Do you have some employees around your office who talk fast, move fast and think fast? Do they look young and act young, forget about their ages? Are they unpredictable, restless, original and impatient? What a smart woman you are! You’ve gone and hired yourself some Geminis.
It’s easy to understand why. With all that charm and guile, not to mention flashing intellect and creative imagination, you probably couldn’t help yourself. Now that you’ve had a chance to watch these Mercury people in action, you’ve learned that they can take an abstract idea and reduce it to a formula better than anyone else in the office. Your Aquarian employee can think in wildly abstract terms, your Aries employee can toss out some red-hot ideas, smothered in enthusiasm, and the Virgos can organize the details meticulously. But Gemini can do all three.
Before you fire those other people, however, remember that the Gemini doesn’t have the intense drive of the Aries, nor the willingness to work overtime. He also lacks the fixed and steady purpose of the Aquarian and he’ll never understand the endless, devoted dedication of the Virgo. We won’t cover the other Sun signs. You get the general idea. Your Gemini employee is not a one-man show, all by himself, even if he is a dual personality. He’ll come closer to it than anyone else, but you’ll need the other workers just the same.
Geminis share with Virgo, Aries, Leo and Scorpio a built-in ability to deal with emergencies. They can meet a crisis swiftly. The typical Gemini will make instant decisions and go into action while most of the people around him are still polishing their skis. He’s easily bored with routine, happiest when he’s free, so don’t try to chain him down to the work bench. He’d rather do a stretch of time in Sing Sing than work for a clock-watcher. At least in prison he could turn his curious mind to studying the behavior of the inmates. I’d sincerely like to point out here that the Gemini behind bars is a lonely man who couldn’t find the right niche for his multiple talents in an over-organized, conformist society. Many a Gemini forger or petty thief is basically as honest as the judge who sentenced him, and twice as idealistic. When Gemini is made to feel guilty about his vivid imagination and restless energy in childhood, then constantly criticized by the business world for being too progressive and refusing to fit into stale patterns, his high sense of moral and mental ethics becomes distorted, and he strikes out on the only original path he feels is left to him.
Most Geminis are so glibly persuasive they can talk people into buying things they couldn’t possibly even use. It’s never a mistake to utilize their talents in sales or promotional activities. When the Gemini’s silver tongue gets through extolling the virtues of your firm, you won’t even recognize it yourself, even if you’re a blind egotist about your own company. Send your Gemini man out to sell the public, or to wheedle your customers and clients in restaurants and on golf courses. Or send him on the road to gather up an avalanche of good will and orders for business. If you must keep him in the office, be careful where you place him. He doesn’t resent supervision as fiercely as Leo or Aries, but he will become nervous and inadequate if he’s confined and unable to express himself. When this happens, your Gemini employee will break his shackles and breeze off to more freedom without an instant’s regret. Now don’t run in and take a hasty peek at his desk to see if he’s still there. He won’t fly away or disappear into thin air until he’s had a chance to tell you his reasons and take his chances of winning you over to his point of view. Unless you hear differently, directly from him, he’s probably as happy as a winged messenger from the gods could be here on earth, doing whatever it is you have him applying his agile mind to.
If there’s an office pool of any kind, you may see your Leos, Aries and Sagittarius people doing lots of showy betting, but you can bet your old Brooklyn Dodgers button that it was probably masterminded by one of those streaks of lightning you employ who was born in June. The Gemini won’t throw extravagant sums of money into a complicated bubble scheme as readily as Leo, the lion. He’s more likely to risk his security in a situation where there’s a challenge to his wits, where there’s fast action and a quick return. His conversation will be full of phrases like “Let’s give it a go,” “It’s worth a gamble,” and “I’ll try anything once.” And he will, too. Try anything once, that is. Twice is out. He’s bored by then.
