I was out in the ocean with my precocious Gemini niece. She loves the water, but today she was being clingy and climbing all over me. I asked her to stop; being a climbing gym for a five year old just doesn’t feel good! But she didn’t listen. I got frustrated, angry. She became surly. We stopped playing. Later, feeling guilt and shame for disappointing our chance to play in the ocean (which I’d been building up for months), I went back into the ocean with her. We did the same exact dance all over again, but this time it left me with an injured back and a night of missed sleep.
Mars attacks!!!
Mars is retrograding* through my fourth house at this Solar Eclipse in Cancer, both the fourth and Cancer ruling family and home. Of course, my extended family came for a visit. It’s funny how synchronous the universe is in providing a testing ground for Mars RX issues to surface. In the area Mars is transiting in your chart, you, too, are being irritated, having your warrior mettle piqued and triggered.
Mars is about taking action to get what you want. In my early family dynamic there were two choices when it came to getting what anyone wanted or needed. Either you played by the rules and didn’t bother even trying, or your needs compromised everyone else’s. Two choices: sacrifice your self -or- be selfish.
Not good choices. Neither come from an authentic place.
So, it makes sense that my natal chart features Mars in Aries opposed by Pluto in Libra, with my Cancer Sun at the apex. Pluto can sublimate any archetype, repressing its natural expression because that instinct has been deemed bad, wrong, dangerous, untrustworthy. Anger, a natural extension of learning to honor one’s limits and selfhood, was the bogeyman that was never allowed to enter the room.
One thing I’ve learned about anger, in my anger re-education. Underneath it always lurks: fear. Which was appropriate for my situation with my niece… My anger was trying to protect me from getting hurt! But I felt such shame about that anger.
So, when I went back in, energetically, to clear it, and imagined giving myself permission to take care of myself, I could see the alternative. If I had been more secure in the knowledge that I could take care of myself (Sun in Cancer), and calmly redirected her, she wouldn’t have gotten fussy and felt blamed by me. We would play in shallow water where she wouldn’t want to cling. Everyone would have felt better.
What is Mars retrograde teaching you about your relationship to your anger, desire, goals, independence, sexuality, limits and boundaries? Pulled muscles, thwarted action, boundary issues, frustration…these are common manifestations of any Mars retrograde period. But if you go no further, and chalk it all up to “Mars retrograde” you would be missing out on the opportunity to unravel the symbolism, the “why” behind “what’s” occurring. Mars is about honoring your limits, how you hold your warrior energy. That’s why the muscle gets pulled. That’s why the car accident happens.
Maybe your Mars has been wounded in life, too, like mine, hobbling along on one cylinder. It’s not uncommon. Culture is either in love with aggression and desire, or demonizes it. On the whole, unless he’s in uniform (cop, or armed forces) we don’t respect Mars so much. We burn out our adrenals trying to achieve goals. We fail to stand up for our selves, accepting the consequences of that -stress and pain- as “the way things are”. We do things we don’t enjoy instead of taking the initiative to build a life that we do.
Well then, why not use this time to pull over and take a much needed pit stop? To regroup and relate to your Mars, differently? We’ll be given more opportunities to do so– as the next Full Moon Lunar Eclipse on 7/27/18 conjoins Mars.
*Mars went retrograde on 6/25/18 at 9 degrees of Aquarius, and directs on 8/27/18 at 29 degrees of Capricorn. In your chart, look at the area between 29 Cap-9 Aquarius.
Dear Jessica, thank you for reminding about this issue, and, as usual, with your openness and honesty. Also has problematic natal Mars – in conjuction with Saturn, in square with Sun and in 4th house)
Score one for synchronicity, I have been reading “King Warrior Magician Lover” by Doug Gillette and Robert L. Moore (1990), and last night read the chapter on the (Jungian) Warrior archetype. The authors point out that our culture has trouble with this energy and we fail by pushing too hard or being too passive. They said the key to finding “just right” (i.e. being motivated to right action) arrives through being alert to what is going on around us and acting when the time is right. They feel this is achieved through mindfulness. Perhaps mindful awareness is a Libran sort of way to achieve balance with Aries action.
Beautiful. Presence and mindfulness do allow “divine timing” to make itself known.
It reminds me of an experience I had recently. I was at a dinner and suddenly I got really angry. It wasn’t what was said, or anything seemingly external, but a feeling that “it’s time to go”. I ignored the signal and stayed 2 more hours. The next day several of us became sick. We had pushed past our limits. I had been alerted to that.
Conditioning can override our inner knowing about right timing/action, disrupting our ability to express true leadership. (In my case it was Libra Rising conditioning- sensitivity to disappointing others’ perception of having a good time prevented this).
am i just lucky? i got 5 planets retrograde in my birthchart so when a lot of these Rx’s role around i don’t really notice them… okay may i feel a bit more comfortable.. is that weird? i have mars in scoprio retrograde.. so this one in aquarius.. whatever.. where’s my leftover pizza…. xoxo i always love your articles smooch smooch
Such a useful article for me. I have been struggling with co-dependency issues, a flare-up, if you will. This is a lifelong issue for me and Mars in Aquarius (third house) is all about my basic childhood misbelief that its either no-win (so why say anything) or blow-up and get so angry I do damage. A lifelong journey of therapy and other internal modalities (like journaling and walking meditation) has made me more aware of boundaries. But as I was reading I realized I am not listening to my intuition! Again! I don’t feel good where I am living. Its time to move on and move out because of a very strong intuition I have about my landlady. She keeps making it more and more expensive to live at her house but is too passive aggressive to ask me to move out. Finally, the Universe helped me get a storage space for my things in a very welcome miracle/serendipity. Yay! But, as I have been asking around for a house sharing situation two have become available — yet neither feels good. Both feel bad. Yet I have been trying and trying to talk myself into one of the situations because the lady needs help so bad. Problem is she has three ill-mannered dogs (one bites) and a ferret in a tiny house. I have felt all kinds of terrible as I thought about moving in with her and yet, I was talking myself right into it because saying no was so uncomfortable that I’d rather be miserable than say no! I realized this as I read you article so thank you.