Mars in Aries December 31st to February 14

Mars in Sagittarius

Mars in Cancer July 2017

The month gives us a chance to recover and direct the power of sacred masculine that is described in the Greek concept of thumos, a force invoked by warriors in battle to increase their courage, passion and determination. What planet does this symbolism remind you of? Thumos survives in the archetype of Mars, the planet of war and action that, in July, makes a series of intense aspects that will help us look at and take hold of the warrior within. Like many masculine symbols, Mars has a bad rap. Even in their androcentric phase, the ancient Greeks were aware that masculine strength had a dark side, which undirected could lead to wasteful partying and senseless, unbridled violence. As a culture, we knock Mars’ shadow, but do we apply its strengths? Fed on a diet of processed, transgenic food, chemtrails, TV and internet, what remains of our drive is reduced to watching sports events at the bar or, at best, using machines in fluorescent-lit gyms. We have relinquished the positive impulse of exploration and self-assertion. Just as the sacred feminine has become repressed and subverted to a life on automatic pilot, so has the sacred masculine. Plato compared the soul to a charioteer who is being pulled along by two horses, one kind and uplifting, and the other perverse. As astrologer Bill Herbst points out, we can’t kill the black horse: we need to harness its force. Instead of cowering before Mars’ shadow or getting stuck in projection onto certain groups and figures who seem to typify the dark horse, by reflecting on our potential for confidence and assertion and their necessity in our lives, we can gain a new, empowering perspective that can impel us into effective action. And with Pluto involved with the red planet’s first major July transit, empowerment is part of its mission. On July 2, Mars the triggerman opposes his mob boss(Pluto) of the solar system. Mars is in Cancer, sign of feelings, intuition and all things maternal. This somewhat uncomfortable placement can take things too personally. Yet as someone once said, sometime we need to take things personally; it means that they matter to us. The risk is reacting before researching. The crab can snap its claws precipitously, making enemies of neutral or even friendly contacts, hurting in anticipation of being hurt. Yet someone needs to protect what matters most: Mother, the homeland, the oceans, emotional processes and the priorities of our soul. Oppositions give perspective. As Mars, the fighter, opposes Pluto, the planet of power, it makes us look at the need to take an active stand for these concerns, like fighting to protect natural reserves from corporate incursion and protecting women and children’s health needs, including Planned Parenthood, from the GOP’s sabotage. As above, so below. The collective need to act against the repressive, authoritarian drive of Pluto in Capricorn, plays out in our personal sphere and psyche, too. Mars rules anger, and according to Buddhism, this emotion is the enemy of the “Mirror-path of clarity and non-dualism”. When we fail to look at ourselves, recognizing and acting on our positive thumos, we end up feeling frustrated and often lose clarity, projecting our frustration onto others, and, in the case of Pluto in Capricorn, onto figures of authoritarian power.What if we actually use our own power? This implies change, which Pluto is unleashing anyway in some area of everybody’s chart. Mars’ opposition can help us recover our roles as active agents of change, and as we do, recover the power over our lives.Besides the areas mentioned above, the pushy planet’s transit through Cancer gives us a chance to act on, even fight for, the area of our lives where we happen to give –and receive!—nurturance. As we’ll see sign-by-sign a bit further on, this is one of the gifts of the July 8 Full Moon in Capricorn, which will be conjunct Pluto, and continue to trigger this opposition at least through July 11. Nor will the warrior’s July path end there. Mars, the God of War, plays power politics all month. We are dragged once more through the lingering conflicts agitated by the now separating Uranus-Pluto square as the angry red planet opposes Pluto and squares Uranus. Mars is also active during the Full Moon on July 8/9 and the New Moon on July 23. In fact, Mars tracks closely to the Sun all month, perfecting the conjunction on July 26. Additionally, the confusion over what is real continues as Jupiter’s big ideas are dissolved by Neptune’s deceptions.

Judas Priest - Painkiller (Live 2005)

Judas Priest - Painkiller - Live in Detroit 1990

A whole new season of Mars Expression for Boys and Girls of all ages...