Your Gemini employee may be conspicuous by his absence or absentmindedness (same thing), during baseball season or golfing play-offs. Most Mercury people enjoy these sports, and many of them have participated, thanks to the uncanny Geminian dexterity. There’s little he can’t do with the synchronization of his intelligence and his clever hands, and that can include calculating precisely how to swat a white ball over the fence or making a hole-in-one on the green. Sports often attract him as a way to work off all that nervous energy. In the long run, however, the Gemini prefers to exercise his wits and give his mind a workout, so he can bat plenty of home runs for your firm. Still, he should be encouraged to engage in physical activity. It will wear him out so he can sleep. All Geminis are prone to insomnia. Many Gemini employees who work in offices where they’re required to be on the job early in the morning, can be recognized by the circles under their eyes.
Your Geminis will keep the office humming with busy activity, lots of jokes and gay chatter. But they’ll get things done. The Mercury assistant may be the fastest typist in the crowd, and quick to catch your dictation. Normally, if she’s a typical Gemini, she’ll be able to form an intelligent, clearly-stated letter with just a hint from you about the subject matter. In spite of her secretarial talents, you might be better off to put her out in front where she can charm the people who walk in the door and run the switchboard for you. (Doing two things at once and juggling them expertly is no problem for a Mercury female.) You’ll have fewer disgruntled people calling you. Not only will she sweet talk strangers cleverly, she’s not apt to scramble the cords and cut you off in the middle of a call to Kalamazoo to connect you with Katanga.
I’d better warn you not to discuss raises, bonuses, commissions and such with a Gemini, if you can possibly help it. Use a stern Capricorn or a dogmatic Taurus or a no-nonsense Virgo as your middle man. If you don’t, the Gemini may talk you into giving him a higher position with the firm than you have available without firing your wife’s brother and twice as much money as you make yourself. He’ll make it all seem perfectly logical. It’s much safer to avoid financial huddles with a persuasive Gemini. If you’re game, go ahead and try it. But you may come out of the huddle having promised him a weekly expense account that would support a couple of Virgos and Cancerians for a year.
You’re likely to trip over a few broken hearts in the office hallways when you have Mercury employees. A flirtation or two a month and a rather fickle way of changing his mind is the average behavior before maturity. There’s a youthful air of irresponsibility about many a Gemini (unless the natal chart indicates a more stable nature). He has a mind at least a million years old, and the emotions of a teenager. He’ll look like one, too.
The truth is that the Gemini, like Peter Pan, hates to grow up. And like Peter, he needs a Wendy as smart as he is to clean house for him every spring, letting him come and go as he pleases. If you’re the kind of boss to play office Cupid, don’t introduce him to any other kind of woman, or you may have to loan him money to pay his alimony shortly afterwards.
Do you want to make your office really swing? Put your Aries employee and your Gemini employee together in a room to discuss a new project. Then stuff some cotton in your ears to protect them from the exploding fireworks. But stand close enough by with a big, strong net to catch all the innovative concepts flying through the air. Gather them up, take them in to your office, and study them carefully before you dismiss them. One of them is likely to contain a million dollar idea.
CANCER the Crab
June 22nd through July 23rd
He thought he saw an Albatross
That fluttered round the lamp:
He looked again, and found it was
A penny-postage-stamp.
“You’d best be getting home,” he said,
“The nights are very damp.”
How to Recognize CANCER
“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid.
because I’m not myself, you see.”
“Oh, my fur and whiskers!”
It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul.
The best time to hunt for human crabs is by the light of the silvery moon. It’s usually easier to recognize them at night, when they’re all dressed up to go dreaming, wrapped in vivid imagination. Moonlight becomes them beautifully. It goes with their many moods, and it matches their changing emotions.
You’ll gather lots of clues to the Cancerian nature by doing some moon-gazing on a clear night in the country. It may be hard to see it through the smog in the city, but you can always study an almanac. Notice the moon’s changing shape and appearance. As it waxes and increases in light, it slowly grows into a perfect, round ball in the sky. When it wanes, it gradually disappears, so there’s nothing visible but a thin sliver of light with a faint, silver shimmer.
The Cancerian’s passing moods are synchronized to the moon, answering to the same mysterious lunar influence that causes the tides of the ocean to flow in and out. Yet, the moon doesn’t really change at all. It just seems to. Likewise, the Cancerian remains the same person through all his fluctuating highs and lows. Such dependable periodicity—constant in its inconstancy—makes the crab easy to recognize, once you know the phase he’s in when you see him.
