Sky Light: Gemini III

Decan Walk Interview with Alison Dale

Prior to the official start of the Decan walk, I sent out a request to my astrological community to see who wanted to offer their voice on a Decan.

I am lucky to be able collaborate with these practitioners in this Decan Walk series. For this portion, I will have a new astrologer speak on the Decan from their perspective. This is to introduce you to new astrology & tarot voices so that you’re not just listening to mine. A Decan Walk can be a community conversation.

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Gemini III/Ten of Swords

with Alison Dale/Hearth & Spiral

Practical Astros: How would you briefly describe this decan/tarot card? Do you have keywords or a nickname that you assign to it?

Alison: “Lead up to the summer solstice, Ascent and Descent, the duality of Sun and Saturn, light and shadow, integrating the tension of polarities, drama, tipping points, gravity, Queen/King energy, Shakespeare”

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Practical Astros: What strikes you about this decan/tarot? What do you see its strongest characteristics or powers to be? or What is it that attracts you to it?

Alison: “What draws me to Gemini Decan III is the paradox at its core. The Sun and Saturn both in rulership feels almost contradictory, and yet it describes something I recognize completely in myself. A drive toward full expression held in constant tension with an internal editor that says "not yet, not like that, are you sure?".

There's something honest about the 10 of Swords. It's the card of having thought something all the way to its end, of a mind that won't stop until it's exhausted every angle. The card shows a person exhausted from mental activity, after slicing things up with all those swords in an analytical, Mercurial way, and then having to lie there in the dirt and wait for the sun to come up anyway. There's a strange dignity in that.

What I find most powerful about this decan is that the darkness is solar. The Sun rulership means that the capacity for devastation and the capacity for illumination are the same force. The sun is scalding but also life-giving, and this decan is about taking the responsibility of leadership at a tipping point, on a razor wire.”

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Practical Astros: Does this decan/tarot speak to your natal chart in a particular way?

Alison: “My North Node is conjunct Vesta in the 3rd decan of Gemini, and through my studies of both the decans and the I'Ching/Human Design mandala, I have interpreted these placements as a hunger for and devotion to gathering people together, speaking from the heart, and finding ways to integrate extremes and polarities. The Human Design gates in this decan are known as The Queen (Gathering Together), Caution (Standstill), and Extremes, and I find that they correlate incredibly well with the Sun/Saturn ruled decan of Gemini III.

There's a seriousness and sense of responsibility in this part of the wheel that takes both light and dark into consideration, with the sun about to reach it's apex at the summer solstice and the wisdom that the days will begin to get shorter from there on out. With my North Node and Vesta there, it feels like the convergence place of both my sacred work and my growth edge. I feel like it's about letting my expression be radiant and complete even when Saturn tells me to reign it in. About tending the flame of knowing something deeply and then trusting it enough to speak it in that classic conversational Gemini fashion. As a Leo rising, the sun is also my chart ruler, so I appreciate how this sun-ruled decan gives me another perspective on how the sun operates, especially as it relates to the extremes and polarities in life.”

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Practical Astros: Can you give a specific story where this decan/card played out in your own life? Can you share an example of how this card has come alive for you in an expressive or literal way?

Alison: “The 10 of Swords, a card that indicates deep betrayal, has a reputation for being one of the harder cards to sit with. This is because betrayal works on you at every level simultaneously. Your mind, your body, the story you were telling yourself about your life that is pulled out from under you without warning, leaving you flailing through space, not knowing which way is up. Betrayal doesn't just hurt, it truly reorganizes you at a cellular level.

Betrayal has a clarifying function that almost nothing else does. When something or someone you trusted completely collapses, you find out very quickly what was real and what was projection. After time, it shows you what you actually value. The 10 of Swords doesn't leave you with ambiguity, and that's brutal, and it's also a gift. Through the wisdom of this card as the symbol for my North Node and Vesta, I've realized you can't rebuild on false ground after something fully knocks you down and stabs you 10 times. After that, you're forced into honesty.

