also draws meaning from the name itself. Being named for a pair, this borj is read as doubled rather than divided: two hands at work, two voices in a dialogue, a capacity for holding more than one matter in view at once. Where the older texts describe the sign as sociable and companionable, that reading rests on the same image.
Quickness is the quality the tradition attaches to this borj most consistently — quickness of understanding, and a curiosity that moves easily from one subject to the next. Alongside it the tradition names changeability, and the generous reading of that, the one Persian writers on the subject tend to take, is adaptability: a readiness to revise, to try a second approach, to meet a new arrangement without difficulty. In the traditional scheme this borj is also counted as changeable in the technical sense, and that formal label and the descriptive one are understood to say the same thing twice.
These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its month.
The sign, the month, and the moving date
The Persian year begins at the vernal equinox, the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator. From that beginning the months were cut along the zodiac, one sign to a month, which is why the third month and the third sign coincide. The consequence is worth stating plainly: here the sign follows the month, not the reverse. This product reads the calendar's own month boundaries. It does not measure the sun's position in degrees, and it offers nothing finer than the month — no divisions within it, no hour of day.
In the classical scheme this borj is a mutable sign, and what that means in plain words is that it comes at the end of its season. Spring opens with the first sign, settles into the second, and closes with this one, which hands the year over to summer.
Because the year starts at an astronomical event rather than on a fixed Gregorian day, the equinox falls a little differently from one year to the next, and every Persian month inherits that drift. Across the span of years covered here, this month has begun on more than one Gregorian date. A printed table that gives a single fixed range for the sign will therefore be right for many years and wrong for some. This product treats that as the table's approximation rather than a disagreement on its own part: the calendar is doing exactly what it was built to do, and the fixed range is a convenience that cannot quite keep up with it.
What Khordad, the month itself, is called in Iran and in Afghanistan
When Gemini began
The Persian year starts at the spring equinox, so each month starts on whichever Gregorian day the equinox falls on. That is why these dates move.
Across the 101 years below, Gemini began on 3 different Gregorian dates. A printed table prints one of them.
From 1950-05-22 to 2050-06-21.
May 21
1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024, 2028, 2029, 2032, 2033, 2036, 2037, 2040, 2041, 2044, 2045, 2048, 2049
May 22
1950, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026, 2027, 2030, 2031, 2034, 2035, 2038, 2039, 2042, 2043, 2046, 2047, 2050
May 23
1951, 1955, 1959
Sources
- Borkowski, The Persian Calendar for 3000 Years — the vernal-equinox anchoring of the Solar Hijri year
- The traditional Persian borj month names, still used as month names in the Afghan Solar Hijri calendar
- The classical triplicity and quadruplicity cycles of the tropical zodiac, counted from Aries