Mars in Pisces

Monterey Bay Aquarium (Monterey, CA)

(photo credit: Dragan Maksimovic, March 2012)

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Mars in Pisces is not generally thought of as Mars in its most assertive, pro-active mode. Not that Mars is weak in Pisces - the concept of ‘weakness’ which has long been attached to Pisces is more about the inability to pin something down as a finite definition (the ‘finite’ part being the glitch) ... than any weakness per se - which is why Pisces influences (or Piscean people) are often so misunderstood.

Pisces is not about a ‘dust bin’ - it’s about all those facts and feelings no one wants to ... or in many cases even dares to confront, deal with or otherwise get honest with themselves about. So whatever house in your chart wears the sign of Pisces on its cusp is going to be a ‘weak’ point in your life - but not necessarily because of any inability or incapacity. Sometimes people just aren’t interested in something. Sometimes we don’t realize the importance of something until the opportunity to avail ourselves of that opportunity (or to uphold that responsibility) is long gone and lost.

As third of the zodiac’s elemental water signs, Pisces isn’t intrinsically about our emotionality and how to deal with our feelings - that’s Cancer. Nor is Pisces intrinsically about how to get along with others and deal with emotionally charged relationships. That’s Scorpio (in spades).

No ... Pisces is about the feelings we feel when we grasp our uniqueness in the same stroke as the understanding that we’re but a mote in the grand scale of our universe.

Pisces is the reality of all such things. And more importantly, it’s about all the feelings we feel as we really grasp our mortality and existence - and about how having a life means having some faith in our ability just to survive.

Pisces is all about our vulnerabilities - and not just what they are or how we react and feel when we confront those vulnerabilities, but why we have them. Metaphysically, our vulnerabilities are there to teach us something. Yet as the nature of Pisces is such that revelation is offered only when control is surrendered and replaced not necessarily by trust but at least by a willingness to trust in this moment and maybe going forward into infinity providing betrayal never occurs ... not one of us is ever happy about surrendering to the river in the knowledge (not the dream) that we really are going to be taken where-oh-where we do not know.

Abandonment is Piscean. So is abandoning one's self to glee. One is a reality we feel and need to cope with. The other is a momentary emotion. They're both important and they're both a reality of human life. Accepting both with equal lack of resistance and the internal ability to be both sufficiently involved and sufficiently detached (at the same time) to the point where you can see how both things are a continuum is Pisces.

It's also all a far cry from Mars - or at least the general image, notion and manifestation of the astrological Mars as most things strong, determinative, assertive ... and yes, possibly egotistical or even half-pat arrogant. Yet Mars in Pisces isn’t weak. Indeed, sometimes Mars in Pisces is a period of great courage as we commit ourselves to doing something, come what may. Or when we show our strength not through defense or attack, but through our willingness to deal with things which are truly trying - or which we neither understand nor want to be involved with.

And why would we do that? We would do that because Mars in Pisces also represents being brave enough to take on feeling some compassion. Maybe it’s for others, yes.

But maybe it’s also about something you’ve never let yourself feel. Or think about to the point where your feelings become involved. Mars offers a spark of initiation, wherever it is, and Pisces is the lesson that humans are feeling beings. We just aren't stones - or if we are, there's either a truly good reason for acting that way or we should be looking in a mirror and figuring out why we don't want to feel because it's our feelings which motivate and move us.

Feelings get us to move - and make our moves, good or bad - which makes motivational Mars transiting Pisces a time when much may go on behind the scenes now as we do a little 'mirror' (or soul) searching. Or maybe we'll just be doing things in a behind the scenes manner (Pisces, like its associated 12th house is very 'behind the scenes'). Perhaps we'll now find ourselves able to (Mars) identify with some (Pisces) need or feeling cause.

Or maybe we'll be able to (Mars) bravely move past our feelings to a greater understanding which expresses the commonalty, the emotionality, the mortal sense of being human so common to all.

