Gemini
Gemini (Latin for “twins”) lies between Taurus to the west and Cancer to the east, with Auriga and Lynx to the north and Monoceros and Canis Minor to the south. The easiest way to locate the constellation is to find its two brightest stars Castor and Pollux eastward from the familiar “V” shaped asterism of Taurus and the three stars of Orion’s belt.
Gemini is the third astrological sign in the zodiac, originating from the constellation of Gemini. The Sun resides in the constellation of Gemini from June 20 to July 20 each year and under the tropical zodiac, the sun transits this sign between about May 21 and June 21.
Gemini is associated with the twins Castor and Pollux, known as the Dioscuri, in Greek mythology. The divine twins are a mytheme of Proto-Indo-European religion. One recurring element in the divine twin theme is that, while identical, one is divine and the other is human.
Hausos is the reconstructed name for the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn. Derivatives of this goddess, found throughout various Indo-European mythologies. She is thought to have been envisioned as the daughter of Dyeus (literally “sky father” or “shining father”). The epithet “daughter of heaven” remains in nearly all Indo-European mythologies.
Part of a larger pantheon, Dyeus, also known as Dyeus Phter, is believed to have been the chief deity in Proto-Indo-European mythology. It was the god of the daylit sky, and his position may have mirrored the position of the patriarch or monarch in Proto-Indo-European society.
A mother goddess is a goddess who represents, or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother.
The Dawn Goddess is hypothesised to have been one of the most important deities to the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Due to the dawn heralding the sun and inducing the daily routine, the Dawn Goddess is associated with instilling the cosmic order. She have not only been mixed with those of solar goddesses in some later traditions, but have subsequently expanded and influenced female deities in other mythologies.
The Dawn Goddess was associated with weaving, a behaviour sometimes used as a metaphor for the generative properties of sunlight. This characteristic is normally seen in solar goddesses and it might indicate a large amount of syncretism between dawn and solar deities.
The Dawn Goddess is envisioned as the sister of the Divine Twins. Although the “marriage drama” myth (in which one or both of the Divine Twins compete for the hand of a woman in marriage) is usually linked to the sun goddess rather than the dawn goddess, there is a possible degree of syncretism in this regard.
In Babylonian astronomy, the stars Castor and Pollux were known as the Great Twins. The Twins were regarded as minor gods and were called Meshlamtaea and Lugalirra, meaning respectively ‘The One who has arisen from the Underworld’ and the ‘Mighty King’. Both names can be understood as titles of Nergal, the major Babylonian god of plague and pestilence, who was king of the Underworld.