Noam Chomsky on Trump and the decline of the American Superpower

Mars turns Direct in Scorpio June 29th

Mars has been retrograde in Scorpio from April 18 until June 29 2016. The red planet turns retrograde about every 2 years. I tend to view retrogrades as working in a right brained/cyclical/intuitive way rather than the direct linear mode we tend to operate in just to get through our daily lives. The planets energy is turning itself upside down in a sense, so we get the opportunity to view things from another angle. Mars is traditionally a malefic, but it does not follow that in retrograde it becomes even more malefic. Nor does Mars become it’s opposite, a benefic! It just becomes well… weird. With Mars retrograde, instead of the usual flame-grilled Mars direct affair, it becomes more of a slow, rich bake. Much depends on in which sign Mars finds itself during the retrograde period. Generally the Martian impulse will be slowed down, deepened and feel more Plutonic. Mars retrograde could also be similar in effect to the energy of Pallas Athena, where every move is planned carefully and strategically. I have read that Mars retrograde is akin to it travelling in the 12th house, which would make it more of a spiritual-warrior. So if one is going to wage war at all, it will probably be a psychic one. There's an interesting surge towards the end of this Mars retrograde, and then when it does go direct it kind of goes with a bit of a zoom. Be careful of others who are, shall we say, more invested or somewhat stuck in the masculine aspect because I see them heating up or getting more angry. So do be cautious around others and I’d say also careful about what you post on social media because backlashes and that sort of thing. Since Mars (and Scorpio) is about sex as well as war, Mars retrograde prompts us to re-evaluate our sexual relationships. A new sexual attraction may burn out quickly, while a fling with an old flame could turn into something unexpectedly long term. Our ambitions and goals are bound to come under scrutiny also. It is said that those who start a war during Mars retrograde are likely to loose. In personal terms, “starting a war” could mean summoning someone to court or initiating a new business campaign against a rival. In competitive cases like those, it is usually advised to wait till Mars is direct again. However if someone should wage war on you, then it would be foolish not to defend yourself. When in Scorpio, Mars is actually quite at home. Before the discovery of Pluto in 1930, Mars was considered the astrological ruling planet of Scorpio (it also ruled Aries, and still does today). The high octane energy of Mars finds natural expression in typical Scorpio themes, which are the energetic connections and bonds underpinning our exchanges: sex, power, joint finances, psychology and pathology. Mars can be a wild, all-over-the-place energy if left unchecked but its impulses are well contained in Scorpio, where it finds focus. Nothing sloppy with this placement; it is nothing if not discliplined. Excellent strategist. Scorpio has a compulsive need to suck the poison and cut the rot out of life; Mars here is not easily deterred from acting on its need to simultaneously explore and free itself from seediness. in Sagittarius is a much more externally high spirited placement. Sagittarius is a fire sign and so Mars is at home here, too. After leaving Scorpio, Mars in Sagittarius turns its sights on battles of a higher nature: culture and religion, ideas about God, belief systems in general. Mars in Sagittarius is a strong defender of people’s beliefs, and will defend other’s ideas even as they are vehemently arguing their own. It is quick to spot hypocrisy and quicker to shut it down. Sagittarius is a sporty, athletic sign and Mars here likes to work up a sweat, preferably while outdoors. The environment and the outdoors are also favorite Sadge themes and Mars in Sagittarius can be a champion for nature and animals. All that is well and good on its own. However, the very long retrograde shadow in general, and more specifically the retrograde period, will not necessarily represent Mars at its best in either sign. A retrograde is the illusion of a planet slowing down and turning backwards in the sky, retracing its steps. Things represented by the retrograde planet tend to follow suit; slowing down, looking back instead of forward, having internal dialogue rather than external exchanges. The very nature of Mars means it isn’t very comfortable retrograde; Mars likes to move ahead as swiftly and forcefully as possible in straight lines. Mars does not like to slow down, review, wait. Mars loses its momentum when retrograde, becomes frustrated, takes one step forward and two steps back. Its frustrations can turn to angers that are either repressed through lack of appropriate channels or blow up in quite harmful ways. The Mars retrograde period in 2016 isn’t one to ignore. Initially, once Mars enters its retrograde shadow in Scorpio on February 17th it may seem as if energy is everywhere, but we’ll soon notice that the tempo has a lot of variables, like a record skipping. Mars enters Sagittarius on March 5th, bringing excitement, enthusiasm and optimism. Things begin to change in April, though, as Mars in Sagittarius will be conjunct the fixed star Antares (located at 9 degrees Sagittarius) the entire month. Antares, or Anti-Ares, has a strange reputation in astrology. It is said to be a mixture of Mars and Jupiter energy; Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, so the retrograde stationing of Mars in Sagittarius conjunct Antares will exacerbate the fixed stars reckless and even dangerous qualities. Antares was traditionally something of a malefic; associated with daredevils, rash leaders, battle, and even fatalities. It does also lend a disctinct mental and philosophical toughness and bluntness.

