Gemini Coven

The Gemini Coven are a group of witches from the Pacific Northwestern United States, most recently Portland, Oregon. They're known for their penchants for cloaking spells and their unique means of selecting a leader from a set of twins.

The Geminis are also notorious for their ability to create prison worlds. They are also known to have found a way to contact their dead ancestors before the Other Side collapsed.

It is said that the Gemini Coven is currently made up of six different witch families, however some of these families currently have more than one branch.

Early History
For 2,000 years the Gemini Coven kept track of the Travelers so that they would be unable to break the curse put on them as punishment for Silas and Qetsiyah creating the immortality spell. Their mission was to keep them from getting their hands on Silas and Amara's doppelgängers to break the curse.

The 1200s
In the year 1201, the Sanguis Coven, a rival coven of the Geminis, placed a powerful curse on the Gemini Coven that not only forces them to practise the Merge but creates a mystical link between the leader of the coven and every other witch that belongs to the Gemini Coven. Prior to this curse, the Gemini Coven had always been led by a pair of twins, from the family that would one day become the Parker Family.

The Merge is how they select their leader; when a pair of twins are born into the coven, they undergo the Merge ceremony once they reach the age of twenty-two. During this ceremony, the stronger of the two would claim their twin's power and emerge with double the strength they previously held. Their weaker twin dies as a result, leaving the survivor to become the new leader of the Coven. The various members of the Gemini Coven apparently all bind their magic and life to the success of the Merge ritual, as it has been said that, should the leader of the Gemini Coven die before a new leader can replace them, then the rest of the coven will die as well. Additionally, the major spells cast by the coven, such as the one that created the prison worlds, are also bound to the leader's life, if the leader dies, the spells are no longer bound and cease to exist.

1900s to Present
In 1903, the Geminis became aware of a violent Ripper vampire named Lily Salvatore, who slaughtered as many as 3,000 people in Europe on a blood-crazed bender. They made it their task to stop her, and, when she returned to the United States (presumably to see her sons, Damon and Stefan), the Geminis were waiting for her when she docked in Manhattan. They then trapped her in a prison world, and afterward, they were forced to burn down the ship in which she came to the country when they found she had drained the entire crew of their blood. As a result of her crimes, Lily became the first person to be imprisoned in a Gemini prison world.

At some point, Joshua Parker survived the Merge ceremony and became the Coven's leader. Joshua's first born children were twins; Josette and Malachai Parker. As such, they were meant to undergo the Merge, after which the strongest would succeed Joshua as leader. However, Malachai was born with a rare affliction; he could not generate his own magic. Instead, he could only practice magic when he siphoned it from another witch through tactile contact, and this power was typically used up quickly. Seeing this as an abomination of nature, Joshua and the rest of the coven decreed that Malachai could not become the Coven's leader. Joshua and his wife then continued to have more children until they finally had another set of twins, Lucas and Olivia Parker. However, when Malachai realized his parents' plans, he was furious that he was being robbed of his place as future leader of the Coven. Desperate to be able to possess his own magic and to no longer have to rely on others to give it to him, Malachai slaughtered three of his siblings in an effort to find and kill Lucas and Olivia. He also seriously wounded his sister, Jo, by removing her spleen with a large hunting knife. However, Jo was able to use a cloaking spell to save her brother and sister from Malachai. Afterwards, she hid her magic by sealing it in the same blade her brother used to butcher her body and told Malachai that she was willing to perform the Merge so long as he didn't harm any more of their siblings. Later, as they attempted the ceremony, Malachai realized his sister had tricked him when he could not feel her magic as he held her hands. Joshua and the rest of the Coven then used the passing of a solar eclipse on the 10th of May, 1994, to imprison Malachai in a prison world, which trapped him in a temporal time loop where he was forced to relive the same day over and over again and be forever alone, as he was incapable of killing himself to escape his punishment. As a price for locking her brother away, Jo was allowed to leave the Coven and she became a doctor, leaving her magic sealed in the kitchen knife at the Parker house in Portland.