How does each sign of the zodiac perceive and process the world around them, and what motivates them to act the way they do? In episode #008 of The Stellium Astrology Podcast I talk about Air signs and look at a few client, subscriber and celebrity examples to explore in greater depth.
Below are the highlights, links and episode transcript so if you aren’t able to listen, you can read the podcast instead.
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Episode Links
➡️ View The Best Astrology Books for Beginners here
➡️ Check out episodes on The Elements
➡️ Check out episodes on The Modes
➡️ Check out episodes on all Zodiac Signs
➡️ Check out episodes on The Planets
➡️ Check out episodes on The Houses
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
Recommended Books
➡️ Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements by Stephen Arroyo
The Elements: Air Signs
The Air signs are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius
Dividing the horoscope wheel by three and connecting the points where the circle is intersected gives an equilateral triangle. Signs of the same element sit at the points of the triangle at 120° (four signs) apart. The Air signs are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius.
Episode Transcript
Hi and welcome back to The Stellium Astrology Podcast. I’m Stefanie James, and I’m currently discussing the elements.
iTunes Reviews
Now, before I get into the elements I just wanted to share some lovely reviews that I’ve got on iTunes.
Thank you to Lysthada who said:
I’ve been following Stellium Astrology for several years. I’m really looking forward to hearing the podcasts. Stefanie is a really genuine and passionate astrologer and her chart readings and horoscopes are always spot on.
Lysthada
Thank you Lysthada that’s a really kind five star review there.
And I’ve got a review from a load of numbers. Unfortunately, I don’t know who left this review for me:
So enlightening and informative, has everything I want to know and more. I look forward to regular episodes to listen to.
8878
Well, I’m knocking them out! So I hope you’re enjoying and now I’ve got one from Mepap-r which says:
Yaaaaassss! five stars. So excited for this podcast SA is highly knowledgeable about astrology and I can’t wait to hear her nuggets of wisdom.
Mepap-r
Thank you very much very kind words. I told you, I’d give you a shout out!
So thank you so much to Mepap-r, 8878 (whoever you are), and Lysthada; I really appreciate your lovely reviews.
Back to the topic of the elements, and today we’re talking about Air signs. I just wanted to (if you haven’t already checked in with previous episodes) remind you to go back and have a listen because there’s quite a lot of good information there.
But with the Air signs (actually with all the elements) I just wanted to remind you that to find the elements we have to do is divide the circle by three equally (an equilateral triangle) on top of a circle. And the points of the triangle will be where you find the related elements. So placing one tip of the triangle on to Gemini (the first Air sign), then the other two tips of the triangles will be on Aquarius and Libra (the other two Air signs).
And like I said before, there’s a sense of natural ease and aptitude and compatibility between the signs, they flow very easily within each other. So if you have any Air in your chart, and you know other people who have Air in their charts as well, you’re probably going to have a very comfortable ease of communication with those people and a sense of kinship with them where you’re able to relate to them quite easily.
A good book about the elements for you to delve into is Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements by Stephen Arroyo. I’ll add that to my books pages on my website, and I’ll also include a link in the description.
What Drives Air Signs?
So really, like the other elements it’s the basic way of perceiving and processing stimuli, and our impulses and urges and our needs. It’s also what motivates us and what drives us our type of energy. So with Air there’s this urge to label things and to communicate whatever it is you’ve found, and also to establish what something is.
So Air is a little bit investigative, it likes labeling things trying to define and categorize and tell people about it. Once they know what it is they’re trying to describe they want to then share it with people.
Meditate On It
I like to try and imagine almost meditate on the element really. So if you think about Air: it can be quite hot, quite warm, it can be stifling, it can be cool, it can be icy, it can be refreshing, it can be awakening, it can have an impact on you as you walk out the front door.
If you Imagine you’ve had your central heating on indoors and you open the front door and it’s really icy outside, that wall of ice can hit you.
And in a similar way I went to Spain and traveled around in an air-conditioned car. I’d being freezing because I’d be wearing really summery clothes, then I’d open the window to let some heat in and it would be like a wall of heat literally slapping me in the face!
So Air can have a real impact on you even though you can’t see it. It circulates and you can think about Air being recycled through air-conditioning units. So you can have a sense of like recycled Air which can be quite refreshing but doesn’t necessarily have that fresh punch. And it can be quite stale at times.