Tuesday, June 7

The Day of Mars in the first week (Fire) of the Gemini Lunar cycle. The person in charge of dispelling notions will be off duty today, during the hours of greatest morphic resonance, in order to provoke the gods. If you’ve ever pondered the planet Mars’ rulership of the sign Scorpio, consider this quote from Scorpio president Theodore Roosevelt: “Get action. Do things. Be sane. Don’t fritter away your time. Create. Act. Take a place wherever you are and be somebody. Get action.” When Ted was a kid the doctors warned him that because of his questionable health any sort of heightened activity would kill him. And that warning was disregarded to the fullest extent of his body’s wild, unfettered spirit. The Scorpio spirit personified. Provoke a pause and listen to intuition this morning, when an opposition from sensitive Cancer Moon to dredger Pluto favors emotional perspective, and meditating, creating, or working alone. Afternoon harmonies from Moon to Uranus in Aries and dynamic Mars in Scorpio combine instinct with impulse, great for acting boldly on the wisdom gleaned this morning. Tactically, we are the proverbial dodo feather stuck between the crocodile’s teeth.

Mars is now retrograde!

A Matter of Time

Available from Metaversal Media: IAO Core's "The Rite of Mars"

Anger as a Mental Disorder?

Full Moon on the Day of Mars

Tuesday, June 2 Marsday of Airweek and your muscles need attention, don’t they? Stretch ‘em, massage ‘em, work ‘em baby! One’s Will has lot in common with muscle tissue. Like a muscle, The Will becomes stronger the more one work’s it. As an exercise today, find something that you regularly do automatically, and don’t do it, with the intent of giving one’s Will a workout. Or stop by Metaversal Lightcraft today, where I have been leading a Karma Yoga Workshop every Tuesday for the last year. Luna becomes Full in Sagittarius with a promise of positive change. Sagittarius represents, on the level of the first octave, the period between Conception and 7 weeks, the first Lunar month after the sperm reaches the egg, and is a compacted pattern at a molecular time scale of the entire life of the cellular body. The embryo develops in parallel with the earlier phases of evolution, retaining memory of these structures in the brain. On the level of the fourth octave (see Chapter 9 of the Metaversal Lightcraft Training Manual for more on the Four Octaves), Sagittarius represents Initiation beyond the realms of Death (Scorpio). On the World scale, Sag occupies the period between AD 1500 and AD 1750, The Renaissance. This was the time when astrology, mathematics, musick and geometry were understood as divine techniques for communicating with the Soul of the World. With the Moon in Sagittarius we are into philosophical speculation, adventure, and foreign influences, and actions that expand the awareness through gathering unfamiliar experiences.It’s time to start filling a new empty place in our life. A tight connection between Mars and Pluto is active, intense and potentially explosive. Yet the Sabian symbol gives direction for absorbing and using this lunation’s gift: A FLAG BECOMES AN EAGLE, AN EAGLE BECOMES A PROUD CHANTICLEER…. mounting mastery, extreme good fortune. These transformative images resonate with the waning square from Uranus in Aries, ruled by Mars, to Pluto, the aspect that triggered the spiritual warrior within over the last three years. Not to say that we should get under the rug with our mala or rosary; the Sabian symbol for the Sun underscores the element of challenge: A BLACK SLAVE GIRL DEMANDS HER RIGHTS OF HER MISTRESS. Africa was the cradle not only of our genes, but of the legacy of ancestral cultures that recognized the sacred feminine. The slave girl is like the being of power we all have repressed inside, and she now emerges in worthiness. Ask what behaviors, memories and situations keep you in the condition of self-repression, and declare your freedom from them. Affirm, visualize and act with courage to connect with cosmic assistance that will ease our way and shield us from heated confrontation with others, which is a potential with this lunation. In the morning or at midday, do something healing for the inner self—in therapy, journaling, visualization, affirmations like those shared here or in our Full Moon ritual. From that space of power, offer a measure for an oppressed social group, to transmute the energy of outer conflict and separation that might be projected into the collective during this portal. Such morning activities will also open us to receive continued good fortune this afternoon, when a trine from Moon in Sagittarius to its ruler, Jupiter in Leo, makes for joyful sharing, productive promotion, inspired creativity and just plain good luck.

