This week, I’ve been feeling quietly pleased – and somewhat amazed– to realise that I have been running this blog now for three years. It has been a truly pleasurable experience to share some of my astrological enthusiasms, and experience gained both from client work, student teaching – and Life, the greatest teacher of all. It’s been great to have had such an enjoyable and informative dialogue with commenters, making quite a few new blogging friends along the way. Creating the Facebook Page for the blog has also brought a whole new dimension, with a whole new spectrum of readers and commenters. Thanks, everyone! Keep reading and commenting!
Here is the most popular, most widely read post of the whole three years. What is it about TWINS that fascinates us so much?
Helene’s question:
My Answer:
During many years of teaching astrology classes, I found that the above questions came up very frequently.
It is important at this point to emphasise to readers who are familiar only with Sun Signs that to get ‘beyond the Sun Signs’ requires an individual’s horoscope to be drawn up for the date, place AND time of birth. Human beings are complex and contradictory. It’s not possible to approach any satisfying symbolic exploration of that complexity through the Sun or Star Sign alone.
A number of years ago, I decided to address the typical questions students asked about twins (summed up by Helene’s questions here) via one of the tutorial classes I ran for my more advanced students, all of whom had a good grasp of the basics of astrology, and some of whom were already practitioners in their own right.
One student – let’s call her Anna – was the devoted aunt to a set of twins in their mid teens, a boy and a girl – let’s call them Angus and Miriam. These two had been born less than fifteen minutes apart and had almost identical horoscopes.
I had formulated a theory about twins and astrology which I wanted to test out, so I obtained permission via Anna from Angus and Miriam’ s parents as well as the twins themselves, to calculate their horoscopes and discuss them anonymously in class.
My method was to put up on the board only one horoscope since there was so little difference between the twins’ horoscopes, and ask the students to take an hour to prepare along with me a basic outline of the key characteristics revealed by this one horoscope. We did the preparation as though we were preparing a birth chart for just one person.
The class knew nothing about either of the twins, and I asked Anna to observe us, but not to make any comments at all.
Once we had written up the outline, we spent the next hour discussing our findings with Anna, who knew her nephew and niece well.
I am writing this after a gap of about twenty years and no longer have the notes for detailed reference, so can only give a summary of the essence of what emerged from our discussion.
Anna found our summary from the one horoscope of the basic characteristics of both her nephew and niece to be very accurate. What was very clear was that certain traits were held in common, but that the rest were, as it were, divided up between the twins. To put it very simply, looking at a range of traits: 1,2,3 and 4 were recognisable in both; Miriam manifested traits 5,6 and 10 whilst Angus lived out traits 7, 8 and 9.
This very interesting and enlightening experiment does not of course constitute any kind of proof: but it bore out my impressions from reading about the similarities and differences in the lives of twins about whom I had read, as well as my own observations of twins I had come across from my own experience, as well as the few horoscope readings I had done for individuals who were twins.
What was this impression? Coming back to the analogy of the horoscope revealing the characters poised on life’s stage, waiting for the moment of birth to kick start the action of the play, it seemed that twins unconsciously chose which characters on their joint stage they were going to live out jointly – and the ones which they were going to live out separately.
The experiment which I did all those years ago with my students, Anna and her nephew and niece certainly bore out my theory….
After writing this piece I googled ‘astrology and twins’ to see what came up, and was pleased to find on my favourite astrology site, Astrodienst, that other astrologers including Dr Liz Greene had come to much the same conclusion.
As far as two people born at the same time in the same place is concerned, yes, they would in effect have the same horoscopes. You would certainly see considerable similarities if you studied both their lives over time. But each character on the stage at a given moment in time has a range of possible modes of expression. Thus the influence of different family circumstances and different opportunities, etc, would call forth a range of possible responses from the same basic character.
To read much more on this topic, do go over to master astrologer Donna Cunningham’s blog Sky Writer, where she has an excellent piece on the astrology of twins.
Then come back and let me know what YOU think!
Twins
800 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2013/2016
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page of Writing from the Twelfth House
Astrology: Questions and Answers 
Congrats on your three years! It’s been wonderful fun to follow you, and to have my mind stretched, bent, pretzled and soothed.
A new question did come to mind with this reading. For years, we’ve talked so much about our “inner child.” Has anyone ever written about an “inner twin”? We speak easily of dual personalties — of Jekyl and Hyde, for example — but that’s not precisely twindom. Have you ever come across the concept? I suppose inner twins would have to be fraternal rather than identical — but perhaps not!