You may first come across him when he’s laughing the “crazy lunar laugh.” It’s inescapably contagious. It runs up and down the scales with a deep, throaty undertone. It giggles and gurgles, then finally erupts in a loud cackle that sounds exactly like two hundred hens laying two hundred perfect eggs. In his life-of-the-party mood, you’ll have no trouble finding the Cancerian. He’ll be the funniest one in the room, a laugh a minute. If he’s not performing himself, then he’ll be grinning at someone else’s antics. No one likes a joke better than Cancer, and his funny side is all the more startling when it pops up so incongruously from his normally quiet, gentle personality. Lunar humor runs deep. It’s never shallow or superficial, because it stems from the sensitive observation of human behavior. Cancer may not wear his lunar laugh every day, but he can always dig it out of his old trunk in the basement at a moment’s notice.
These people don’t pant after the spotlight like the extroverted Leos or clownish Sagittarians, but Cancerians have an uncanny sense of publicity, when it pleases them to be noticed. Don’t let that unassuming manner fool you. They secretly enjoy attention, and they’ll soak up any headlines they get. You won’t find Cancer pursuing fame with passion (he pursues nothing with true passion), but he certainly won’t shrink from it. He’s far more likely to bask in the reflected glow of applause than to run away. Cancer may hide from things, but you can be sure that appreciation is not one of them.
If you’re the kind of person who catches cold easily, wear your raincoat when you expose yourself to the dampness of a Cancerian in a melancholy mood. He can wrap you in wet blankets until you shiver and shake. Cancer can turn bluer than an inkwell, and drown you in depression deeper than the floor of the ocean. His fears are usually well covered by the nutty lunar humor, but they are always with him, haunting his days and nights with a vague sense of nameless dangers, lurking in the shadows. Pessimism is never far away, always ready to spoil those beautiful flights of fancy. A Cancerian can take the dreamiest trips to the stars on the gossamer wings of his imagination, if he learns to ignore that harping inner voice which keeps nagging him and warning him he might get lost in outer space. But until he learns to conquer his fears, they form his Achilles’ heel, and they hurt every time he starts to fly too high.
His tears are never crocodile tears. They flow from the deep rivers of his fragile and vulnerable heart. You can wound his sensitive feelings with a harsh glance or a rough tone of voice. Cruelty can bring on brimming eyes or a complete withdrawal. (It’s an odd thing that Cancerians seldom get fevers; they’re more likely to suffer from the chills.) It won’t be easy to spot the crab in this mood, because when he’s hurt, he disappears into reproachful silence. Sometimes, he can retaliate with an almost scorpion revenge, but he’ll usually do it secretly, seldom openly with the Scorpio’s fine contempt for consequences. Most of the time, however, he’ll turn away from getting even, content to hide under his protective shell. Once you’ve wounded him, you can poke at him with a sharp stick for days afterwards and not reach him. He won’t answer his phone, his doorbell or his email. In the midst of uncertainty, despair and sadness, Cancer people seek retreat and solitude. Just like real crabs.
That’s another mood Cancerians have. Crabby. The person who gave you a cranky answer when you asked for the time, the one who nearly snapped your head off when you asked him to pass the salt—was probably a Cancer person going through one of his occasional crabby spells that makes him hate the world. He’s not angry with you. He’s disappointed with life. He’ll get over it, and be his own sweet, gentle and understanding self when the moon changes. Consult the daily paper for the next quarter, or wait until the tides come back in.