Anger Management - I Feel Pretty

Mars in Pisces ---- "This aggression will not stand, man"

mars in capricorn

hamburgers and bullets and mars in scorpio -----> by Jessica Murray

Uncle Sam is asking himself some hard questions about violence right now. Against the backdrop of the cardinal grand cross (2014-15) (1), Mars is revving his engines. During the final months of this year, Americans will be tweaking our relationship with the god of war. Starting in mid-October, Mars begins a series of provocative transits to the USA chart. Beginning with Mars’s opposition to natal Mars (October 15), the warrior planet will hit the US Venus-Jupiter-Sun (10/31-11/15), its Mercury (11/28) and end up, over the first week of December, in a conjunction with natal Pluto. This is a dramatic send-off. Mars and Pluto together symbolize raw power made manifest. Violence It is hard to look at violence. Real violence, that is. Millions of Americans have no trouble at all looking at the bloodshed depicted in video games, action movies and high-concept torture porn (e.g. Luther, True Detective) (2). The plethora of killing and maiming in American entertainment suggests that something within our mass psyche is trying to work itself out. We might ask ourselves what a concerned kindergarten teacher might say about a child who repeatedly made pictures of people stabbing and shooting each other. She would probably advise his parents that Little Jacob has a lot of aggressive energy he is trying to work out. It is not the just the USA, of course, that is thus fixated. Humanity as a whole is in the third year of the Uranus-Pluto square’s peak period. In the frenzy (Uranus) of destruction (Pluto) reflected in global headlines we are seeing the paroxysms of an old world order in collapse (3). The astrological way of looking at breakdown is as a precursor to new life; the more dramatic the death throes, the more significant the rebirth to come. Our job as human participants in these cuspal years is to try to maintain this perspective while staying engaged. Summer 2014 saw war in Ukraine, schoolgirls kidnapped en masse in Nigeria, jihadists beheading journalists on the Internet and the pummeling into rubble of the Gaza strip. Despite the fact that this violence is occurring far from American shores, Uncle Sam’s fingerprints cover the crime scenes.The state-of-the-art weaponry used for the asymmetrical slaughter in Gaza (4) is, of course, American-made; US tax dollars paid for that fancy iron dome. Moreover, Americans were dismayed to learn that some of the missiles used by the ISIS fighters—Washington’s sworn enemies—were also forged in the USA. It appears that these arms, shipped by the Pentagon to the Iraqi army, are often captured by the jihadists and moved into Syria. A deft exercise in re-gifting. Soldier-Cops The specter of a militarized police force reared its head this past August, after the latest cop killing of an unarmed black teenager spurred riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Local police forces have been acquiring leftover equipment from the US army for quite a while, but the issue had not burst through the threshold of collective consciousness until the Uranus-Pluto square lined up with that natal Sun-Saturn square (conflict with authority) in the USA chart.What people saw on the news blew their minds. Those visuals of cops in combat gear rent asunder the comforting national stereotype (Sun in Cancer) of the friendly neighborhood cop. Footage of paramilitary police brutalizing demonstrators in Missouri featured the kind of imagery Americans had heretofore associated only with fascist takeovers (Pluto square Saturn) in other countries. Now, the picture was suddenly (Uranus) and irrevocably etched in the mass mind, of police—officially protectors of the peace (Saturn in Libra)—decked out to wage war. Filicide This escalation of state violence appeared just as the phenomenon of citizen-on-citizen violence reached crazy new heights. America’s current wave of mass killings began in earnest with the movie theatre murders in Aurora, Colorado, when transiting Mars triggered the US chart at the first hit of the Uranus-Pluto square (see The Darkest Knight). The litany of mayhem that followed, from a campus in Santa Barbara to the Bullets and Burgers shooting range in Arizona, revealed a country whose relationship with Mars (aggression) is fatally skewed. This is not the fault of planetary geometry. It is what happens when a group entity is living out not the promise of