Having Air flowing through a property by opening the front door and the back door can be quite powerful in the sense it can really draw through – you can get a draft that comes all the way through the house, pulling things with it. It can actually slam doors and windows and having fresh-air flow through a property can really make it feel like a completely different place. It can bring things to life.
When a baby is born, that slap on the bum instigates that need to scream or cry. It can really clear the mucus from the airways, just by giving it that initial slap. And that initial scream or cry is a relief to everybody in the delivery room because they know that that baby is able to breathe independently.
How Does Earth Behave?
So, there’s a lot Air does a lot for us. And really, if you think about the whole process of birth, and everything that happens, Air is one of the first signs that we know that everything’s okay. It’s recognizing that that there’s life inside that being. Similarly, Air can be the life of imagination or the birth of ideas. So it’s quite important in life: obviously we couldn’t live without oxygen.
Also, you can have that same element of freshness when you have someone look over a document with a “fresh pair of eyes”, they can spot errors and bring new ideas and perspectives to your ideas.
Air can blow really hard it can spiral like a twister or a hurricane. And it can be still and calm, like the eye of the storm. It can inspire and it can bring with it new ideas, new events, but also it can be destructive and it can tear things down. If you’ve ever seen on the news where a twister has gone through the tornado belt in America: they literally tear properties down in a split second. You’ve got lots properties and suddenly it’s just piles of rubble.
Mind: Blown
With Air you can be blown away, and you can be refreshed with Air. With Gemini you can have your “mind blown” with new ideas. With Libra, you can be “swept off your feet” with somebody else. And with Libra and relationships, there’s this idea of what you can be with another person or what another person can teach you or what you can learn from yourself in this exchange with other people.
Air is a great exchange. And just to really touch on the basics here, Air is a masculine sign. That doesn’t mean it’s male / a man / all Air signs are men. It’s just that there’s that masculine quality about Air, which has a sort of conscious and considered attack. It’s extroverted and externalized. There’s a consciousness about Air.
The Air and the fire signs as quite demonstrative and quite ‘out there’. And there’s also an element of confidence because when you’re asserting yourself or being extroverted, there is an element of putting yourself out there. and not necessarily having faith in yourself, but having confidence in where you’re coming from, I suppose.
The Great Debate
So, the essence of Air is to really go out there, share ideas and create debate. The Air signs are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius, if I hadn’t already touched on that, and these signs really are focused on interaction, the exchange of ideas.
To create sound, speech and music it’s entirely dependent on Air but you do need like a sense of vibration or frequency within that.
Air likes to inform everybody, it likes to spread the message it likes to communicate, it generally has good social skills because Air signs are able to have their own perspective, but see other perspectives, as well. And they’re also able generally to keep things in proportion (whereas Fire signs might blow things way out of proportion).
Air is very interaction based so includes fields like counselling, which are based around talking and conversation and helping interactions.
The Spice of Life
There’s a need for variety with Air: keeping it fresh, changing things up and travel is associated the Air signs. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to travel everywhere all the time: it can be a journey of the mind, storytelling and that sense of adventure in an imaginative sense – or in a literal sense going on a journey of discovery.
There’s a lot of focus on dialogue, a real thirst for knowledge, and they can be rational and objective. The Air signs don’t have to agree with another person, but can understand where they’re coming from. So there is a type of empathy because you don’t have to have been through something to put yourself in that place (mentally) and think about when you have experienced something like that, to empathize with another person.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be empathy – it can just be considering an alternative perspective or ideas opposite to their own. They can be very fair and rational and logical. There’s a sense of law about Air signs.
Heavy Air Emphasis
If there’s a lot of Air in the chart being it can make someone very ‘heady’, overly theoretical, scattered and anxious – A little too trapped in the head and struggling with grounding things.
Someone I used to work with would say call herself a “blue-sky thinker”. She’s an Aquarius and she’s definitely a blue-sky thinker. She liked working with me because I was able to be her anchor (I’m an Earth sign: my Sun is in Capricorn).
So, she’s a blue-sky thinker, and she liked Earthy people, because they were helping her anchor her ideas and her visions for how she wanted things done.