The moments where this card came alive for me were definitely about other people failing me, at first. My landlord who had no fire alarms or ladders to the roof when I was caught in a 3rd story housefire. Who had no insurance for her 5 properties that could have covered my medical bills and rehousing. My ex who spent years cheating on me while we were building a life together.

I've experienced deeper betrayal by those I've loved and those I've trusted than I hope most have to in their lifetime. But these experiences, over time, led me to discover what I was genuinely devoted to, once the pain cleared. I found myself in the ashes. Vesta doesn't really ignite until something burns away what was obscuring her. The betrayals that hit deepest were the ones that sat right on top of something sacred. You don't feel that level of devastation about things that don't matter, and through this card I learned what really, truly mattered to me.

Saturn as sub-ruler of this card/decan makes sense to me now in a way it didn't before. Saturn is the structure that remains after the collapse, after the sun sets. The 10 of Swords has taken me to the ground, for certain, but what I reached for when I got back up, that was my Vesta, my devotion, my North Node pointing forward. Not everything burns in a fire- the structure remains, and the sun still rises the next day. That's what I hold onto here- no matter how harsh the wound, I am destined become stronger through the healing process itself. I've come to recognize the fact that betrayals, times of being face down on the ground, were not detours, but a profound curriculum of my life.”

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Practical Astros: If you use the tarot card correspondence to this decan, what tarot deck do you typically use to visualize this decan?

Alison: “I've been working with the Muse Tarot by Chris Anne- in this deck, swords are transliterated into the suit of Voices, because the cutting difficulties we face is often a result of communication. In this deck, our Voices teach us how to use our swords. "For healing comes, and at a cost, a soul sewn stronger still. For healing comes, and all the loss, gives strength and love and will.”

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Practical Astros: What is your theory or belief of what the decans are, beyond their measurement of 10° movement through the Zodiac?

Alison: “My theory is that the decans are memory. Actual encoded memory of what it felt like to be a human body moving through a year on this earth, season by season, before we had any insulation from it.

I believe our ancestors didn't experience time the way we do now- they felt it in a cyclical, lived way. The shift from one decan to the next, like the shift from one sign to the next, was a shift in light, temperature, what was growing or dying, what the animals were doing, how much food there was, and how hard you had to work to get it. The 36 decans are 36 distinct inhales and exhales as the earth herself breathes.

Gemini Decan III is where the sun travels as we approach the edge of the summer solstice. Our ancestors would have felt this as a kind of culmination, with the longest day approaching, and underneath that peak there was a knowledge that the turning toward the darkness was coming. The Sun ruling this decan makes sense, because everything is fully exposed in the light of summer. And Saturn underneath it knows the descent that inevitably follows. At the peak of summer, the plants are shriveling in the heat, and there is concern that the rays of sol could even burn them to a crisp. The extremes are on full display.

I think the people who codified the decans were paying attention to this, mapping the sky as it aligned the felt experience of being alive inside a year. Which is why they still work, I believe. Because they're not abstract. They're encoded in our bodies and in the earth's subtle language of the seasons.”

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Alison’s bio:

Alison Marie Dale is a disciple of cycles, artist, writer and guide working at the intersection of astrology, the I'ching, and embodied goddess traditions. Through Hearth and Spiral, she offers a grounded, embodied approach to ancient wisdom.

Her work explores seasonal rhythms, goddess archetypes, shadow work, and the stories we carry in our bodies.

She is the host of Living the Spiral, a podcast about seasonal descent, transformation, and what it means to live a mythic life within an ordinary year.

Alison offers Astrology and Human Design readings and somatic breathwork sessions through her practice at hearthandspiral.com

Find Alison:
🌀 Website & Readings: hearthandspiral.com
📖 Substack: Living the Spiral
📸 Instagram: @hearthandspiral
🎙️ Podcast — Living the Spiral: available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

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Thank you, Alison, for sharing your voice on Gemini III!