its birthright, but its shadow. With Pluto (death) still hovering in the degree range of the Sibly Sun cluster, we are seeing a massive failure (Saturn) to protect (square Cancer). It was the Newtown shootings that made this point most poignantly, because the victims were so heartbreakingly young. One got the sense of a nation committing filicide. Victim-Perps But the little girl who became an accidental murderess at the shooting range in Arizona in late August made another side of the issue vividly clear: that in a gun-crazed society, the shooters are victims, too. In this group we must include the disaffected, unstable young men (Aaron Alexis, Adam Lanza, James Holmes, et al.) who had better access to automatic weapons than to mental health services. The USA’s failure to protect its children from harm includes our failure to protect a growing list of young men from the inner demons that make them pull the trigger. To this sorry list of victim-perps we must now add a hapless nine-year-old, whose parents thought it was a good idea to arm her with an Uzi. Awash in a sea of guns (5), US society is playing out its destructive impulses so outlandishly that we cannot look away. This is essentially the point of the transits upon us. It is terrible that in this purported land of the free and the brave, citizens with a certain skin color regularly get shot, beaten and choked by the police. But it is not a terrible thing for a populace to recognize that this is happening. It is horrible that the USA is abrogating its Cancerian responsibility and purpose (square to Saturn in the 10th house) by allowing violence to run amok (Mars square Neptune). But it is not horrible to have the veil ripped away from the national pretence that, except for a few aberrant individual cases once in a while, everything’s fine. Out of the Fog Astrology is invaluable as a lens through which to watch disturbing cultural phenomena. The distance it gives us allows a larger meaning, and a conceptual clarity, to emerge out of the fog of emotion and chaos. This does not mean astrologers dismiss the closer-to-home responses to human suffering, such as empathy (Moon, Venus). Nor does it mean that we abdicate our responsibility (Saturn) to stay informed (Mercury) about what’s happening at the level of current events. Earth life is a multi-layered experience, where our ego impulses (Mars) and ideals of justice (Jupiter) are just as real as the lofty esoteric lessons that we draw from epochal transits like the Uranus-Pluto square. We can legitimately address the issue of American violence through “politics.” On the level of public policy, “Guns make violence happen; gun-control laws make it stop,” as writer Adam Gopnick has put it. But as transit trackers we have a vaster vocabulary, as well, with which to address these things. On the level of cosmic policy, we would look at gun laws not as a cause but as an effect. That is, gun laws are an example of something that might happen if America’s consciousness about violence were to radically shift. The function of the outer planets (a.k.a. the transpersonals) is to jack up our awareness. They do so by wrenching us into the moment, which is the only place where consciousness lives. Pluto gets us into present time by reminding us that death exists. Uranus slams us into the present by shocking us. Through the grand cross to America’s chart, together they are forcing a consciousness jolt that could not have been affected any other way. Notes (1) The Uranus-Pluto square, whose outside range is 2008-23, is coming up on its sixth exactitude (out of seven), on December 14, 2014. During 2014 and 2015 it is forming a cross configuration with the Sibly chart (7/4/1776 5:10 pm Philadelphia). For details, see At the Crossroads. (2) The way American movies are rated speaks volumes. As film critic Mick LaSalle puts it, the MPAA gives an R rating [restricted] to “humane little movies like Before Midnight, and a PG13 to any violent summer film with money behind it.” (3) The particulars of this collapse are succinctly outlined by ex-military intelligence expert R. D. Steele, who helpfully gives it a timeline. The man pulls no punches. (4) As of late August, 857 Palestinians (including 149 children) had died, as opposed to 37 Israelis. (5) I knew the USA had the world’s highest civilian gun ownership rate, but I was blown away to read that it amounted to 89 guns per 100 people (Small Arms Survey of Geneva). Residents of the USA are 20 times more likely to die by gun-related .