It was a really nice image for me to think about: that blue sky thinking which Aquarius can be very good at – coming up with ideas, conceptualizing and thinking about what contingencies we might need if something comes up when there’s an issue, but then the practical Earth signs are able to say “Now let’s go and apply this and actually create procedures and processes”. So that’s quite a nice way that Air and Earth can work together.
Air signs can be overly-logical, overly-rational. And they can apply logic over empathy.
Theory Over Practice
Sometimes, they can think about how the other person might feel but could be out of touch with being able to relate to how the other person feels. They understand what they’re going through, but they don’t empathize with it. They might say “Well, yes, I know you’re upset. I get that this is upsetting thing, but we do need to be rational”.
Sometimes people need that space to process. So it can be a little bit robotic, a little bit too efficient in its processing of the the theory behind emotional situations or practical situations without actually getting into the practice or the feeling of things. It’s a case of theory over practice.
If you’ve ever heard somebody say, “I’ve passed my driving test, but you really start to learn when you actually start driving”.
You can tick all the boxes with the exams, you can have all of the qualifications on paper. But when it comes to actually applying yourself to real life situations, you can have all the Air but you don’t necessarily have the Earth that actually anchors it down.
So it’s an interesting one because it is very ideas orientated. It’s very conceptual, and quite can be abstract at times. What makes logical sense doesn’t always make emotional sense or practical sense. Things like ‘think-tanks’ trying to make sense of things in meetings, getting fired up with that conversation and then going away where you then have to apply it.
A Lack of Air
Lacking Air as you know [from previous episodes], can lead to overcompensating. They might want to appear to be extremely intelligent. They may lack the confidence in their intellectual ability as well.
Being a bigger picture kind of person (with Air and thinking ahead) if you’re lacking, it may be difficult to grasp that.
And it may be difficult cooperating and compromising sometimes with other people. If you’re lacking it, you may be a little bit unreasonable. Or maybe people have told you that but you can’t quite see it.
And as previously mentioned, there can be anxiety with Air signs. With people that lack Air, there can be anxiety meeting people. As with a lack of Fire there’s a kind of pessimism, not always able to see the positive. It can be a little bit doom and gloom.
There can be a real lack of ability to apply oneself intellectually or act – academically, everybody’s different – but there’s not always an ability to apply oneself in the realm of ideas and processing of information. It can be a struggle sometimes.
So that’s just a little look at some of the ideas around Air signs. And I’ve picked out a couple of charts to look at.
Subscriber Charts
Karis
Karis has 3 planets in Air: Sun, Venus and Mercury (plus asteroid Chiron) scraping the top of her chart on the Midheaven
Karis from Carshalton has 3 planets in Air, but also her Midheaven (her career point) and she also has Chiron up there, as well.
So she has lots lots of planets in Air: the Sun, Venus and Mercury up there at a really high point in the chart. And Karis is a Gemini, and she’s got all of that stuff going on in Gemini.
Karis is somebody who tends to learn or teach people for a living. She’s a teacher, it’s all sitting up in her 9th house [of teaching and learning]. She teaches people how to speak different languages. Karis is fluent in Portuguese, as well as English. She can speak Spanish as well, but Portuguese is the thing that she’s much more fluent with.
And I believe she can speak some other languages as well. But the other thing that’s interesting about Karis is that she’s taught English as a second language when she’s lived abroad. And Karis is somebody who has always gone traveling, and she’s traveled all over the world.
When she decided she wanted to be a sound therapist, she didn’t think twice about booking a course with a sound therapy teacher in and travelling to Cornwall which is miles (and hours) away from where she lives in London [Gemini is associated with travel].
She works with frequencies: the voice and the different pitches, ranges and frequencies which can unlock blockages.
By the way: I’m not an expert in sound therapy, but my understanding from having a treatment myself with Karis, is that there is an element of using frequencies in order to create flow within the body. She’s a believer in using the voice and using frequency as a way of freeing up energy blockages.
She’s also a musician and a singer. I know she can play instruments, but her voice is her instrument and she is literally a songbird! And yes, she does sound therapy, she’s a yoga teacher and she teaches English as a second language.
I could get into the whole Gemini aspect of her life but I won’t right now because I think Karis has a great mutable chart and we’ll be talking about her again when we talk about the mutable signs. But yes, Karis is a very Airy person who loves conversation, sharing ideas, and a very knowledgeable person.
Gauri
Gauri has her Ascendant, Moon and Pluto in Air signs
Somebody else who we’ve got some Air in their chart is one of my subscribers, Gauri.
