Mars in Sagittarius: Headings versus Headaches

 Mars thin...sometimes described as 'tenuous' atmosphere as photographed by the Viking Orbiter (photo credit: NASA-JPL, 1976)

Mars is entering Sagittarius on Sunday, October 7th at 3:22 in the morning, UT/+0 time.

Generally speaking, as an astrologer I think of Mars entering Sagittarius and I say ‘oh boy – everyone’s going to be out there living to the max!’

To me, Mars in Sagittarius connotes good things. Active things. Trying-it-out new efforts, new attitudes, a renewed willingness to hear others out and listen to new ideas. Mars in Sagittarius fairly reeks of open our minds to the improbable but possible. The startlingly stunning, but real.

Okay…so full confession here, I do have a natal Mars in Sagittarius. Conjunct asteroid Scheherazade, my Sag Mars is a validation of my life as a writer. It doesn't matter what field I work in...eventually I end up writing.

And yes, this does mean I'll soon be getting a new Mars Return. Also yes - all such returns are highly informative!

But when I erect my personal Mars Return chart, you can also bet I'll be thinking about this Mars/Sagittarius ingress.

 Mars entering Sagittarius

October 7, 2012 - 3:22 a.m. UT/+0 - Aries Wheel

(location not specific)

And oh boy - is this an interesting chart, or what?!!

The first thing I notice (and yes, I'm looking at a highly detailed version of what's posted here) is that as Mars reaches 0 Sagittarius, asteroid Medusa is sitting right there.

That's right - right there at 0 Sagittarius.

And five degrees ahead? There stands Juno.

And four degrees behind?

There sits the Scorpio North Node.

Here's a snip from my screen view:

Medusa is one of the most interesting asteroids around. If you haven’t read a full discussion on it, here is a LINK to an article I’ve written on the subject. But for those who don’t have time for that at the moment (don’t worry, it’ll still be here later), suffice it to say that Medusa encompasses all of our fears about what we might learn…most of all about our Self.

That ‘hair turned to snakes’ Medusa thing and her gaze ‘turning us to stone’ – that isn’t about others. That’s about us, about how scared we each can be to learn things about ourselves which causes us to simply be scared of who we are. Or could be. Or have been. Where we see Medusa, we see where we are apt to try our hardest not to have to look. We’ll skate and avoid and deflect and evade, all in an effort not to see the truth.

And that truth is not about the thing we’re seeing. It’s about our reaction to it. It’s about us – our feelings and how we do or don’t govern them, how we do or don’t own them, how we do or don’t allow ourselves to feel them….or at the other end of the spectrum, how we do or don’t govern or reign them in – maybe take responsibility for them.

That part of the Medusa tale speaks volumes about Juno being positioned here at 5 Sagittarius. Juno (another name for Hera, wife of Zeus - aka Jupiter)…Juno is a guardian and regulator. When all is well and our Juno is well placed, we’re good with taking care of our home, our family, our responsibilities, our job, our mentality, our emotions – the whole enchilada.

When Juno is iffy in the natal chart, or during periods of stress even the best of us will squirm and quake. The question is however, will we give way? Will we allow ourselves to let our discomfort cause us to run away instead of doing something which could benefit us in the long run? Or maybe something which could help someone out – even heal some terrible wound?

Juno is about priorities. Most often you’ll hear me speak of Juno as self-discipline because that’s what it takes to get ourselves to face life’s music no matter how discordant we think it sounds. To have Juno just ahead of Mars says that some of us need to be prepared to ‘discipline’ ourselves through a process soon to come.

That could be just cleaning the garage. Or maybe you need to start a new business. Or maybe you need to admit you’ve made some terrible mistake or misjudgment somewhere along the way. Maybe you need to admit your mortality? Or your irresponsibility. Or your unwillingness to feel your own vulnerabilities, hurts, anger or disappointment.

The issue is not about ‘them.’ It’s not about whether you can tell them…it’s about your ability to deal with the truth of who you are and discipline yourself to be the person you really want to be.

Juno and Medusa are a really and truly tough pair. I know one fellow with Medusa-conjunct-Sun who does a very tough job and does everything he can not to be involved in it. As a result, he fails the standards he would like to think he lives…and the more the process goes on, the more upset with himself he becomes and the less he wants to admit that he’s upset or feel the upset….

Medusa can be a quagmire. Medusa is a tough, tough point – and we all have one. Yours may not be conjunct your Sun, but it’s somewhere.

As for Juno, I know probably fifty or so people who have very prominent Juno’s in their natal charts (I went on a Juno study kick last year, hence this particular collection of people and charts). Out of the fifty people with prominent Juno positions, so far forty-nine of them have revealed their ability to be highly disciplined people UNTIL you hit those couple of vulnerable spots…at which point someone else becomes the object of their ‘you need to…’ disciplinary chant.