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Many thanks, Linda! Since I’ve been promoting the blog posts on my Facebook Page, most of the comments are left there now, plus Facebook Shares on other people’s Pages – so it’s nice to have occasional comments left on the actual post! Thanks so much for your kind words – although I think it would take a lot to pretzel your most excellent, wide-ranging mind…No, I have not come across the concept of the “inner twin”, but it is an intriguing one upon which which I must reflect. Perhaps returning to the esoteric writings of one Carl Gustav Jung would point me in a productive direction…the only thought occurring at present is that one could perhaps call one’s ‘daimon’, that inner wise guide of us all toward what we are meant to be in this life, by the name of inner – wiser – twin. Will mull…
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Reblogged this on Lost Dudeist Astrology.
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Many thanks, Grandtrines!
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You are welcome!
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You may email me, as long as you are not a spammer.
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Via Facebook, 17.7.16:
Allan Wong:
This is true.My wife has an identical twin sister.And observing them you can see the differences and similarities.
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Thanks for this feedback, Allan. It’s always illuminating to hear from people who have direct experience of twins.
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17.7.16: via Facebook: Carrie Cannady:
My dad was an identical twin. The differences between him and his brother are what I remember most. Congratulations on three years of blogging!
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Thanks for the feedback, Carrie – and the congratulations. Actually, I have been blogging for eight years and only wound up my first blog ‘Writing from the 12th House’ which is now an archive of of wide-ranging articles, in May of this year. I wanted to devote more of my time to this one! It’s great to see your name cropping up regularly these days…
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17.7.16:
Carrie Cannady via Facebook:
Thank you, Anne! I continue to enjoy your posts. The insights are most helpful to my learning process.
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2016 · July 17 : via Facebook:
Janet Bowman Johnson:
I have fraternal twin grandkids (boy & girl) that were born one minute apart by caesarian section. Yet their charts are different because one has an intercepted sign & planet in the first, reflecting an inhibition of expression. Also being different sexes influences how their energies are expressed. I believe environment makes a difference as does personal choice. 🙂
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Thanks, Janet, for this interesting feedback. Have a read of what I replied to Billie regarding the reason I chose those particular twins to write about.
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July 16 2016: via Facebook:
Billie Gypsy:
5 minutes can put planets into different houses…change the aspects on planets and even the ascendant and mid heaven…of course twins are slightly different…but one will always lead the other re transits and progressions!
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Thanks Billie, yes I am aware of this explanation for differences between twins, as I’m sure are most astrologers. What pleased me about the twins featured in this post, was that there was hardly any difference between the two charts: same MC, same Ascendant at almost the same degrees. So very very little difference could be accounted for by the usual astrological variations such as you so rightly describe – which enabled me to demonstrate that twins seem to allocate their different roles before birth.
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17.7.16: via Facebook:
Janet Bowman Johnson:
I’m loving your blog. Thanks for doing it!
I don’t know if twins choose their roles before birth (possible!) but I do believe each individual has free choice within the scope of their birth character following birth. They can’t ‘change their spots’ but they do choose how they direct their attention and energy. We all do. Each moment, each hour, each day…
Hugs!
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Yes, agreed, Janet! It looks – if one has a metaphysical bent – as though twins divide some of their joint roles before birth.But if so, the mechanism is not known, and it may well NOT be so. It just looks like that could be the case. As that wise old ancient Greek once said :
“The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us, but in the course of time
Through seeking we may learn and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor shall he know it,neither of the gods
Nor yet of all the things of which I speak.
For even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it:
For all is but a woven web of guesses”
― Xenophanes
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17.7.16: via Facebook:
Janet Bowman Johnson
Ah! Excellent! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
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Anne dear! I’ve been intending to read your twin blog ever since you posted it as I have recently started a relationship with a twin. Having recently met his (older) twin brother, it certainly seems true that twins can take very different journeys through life….But an additional comment on how this happens, as one born into a large family. It seems to me that each successive sibling has to find their own particular qualities to develop so as to distinguish themselves from the rest (as the oldest, I had first choice!). So I guess that the same goes for twins, although as you say, there are also the qualities that twins may chose to share. The older brain cells do not allow me to recall the authors, but there have recently been a couple sociological studies of the impact of birth order on siblings, and Prima and Septimus can have much in common with other first- or seventh-borns. Bossy boots springs to mind for oldest, and we are old enough friends for you to agree!
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Thanks, Jane, for this thoughtful reflection on the ever-fascinating topic of twins. There are number of ways to explore Twins themes: astrological analysis certainly gives some useful perspectives, I feel. I also have a post on astrological twins – born on the same day, but not related, which you might also find interesting. Check Categories on right-hand sidebar!
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