Gauri signed up to the mailing list and sent me her chart details.
Gauri has Gemini rising and has her Moon and Midheaven in Aquarius, so that’s two placements in Air signs, and she also has Pluto in Libra (like a whole generation of people). Like I said (in previous episodes), Pluto moves really, really, really slowly. And Pluto is the only planet in Libra in Gauri’s chart, so we wouldn’t look too much at that because it’s a generational thing. We would look if there was going to be a (planetary) transit there. But as far as natal interpretation goes, or looking at the elements, at least, it’s not the most heavily weighted chart towards Air.
There’s definitely more water in this chart. But I thought it was interesting to look at the fact that we do have Air rising and we also have an Aquarius moon, and again, like Aquarius is quite conceptual, very community driven and sharing ideas around a subject that they’ve decided that they want to focus on.
And they’re very much interested in that exchange with like minded people, whereas Gemini might not care too much if you’re like minded. Gemini’s more interested in hearing different perspectives and understanding things from a completely different point of view. That’s why Gemini is represented by the twins, because the twins are not carbon copies of each other in an intellectual sense – they actually have their own minds and freedom of thought.
So that’s a nice complement to the rising sign and the Moon, and that sharing of ideas. And actually, your moon is trine your Ascendant (rising sign), meaning that actually, your Moon and Ascendant are almost exactly 120° (one side of the triangle) apart.
So it’s a really nice flow and it probably gives you a very nice ease of communication with the people that you meet. People probably find you very interesting and very curious naturally, and probably find you to be a very natural communicator. But with all that water going on in Scorpio in your chart, you’re probably likely to be perceived as very deep. And getting into very deep, intense conversations and the subjects that other people might struggle to approach, you don’t tend to struggle with, too much.
And actually, you probably make it easier and more accessible for people to be able to talk about more difficult things, because you open up that dialogue.
Celebrity Charts
Bob Dylan
Now, I just really want to get on to talking about just a couple of celebrity charts. So the Gemini chart I chose is Bob Dylan.
Bob has got Sun, Venus and Mercury all in Gemini. And Bob Dylan is known for playing guitar and his finger picking style. So it’s not just like strumming the strings and chords. It’s playing really intricate songs and being able to operate both hands independently while singing at the same time. And what’s great about Bob Dylan is not only that he’s great at guitar, but the songs that he comes up with are so very… he’s more of a social commentator, an abstract social commentator, whose lyrics whether you like them or not, are worth listening to.
I will definitely be talking about his chart again at some point because Bob Dylan has an amazing chart. He’s got a lot of mutability and a lot of fixity in his chart, and he’s quite Airy.
So it’s definitely very, a very interesting chart to look at: Bob is a musician, he’s known for being a poet. He packed his guitar up and I can’t even remember how much he said he had – I think he said at the time he had about $10 bucks in his pocket, and he traveled… where did he go? Did he go to New Orleans? I can’t remember where exactly.
But he went to put himself out there and just start performing. And Bob Dylan became respected and well known for being a musician and songwriter, a wordsmith. Because Bob Dylan is a wordsmith, and a very talented musician, whether or not you like the music, you have to give him credit for the fact he’s talented at writing lyrics and songs.
He was described as the voice of a generation. He basically was the mouthpiece of his generation, and he spoke about some incredibly challenging and difficult times that humanity went through. So he’s a really interesting chart to look at as far as Air is concerned.
➡️ View_Bob Dylan on Astro-Databank
Kate Winslet
Another person I chose has got a lot of Air is Kate Winslet. She’s got Sun, Moon, Mercury, and Pluto, all bundled together in Libra. There are some questions over her birth time (the time we have for her isn’t necessarily accurate). The initial time we’ve got for her is considered DD: that’s Dirty Data (the Rodden Rating).
But we are in thinking that possibly she has a Libra Ascendant as well. I think that the idea of where her Ascendant came from was Jonathan Cainer’s website (I’m reading this on Astro Databank), and it said on Jonathan Cainer’s website it gives a time of 7:15am and it’s also been given on IMDB, but it’s unverified.
So she’s got sun rising in her chart. And she’s another great one that we’ll probably talk about again. But having Libra rising and you know, having lots of planets in Libra lends towards being somebody who’s quite likable and quite charming.