Juno’s interesting. It’s not the emotional molasses pool Medusa is…no, Juno is less sticky than Medusa but tougher. Our Medusa factor is squishy. And if you learn to master your Medusa factor you will be looked upon by friends, foes and various standers-by as pretty awesome, but tough – probably beyond their tolerance.

Like attracts like. Remember that. When you work to improve your life you automatically run the risk of needing a whole new herd of friends to run with. Why? Because people aren’t all that good at tolerating differences. Tons of people partner (and marry) based on someone who matches them at their lowest and weakest point instead of their strongest. Then, when one person grows, the marriage (or partnership) ends. Our wanting someone to ‘feel’ us is usually about our fears, our lack of willingness to try, our being sick and tired of being the whole who ‘always has to…’

Who’s disappointed when we don’t do that ‘always’ thing? Them, you say? Uh, no. Us. We’re disappointed that they don’t like us in spite of our not trying.

That’s Juno. That irritation with them is really about us. That’s our Juno responding to the ongoing, life-long conversation we all have with ourselves about what we need to do, what we can slough off, what we can leave for later, what we need to do now…all that stuff.

(And now that you know more about the astrology of Juno and Medusa than you had on today’s to-do list, now we're going to add in the North Node!)

(The NORTH NODE?)

The Nodes just changed signs – the blog on which is found HERE. Suffice it to say that the North Node always (always, always, always) represents that which we should do …and which we don’t really want to do…which in this case is to find solutions which really-o, truly-o work for EVERYBODY equally. That may not be ‘equal’ in the same sense, but the amount of satisfaction from ‘the thing’ should be equal.

For instance: ask a half-dozen people what they want from a primary relationship and you may end up with a list which goes like this…one for love, one for companionship (so they won’t be alone), one for sex, one for financial security, one so they can have children and one so that their parents will stop going around whining ‘oh where did I go wrong…?’.

The numbers you can argue. The point is, people do things for different reasons. And when it comes to the Scorpio department of life – which in this case involves your doing that thing you don’t really want to do and which seems soooooo burdensome and so NOT what you want to be doing with your life…not only do you have to do the thing, but you have to care that everybody gets an equal share of satisfaction out of it.

Got it? NOBODY likes their North Node. The South Node? Hey, everybody likes their South Node – which in Taurus is wanting it OUR way….not THEIR way.

(Sometimes as I write these blogs I get the vision of the entire human race as a bunch of kids about to flunk ‘play nice in the sandbox’ class...)

 Children playing in a Harrisonburg, Virginia Our Community Place sandbox

(photo credit: Artexerxes, June 2008)

The combination of all this has Mars entering Sagittarius with our being afraid of what lies ahead or studiously ignoring that which is back there in time…or simply lurking in the back of their mind. We know we have to get to it, but…

And wait – there’s more!

(I know…who can wait, right?)

Just to make this all more juicy, Mars’ ingress position (0 Sagittarius) is the ‘starting point’ of a mutable t-square.

As portrayed by this t-square, everything we’ve just discussed is a factor in some current situation. The ‘object’ of the t-square being the South Node (in Taurus) conjunct Black Moon Lilith in early Gemini – this is  something not every exotic (read: all too common) in our lives - wanting to get ‘the thing’ over and done so you don’t have to talk…or even think about “it” anymore.

That “it” may be what you need to get through to achieve freedom from the problem-situation-challenge (etc.). Or “it” may be the situation itself.

Not noted on the above diagram (sometimes things get by me in the moment, sorry...!) are two fixed stars which enter into this discussion. The first is Mirfak - also known as Alpha Perseus. Positioned at 2 Gemini and thus exactly conjunct Black Moon Lilith and soon to be opposed by transiting Mars (around October 9-11, depending on what time zone you're in), Mirfak has two main thrusts and a duality which fits its position in Gemini.

The first part of the question asks whether we are courageous, or merely into competition or competition's nasty brother, arguing.

The second question asks us what's the honorable (respect-generating) path to follow and if we're going to follow it.

In conjunction with Black Moon Lilith, Mirfak describes a (Gemini) choice of how to act and why to act that way, with the understanding that there is a universal response to decisions we make on how to act and what sort of standards to hold ourselves to.

The second star is Alcyone. Currently positioned at 0 Gemini and therefore in exact opposition to the Mars-Sagittarius ingress, Alcyone (also known as Eta Taurus) is worthy of a blog post on its own (I'll schedule that for later in the month - not to worry!) but in short, a star which at some level represents the linking of our spirit - the essence of who we are - with our life, what we do and how well or not well that functions.

With Black Moon Lilith involved here, there's a whole statement being made about how you are affecting your world as seen through how you are being received and respected BY your world.

Our lives are very separate. We each live with unique circumstances and considerations. We may be very 'popular' or successful in an area of life which gives us one thing but not another. As with all things Gemini, the big question is priorities. If one thing is going well and another thing is going not so well, the real question is which is more important to your life?

