Gemini- The Goddess Iris (2024)

Iris, pot 525 BCE.

Bees buzz in the Spring sunlight as a light rain begins to fall, they take shelter under green leaves and the rainbow spreads from sky to earth a linking bridge from the goddess to you.

She walks down the seven coloured bridge, colours sparkling and vibrant and teaches of the seven natures, the magic numbers of life, the seven planets, seven energy centres, the seven notes of the scale. Red for blood and life and root and earth. Orange for pleasure and sexuality and all the abundance. Yellow for self-love, self-acceptance and self-worth. Green for the heart which connects lower and higher energies, for universal love and joy and peace. Turquoise for loving speech and expression, for truth and music. Indigo for clear seeing the unseen, clairvoyance and visions. Violet for messages from the Goddess and divine communication. All these gifts the Goddess brings to you, to share around the world as you fly between Spirit and Earth and the Underworld your gifts bring solace and wisdom and joy and speech to all.

Iris (Ιρις) was the daughter of the Titan Thaumas (wonder) and Oceanid Electra, so she was born from the union of the sky and the water. Iris was the personification of the rainbow and more generally of the relationship between heaven and earth, gods and humankind, which the rainbow represents. Iris was shown with wings, dressed in thin silk, which in sunlight has the colours of the rainbow. She is sometimes said to be the wife of Zephyrus (the West wind) and mother of Eros, but again these may have been her original attributes, controlling or personifying the winds and sending messages of love.[i]

Iris the rainbow is Hera’s messenger, wearing her cloak of many colours she helps Zeus to flood the earth by sucking up moisture and making the clouds thick[ii].

The name Iris comes from (Ιρις) Greek for rainbow, and also Eris (Ερις: quarrel, debate, and zeal) or eirew (ειρεω), from the verb "to say." If so, then Iris's name means speaker, or perhaps mouthpiece, while eiren (ειρηνη) is the old Ionic word for peace.

Iris was the link between gods and men and between the gods themselves when they were quarreling, as both messenger and mediator. Iris appears in the Iliad but not in the Odyssey, where Hermes has replaced her.

There are two images of Iris: Rainbows portend storms or war,

‘…the shimmering rainbow, a portent and sign of war, or of a wintry storm’. Homer, Iliad 17:547-50.

Iris also brings messages. Zeus sends her to Poseidon, to convince him to withdraw.

‘Go on your way now, swift Iris, to the lord Poseidon, give him this message…and swift-footed Iris did not disobey him…’ (Iliad 15:158,168)

Iris is known for her speed, ‘…as those times when out of the clouds the snow or hail whirls cold beneath the blast of the north wind born in the bright air, so rapidly [went] winged Iris the swift one, in her eagerness’ (Iliad 15:170-2)

Her epithets were mostly those of speed: "wind-footed," "swift-footed," "storm-footed." She was also frequently called "golden-winged."

Iris has a persuasive manner, ‘then in turn, swift footed Iris answered him [Poseidon]…will you change a little? The hearts of the great can be changed.’ (Iliad 15:203)

Poseidon replies, ‘now this, divine Iris, is a word properly spoken. It is a fine thing when a messenger is conscious of justice.’ (Iliad 15:206-7). Poseidon is convinced by Iris.

Iris is also the psychopomp who eases the passage of the dying. Virgil, in The Aeneid describes how Iris eases the suffering of brokenhearted Dido when she is abandoned by Aeneus.

‘So then, dewy Iris flew down from heaven with saffron plumes, trailing thousands of multicoloured hues facing against the sun. She stood by Dido’s head, [whispering]

‘this I was ordered to do, to carry a sacrifice to Dis [Hades] and so I unbind your body.’

‘So it happened, with her right-hand Iris cut Dido’s hair, then all the warmth melted away from her and Dido’s life departed into the wind.’ Aeneid: 4:700-5

By cutting her hair as sacrifice to Hades, Iris releases the ties that bind Dido to the human realm, and she is carried off, away from her suffering by the winds. It is a beautiful image of the gentle touch of Gemini, the air sign, who allows the winds to carry the dead to peace.

Iris not only brings release from suffering for the blameless, but punishment to the wicked. In The Madness of Heracles, Iris appears with Lyssa (madness) to punish Heracles who has offended Hera.