There are two basic Cancer types. The first kind has a handsome round face, soft skin, a wide, grinning mouth, almost circular eyes, rather a baby-faced look. Think of the man in the moon. That’s a perfect image. The second type is more common. The unmistakable “look of the crab” is immediately noticeable in the face. You’ll see a fairly large skull, an overhanging brow and high cheekbones. The brows themselves will seem to knit together in a sort of permanent frown which, strangely, isn’t offensive, but rather interesting. There’s a pronounced lower jaw, and the teeth are either prominent or irregular in some way. The eyes are small and usually far apart. Sometimes you’ll see a Cancerian who combines both the lunar face and the crab face but each is so distinctive that, even when they’re blended, it’s easy to recognize them as Moon people, born under the sign of the crab. Some of them are indisputably plump, but the great majority have a strikingly bony structure. The arms and legs may be extra long in proportion to the rest of the body. The shoulders will be broader than average, and often the hands and feet are either unusually tiny or quite large. Most Cancerians are a little top heavy, and they waddle slightly when they walk fast. Whether the body is plump or wiry, the women will usually wear a sweater size considerably larger than the skirt size. Or they’ll be absolutely flat-chested. Either way, this particular characteristic is quite marked. There is never a middle ground for this part of the anatomy with female crabs.
All lunar people have enormously expressive features. A thousand moods play fleetingly across their faces in the course of a conversation. Do you know someone who sometimes cackles wildly, then weeps despondently,—who occasionally snaps at you irritably, and then hides when you hurt him? Does he normally treat you with gentle consideration? If he’s gruff, yet kindly, a fascinating conversationalist with deep wells of creative imagination, that person was probably born in late June or July.
Cancerians have such control of imagery, and their moods are so intense, they can make you feel them, too. Their imagination seizes joy and despair, horror and compassion, sorrow and ecstasy, and holds each emotion fast with a retentive memory. Like mirrors and cameras, they absorb images and reflect them faithfully. Every experience is engraved on the heart as a photograph is etched on a negative plate. They never forget any of the lessons life has taught them nor do they forget the lessons history has taught mankind. A Cancerian reveres the past and is usually patriotic to the core. Historical figures intrigue him as much as his own ancestors do. He often collects antiques, old treasures and ancient relics and has an insatiable curiosity about yesterday. Cancer is a sort of mental archaeologist, always digging for more fascinating facts.
He’s also a well of secrecy. People automatically confide their secrets to the crab, but with his sensitive
emotions he already knows what’s on their minds. Cancerian compassion is deep and highly intuitive. There’s hardly a secret he can’t strip naked, if he chooses. It’s a one-way street, however. He’ll eventually soak up all there is to know about you, but you’ll never guess his own private thoughts. He guards his inner feelings carefully from prying eyes. The typical Cancer person doesn’t like to discuss his personal life, but he’s delighted to hear about yours, as his lunar imagination lets him easily guess the parts you leave out. Cancer seldom judges, however. He simply gathers, absorbs, reflects.
Although the crab gives back emotions like a mirror, he won’t give up tangible things without a struggle. Take a stroll along any beach and observe the habits of the real crab. When he grabs an object (and make sure it’s not your big toe), he’ll hang on for dear life. He’d rather lose a claw than let go. If the crab does sacrifice a claw, he grows a new one, so he can grab hold once more with the same tenacity; and let that be a lesson to you when you’re trying to get a Cancerian to give up something he or she really wants. Cancer will never relinquish a treasured object, and that can range all the way from a beloved friend or relative to a title or a position—from an old tintype photo to a pair of frazzled house slippers, with the soles half worn away.
While you’re still on the beach, take a few more notes on the customs of the real crab. The way he walks, for instance. If his eye is on that big toe, he’ll never come forth directly and head for your foot. First, he moves backward a few paces. Then he moves sideways. Suddenly, without warning, he crawls to the other side. He always appears to be moving in the opposite direction. But he’s watching every second. If that delicious toe starts to get away from him, he’ll move straight forward, and you’d better run if you don’t want those claws to dig in. He means business when he sees he has a chance of losing the morsel he covets. The human crab imitates these tactics precisely. Cancerians never go directly after what they want. Their strategy is to move in every direction but straight ahead. They’ll play this shifting game indefinitely, until it looks as if someone else is about to grab the prize. Then the cards are played quickly and cleverly—Cancer lunges forward, takes hold firmly, and refuses to let go.
Linda Goodman's Sun Signs Page 15
