Flames and Ashes—Mars square Saturn—August 24th

War-god Mars casts his scarlet light over our lives from June 27th till January 6th, igniting the warm embers of passion, engorging the hot thrust of anger, and, as temperatures soar, engulfing California in flames and ashes.

 

This week, Mars makes a tense square to Saturn in Capricorn, an unstoppable force colliding with an immovable object. Both planets are moving slowly through the heavens, so the energy may feel ponderous, enormously frustrating, emotionally debilitating. Mars begins to grind to a halt and will turn Retrograde on September 9th and Saturn begins to turn direct on September 29th. The cycles of the planets mirror the social, financial and political fire storms, so take comfort that this too shall pass.

 

There’s an incendiary quality to Mars in Aries. He likes to pick a fight, and when he feels thwarted or imprisoned or castrated, he howls at the moon. Mars runs amok in countries where human hearts are ruptured by hate speak or physical aggression. Novelist, Margaret Atwood, born in 1939, wrote in poem called Power Politics: you fit into me like a hook into an eye…a fish hook…an open eye … words which describe the cruelty and possessiveness of a dysfunctional Mars.

 

We all have Mars in our birth chart and over these next few weeks, we will have to decide which wolf to feed.

 

Mars has two moons named Phobos panic/fear and Deimos. terror/dread. Fear seduces us into a frozen state of knee-jerk reactivity as it seeps its dank chill into our homes into our bones. Fear lodges in our brain synapses and replays its nightmarish refrain in the old stories we tell ourselves about our lives, our relationships and the world.

 

As this planet of war and carnal desire journeys above the trajectory of our lives and we co-resonate with the cosmos, we may need to slow down, calm down, own that the battle out there is the battle within. Our self-sabotage, the audio loops of our negative self-defeating thinking, the stories we have been telling ourselves for years about the world around us and those who staunch our ability to realise our joy, our core aliveness. If we are not able to act out our desires, our aggression our Mars energy implodes into the dank darkness of what is labelled “depression”. Our instinctive forces are flayed by a frazzled sense of overwhelm. Our relationships lack passion and emotional closeness, our heroic valour seems diminished. It may manifest as drama which serves to create some movement of energy in our stale burnt out lives, it may insinuate itself into behaviours which are offensive and defensive, the deadlock we call passive aggressiveness.

 

Perhaps we may consider that the lens through which we see the world is predisposed to battle, that we thrive on the heat of the stress that combat brings. Perhaps, as we tear through the world, distracted, pushing, straining, it is adrenal burnout that brings to our knees. As psychologist David Schnarch, author of Intimacy and Desire, writes, “If you can’t regulate your own emotional temperature, you’ll regulate everyone around you to keep yourself comfortable.”

 

Power is not always about taking action. We protect our soul power by protecting the soul power of other living things. Our soul power comes from dis-arming ourselves, removing our breast plate and living close to our heart. Our power may arise from failure and loss. It may emerge from the white ashes of depression. When we empty out who we are not we discover Who we are. If we embrace the grace of this red planet energy effectively during this retrograde period we will allow ourselves the space for reflection and contemplation. To renegotiate those parts of our lives that feel stagnant and lack lustre and allow a new rush of life to energise and renew our work, relationships and forge a renewed connection with our soul life.

 

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