The Mutable Signs

Some people can handle anything life throws at them. The plan changes and they change with it. They learn the new system in a week, see three ways round the problem, and help everyone else through the transition. That is mutable energy: the ability to adapt, to learn, to bend without breaking.

Mutable signs close each season. They are the in-between times: late spring turning to summer, the end of summer before the autumn equinox, late autumn, the last weeks of winter. They carry what the season learnt into the next one.

Four ways to adapt

Each mutable sign adapts in the way of its element.

• Gemini closes spring. Mutable air: it adapts by learning, talking and trying another idea.
• Virgo closes summer. Mutable earth: it adapts by refining, adjusting the method until it works.
• Sagittarius closes autumn. Mutable fire: it adapts by exploring, finding a new horizon.
• Pisces closes winter, and the whole zodiac. Mutable water: it adapts by surrendering, flowing round whatever is in the way.

The double-bodied signs

Here is something most horoscope pages never mention. In traditional astrology the mutable signs were also called common or double-bodied signs, and their images show why. Gemini is two twins. Pisces is two fish. Sagittarius is half human and half horse. Even Virgo was counted among them. Each sits between two seasons and carries something of both.

Traditional astrologers read that literally: things begun under double-bodied signs were thought likely to happen twice, or to come in pairs. It is a lovely image of what mutable energy is: never only one thing, always able to become another.

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