The Black Moon in conjunction with Mirfak and Alcyone says we're all missing some component in our equation. Most important are those which cause us to not get where we want or...even worse...to be trying, trying, trying without getting any positive responses.

Constellations Perseus and Triangulum from the Mercator Globes

in Harvard University's Map Collection

(Gerald Mercator 1512-1594)

So the 'goal' now is to re-balance life while (Mars in Sagittarius) growing your effectiveness and ability to operate in that life. As part of this Mars ingress (and the involved t-square) we are being asked to focus and work on our lives with particular attention to how well our choices are working (or have/haven't worked) and whether this means we need a shift or re-orientation in our priorities. With Mirfak in this picture, we either want our challenges to work/work out for us here in this next six weeks or so, or to at least understand why and where they aren't working so we can fix that - all while maintaining some modicum of honorable behavior or responsible priorities - in short, whatever is required to not just 'get the job done' but to earn/maintain the respect of others in the process.

And now that we understand the goal, back to the challenge - the 't' in the t-square!

So what of this particular 't'? Composed of Neptune-Fomalhaut-Chiron, we know that anywhere where we've tried to cut corners (in life, in our heads, in our hearts), we stand to experience emotional comfort. And as if that wasn't itchy enough, we also seem to have a Neptune-Fomalhaut-Chiron request (read: requirement) to self-examine ourselves for behaviors which...whether they're 'uber-good' (pure as driven snow) or rather off into the corruption ditch, have to do with our efforts NOT to have to confront our own vulnerabilities.

Especially where that may pertain to mistakes we have made.

This sounds very much like a six-week transiting pain in the low back (or neck, depending). And it well may be just that! But it's also the solution to life's current puzzles.

How would that work? Well...Mercury/Saturn in Scorpio here is talk to them…or think through it, step by step. (Same parameters on “it” as before.) And the Moon-Ceres part of this? That’s have a plan or get a plan. So if you need to talk to someone, think through what you need to say. Think through what questions you may get asked.

Your (Ceres) plan is to get through what you need to do. Something needs to be cleared up, cleared out or made to function dependably and productively in order for you to get past your emotional road block.

That means you either haven’t yet thought things through (Saturn-Mercury) or your (Ceres-Moon) plan has a flaw in it that you don’t want to acknowledge.
The giant kicker in this configuration – which let’s remember, is going to play out through the next six weeks while Mars transits Sagittarius – is that Fomalhaut is involved.

Fomalhaut/Chiron is pain, painful circumstances or ‘progress being injured’ by something which isn’t wholesome. Fomalhaut/Neptune is a wavering ‘is it real, is it not real, is it me, is it them’ sort of quality which creates discomfort of whatever sort.

Still, Mercury/Saturn in Scorpio spell a way forward: finding out the facts and sorting everything out from there in spite of the emotional discomfort involved.
It’s music-facing time!

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Just as a sidebar note here…any time we see a connection between Neptune and Saturn there is a marked chance for compulsion/need driven activities which - whether habitual, addictive or otherwise amount to compensations or 'walls' again the difficulty somebody is having with the idea of dealing with life (reality) on the emotional level.

With Saturn in Scorpio this energy is particularly likely to surface as efforts to deny culpability, involvement, guilt, debts or responsibilities - particularly those which involve 'Saturn things' like laws, contracts and career matters and/or Saturn-Scorpio 'transactional' issues which, whether they involve money or not, are plainly based on trust or emotional responsibility.

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The rule with t-squares is what it is: until we get past the ‘my ego’ factor described by the ‘t’, we get bounced back to the start of the configuration. In this case that means getting bounced back to that Mars-Juno-North Node knowing you need to face doing it even though you don’t want to.

So what happens if you do nothing?

Ordinarily, that’s a maybe this, maybe that sort of question. But in this case, there’s going to be a solar eclipse on November 13th.

AND...as that solar eclipse occurs, Mars is going to be rolling across 27 Sagittarius – the degree of the Galactic Center of our local Milky Way galaxy.

The Galactic Center has a rule: what you get out of life depends on what (how well) you contribute to that life.

Being in Sagittarius, this is not 'local.' It cannot just be about you or your chosen few.

Being at 27 Sagittarius (part of the last decan/third of the sign), YOU don't get to decide how worthy you or your contributions are - the world (other people and worldly institutions) do that! 

Solar eclipses are a big astrological deal. So particularly if life is not going your way, there's some tall thinking which deserves some priority, quality time in your near future...lest you regret not having stopped to think in the long run.

We always say that the last six-to-eight weeks before a Solar Eclipse represent a 'breakdown' period. Anything which you know (in your heart, head, or otherwise) is not working needs letting go of. 'That' - whatever it is - is not your answer, your solution, even your safe harbor at this time. You need to let go, move on and accept that life...inclusive of your life...is changing/has changed.

We'll be talking more about the Solar Eclipse in days (and weeks) to come. But this Mars entering Sagittarius event? That's a tick-tick-tick of the cosmic clock.

What is it time for in your life?  
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