I believe Bill Clinton also has a lot of stuff going on in Libra. I know he’s actually featured in Frank’s get to the heart of your chart book, which I’ve got right next to me.
There is a charm about these Librans and an attractiveness that you can’t deny. But they’re also considered to be quite fair. And they are very focused on other people and very interested in the exchange with others – all the Air signs are – but Libra is much more relationship-focused and learns a lot about itself through relationships. Kate has done a lot of different films, but she’s very well known for being in Titanic, and that was very much based around a relationship.
Also, Venus is about beauty, and Libra (as it’s a Venus ruled sign) can be very focused on beauty as well. Kate has been known to say: I don’t want my photographs, airbrushed, this is who I am. This is what I look like…accept me for that; accept me for the way that I look. So it’s interesting that she’s very much Sun rising in Libra, (if that is her correct birth time).
But she defnitely has Sun, Moon and Mercury in Libra, and she was talking about beauty ideals and beauty. And she has honest Pluto there too – that’s a stellium in Libra.
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
So, Bob has a stellium in Gemini, Kate has a stellium in Libra, and I’ve picked someone with a stellium in Aquarius who immediately sprang to mind for me:
Eddie Izzard
➡️ View Eddie Izzard on Astro-Databank
The reason I chose Eddie Izzard is because he embodies that Aquarian uniqueness, and he’s such an Airy person. He’s got: Sun and Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Saturn and Mars, all in Aquarius, so many planets in Aquarius, and he also has Gemini on the Midheaven.
We don’t necessarily look at the Midheaven as a point where we’re going to look at elemental weighting, but actually, as far as Eddie is concerned, we have got a lot heavy weighting in Air and – particularly in Aquarius.
Eddie is a heterosexual male transvestite, stand-up comedian, actor and entertainer. Now, comedy very much is Airy, because it’s being very quick, and there’s a storytelling element to it, but there’s also the ability to just come up with one-liners.
But what’s really interesting and unique about Eddie Izzard and I would encourage you to go and look at to find a video of his online and just watch him do his stand up routine. I can’t remember which one in particular I’m thinking of. I think it was in San Francisco and I remember the name of the DVD that I watched – it’s Dressed to Kill.
He doesn’t subscribe to a particular social convention. So he will quite happily go on stage wearing makeup and high heels and a dress, because that’s what he feels like doing.
It’s very detached. There can be a detachment from the body (and emotions) with the Air signs. And so there’s this detachment from, you know, social convention and gender ideals actually even gender roles and assignments.
Something else that’s great about him is that he can slip between languages in his stand up routine. He’s fluent in French. And he literally switches over from speaking English into French, and is still able to make the audience laugh even though some of them don’t understand what he’s talking about. It’s that gift with language and that ability to communicate it in such a way that people just connect with it.
So Eddie Izzard is a great one and actually he’s got into politics over recent years and has a lot of people very interested in following him. He was going stand for election as the Mayor of London for the Labour Party in the UK.
And actually, Labour has more liberal ideals now than perhaps it used to. It’s not quite as far left as the Liberal Democrats, but actually, Air signs can be seen to lean towards equality and having an idea of how things should be done, and so they want to promote that idea. So that was a really interesting chart to look at as well.
That’s a Wrap!
So if you’re enjoying this podcast, please subscribe rate and review it on iTunes and share it with somebody who might like it – especially if they are an Air sign.
Want to be Featured?
And if you want to have your chart featured – if you’d like me to have a little look and find areas where we can share information about your chart, then just subscribe to my mailing list and fill out the form.
And that’s about it for today. So thank you very much, I’ve enjoyed talking about Air.
BT DUBS…
And actually, perhaps I didn’t share with you all, but I have a stellium in Air as well (which is why I can waffle on for ages!) and I have a Gemini Ascendant. So I’ve got a lot of Air in my chart.
Perhaps a little too much Air!
Thank you very much for tuning in. I’ll speak to you next time. Bye now!
Episode Links
➡️ View The Best Astrology Books for Beginners here
➡️ Read What is a Stellium?
➡️ View_Bob Dylan on Astro-Databank
➡️ View Kate Winslet on Astro Databank
➡️ View Eddie Izzard on Astro-Databank
Recommended Books
➡️ Astrology, Psychology and the Four Elements by Stephen Arroyo