‘Fear not, old men, as you see Lyssa born of Nyx (Night), for I am Iris, handmaiden of the gods. We come to do no harm to your city, we join forces against the body of one man only. Hera wills it to fix upon him [Heracles] fresh blood guilt by killing his children, and I wish the same. Unwed maiden of Black Night (Νυξ), your heart hard, lay your hands upon him so he might suffer. Send madness upon that man and child slaughter, show him tumult and send out frenzy (the leaping of the feet), drive him to be murderous, so that when he carries his own beautiful children on Acheron’s ferry, massacred by him, he will understand this rage of Hera’s and mine.’ (Euripides: 815-874)

Hera and Iris, pot 480 BCE

While Iris is compassionate, she is also merciless in her punishment, when Nyx tries to dissuade her. Iris is unyielding and sarcastic, she dismisses any objection and reminds Lyssa what her job is and pulls rank, she and Hera will have their revenge. ‘Don’t you rebuke the machinations of Hera!’ Furthermore, ‘It was not to be moderate that the wife of Zeus sent you here!’[i] Lyssa has a job to do and that is to drive people mad, she may not question her orders. Heracles’ crime is that he is the son of Zeus by another woman (ostensibly). Iris is messenger of Hera and speaks her truth.

Heracles ‘taming pathless wilds and raging sea,’ offended Hera and Gaia who liked their ‘pathless wilds’ untamed, they were places where nymphs and maenads danced ecstatically. The twelve Labours of Heracles involved the killing or capturing of ancient symbols of the Goddess. The Nimean Lion, the Lernean Hydra, the Cerynian Hind, the Erymanthian Boar, cleaning the Augean Stables, the Stymphalian Birds, the Cretan Bull, the Horses of Diomedes, the girdle of Amazon Queen Hippolyte, the Cattle of Geryon, the Golden Apples of the Hesperides, the hound Cerebus. Hera is revenged. In a frenzied attack Heracles slaughters his wife and children and then is returned to sanity to suffer the enormity of his actions.

Iris not only brings punishment to mankind, but to the gods also.

‘When strife and feuds among the immortals are stirred up and one who lives in a house on Olympus should lie, Zeus then calls Iris to bring her golden jug, which contains that which is sworn upon, the famous cold water which pours down from high, steep, rocks. Far under the wide earth, a branch of Oceanus flows through black night from the sacred river and is divided into ten parts. These nine silver swirling streams wind around the earth and the wide back of the sea and fall into the brine, while the tenth flows out from a rock, bringing great misery to the gods.’ (Hesiod Theogony 775-798)

Iris then, is more than a handmaid who serves the gods. Iris brings the sacred waters from the tenth silver stream for swearing a sacred oath in her golden jug. The water is poured from the jug and an oath is sworn. (fig 18). It is the ‘famous cold water’ which comes from the high rocks. The punishment for lying on oath is exile for a year, unfed or watered, lying on a couch unattended. Afterwards, for another nine years the wrongdoer is banished from the assemblies and feasts of the gods.

Iris is one of the few gods who can enter Hades and return, so she has this sacred duty to carry the waters of the Styx (her mother was after all an Oceanid) back up to Olympus and the pour the liquid and bear witness to the oath.

Although Iris appears lightweight and ornamental, she has power and reach. She can be vengeful and implacable and demands the truth and recompense from wrongdoers. She does not enact the punishment herself; she brings Lyssa (madness) or the water for the oath and stands back for other gods to exact the penalty.

Iris is a messenger both compassionate (Dido) and vengeful (Heracles). She has an airy neutrality which states the facts, shines light on wrongdoing and steps back. As psychopomp, Iris releases suffering Dido to the winds.

As an air sign, mutable Iris is wide ranging, unpredictable, changeable unbounded. She speaks to the gods and also mortals, she connects the upper world with the lower world, the world of humans and gods of the upper and underworld.

Air signs do not much like physicality, they like the wide airy open spaces of the mind. They need stimulus for their minds and love to chatter and like Iris are connectors, networkers, who move quickly between worlds. It is not unusual for them to have many separate spheres of friends in their lives, who represent different interests, they are kept apart and would be surprised if they met each other, they are so different.

Iris connects but is not affected by whatever she meets. She can be in the underworld or with the gods and is equally at ease in either world. She can enter and leave the underworld at liberty, unlike anyone else, and registers and reports but experiences slide off her shiny carapace. She is about collecting experiences and less about experiencing them. For this reason Gemini can be called superficial, but really, they are interested in everything, especially the bright and shiny things and people.

Iris is the servant and also the shapeshifter[ii]. Inconstant but flexible, able to fit into many situations, she may suffer from being all things to all people. Iris can be the servant following others rather than taking a stand. Many politicians and journalists are Gemini, slippery and changeable, often with a flexible relationship to the truth. Gemini follows Taurus, she brings us messages about how to conserve the riches of the earth.

Extract from Goddess Astrology buy here.

[i] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0101%3Acard%3D822

[ii] https://www.goddess-guide.com/iris.html accessed 21.9.2020.

[i] Grimal,1987: 237.

[ii] Ovid, Metamorphoses book1:269-70.