And when does Mars dive into the watery realm and sign of Pisces? That will occur next Monday (as the blogger blogs) January 12th, at 10:21 in the morning, UT/+0 time. And once there, Mars will be moving along at a rather rapid clip, as it’s more-or-less ‘standard’ two-month transit of a sign in Pisces is limited to about five weeks, as Mars will exit Pisces (for Aries) on February 20th.

Eris Direct at 22 Aries (glyph chart)

January 10, 2015 - 00:27 a.m. (UT/+0) - Aries Wheel (Location Not Specific)

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 Eris Direct at 22 Aries (text chart)

January 10, 2015 - 00:27 a.m. (UT/+0) - Aries Wheel (Location Not Specific)

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As for why we care, theoretically every sign has it’s ‘business’ to do, and as the ‘business’ of Pisces is to teach us about being in touch with our feelings (especially those particularly unsettling ones) so we will understand and relate to others through those feelings, Mars in Pisces is at some level the experience of that which will (Mars) motivate us through our deepest, most human understanding about what it means to be human precisely because we are human.

Depending on how accepting (or not accepting) we are of all that, with all we know - and inclusive of all we’re afraid to know, that’s how well we relate to the sign of Pisces.

(Read as: we all have issues with it.)

And about that rate of passage ... with an orbit around the Sun which takes just shy of two years the “norm” for Mars moving through any one of the twelve zodiac signs “should be” around two months.

But here, it’s only about five weeks. So for good or ill, that means that whatever it is which we meet up with, it will move along swiftly. And whatever it is which will cause us to feel, that’s what’s likely to happen so that we have an opportunity to be courageous in feeling those things ... as well as in ‘choosing to choose’ how we will respond instead of abandoning ourselves to our emotions by simply responding out of instinct.

Under Pisces, we become more deeply human by experiencing what it is and what it means to feel and feel ourselves managing the act of being a human being.

Another thing about this transit: Mercury will be in retrograde for most of it, and retrograde from the sign right next door (that being Aquarius) to Pisces.

Expect delays. We always expect some slowdown,  some jumbling of information and some going awry of schedules under Mercury retrograde, but with Mars in Pisces going on next door (as it were), there’s as distinct a chance that ‘crossed-wires’ will cause some kind of uproar and there’s just as good a chance that some kind of fracas will result in wires getting crossed out of (Mars in Pisces) instincts gone haywire.

In spite of which, all may well be worth everything in the end. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for said end to arrive - unless you look really, really good in a greyish shade of terminal blue. 

And as if that wasn’t exciting enough here during a period when so much is ‘out there’ and yet to be determined (which isn’t sitting well with a lot of us), we’re also in for some kind of t-squared (or squaring) sort of challenge.

As with all t-squares, this one works in zodiacal order (which here works out to be top-to-bottom). So with Mars-Fomalhaut-Neptune in the ‘starting position’ anything that we’re starting out with as Mars moves into Pisces needs to be honest, moral and not aimed at gaining any advantage or personal gain ... at the same time that we’re very busy being our own worst critics and about as ill-equipped as possible to judge ourselves (or what’s worth what) in the mists of this particular Martian deep water moment.

It all begins to come clear when we think of the ‘rule’ of dealing with t-squares, that being to see any  symbol at the ‘t’ as something which has to be approached globally and not personally to succeed - much as a class-action lawsuit is different from an individual course of legal action.

In other words, the challenge of any t-square is to get the “me” - the ego - out of the mix. So in simplest terms, t-squares support causes, not demands. They're about the 'cause' and not who we would be as an individual within (or against) that cause.

And when we fail? With a t-square, when we fall short of getting past our personal motivations, as they say in the world of board games we ‘return to Go without collecting $200’ - which in this case is being “returned” to Mars in Pisces (read: can you surrender your ego wall?), Fomalhaut (read: you’re only going to succeed when you do the right thing the right way for the right reasons!) and Neptune - the cosmic timekeeping hand which points here and there and nowhere at all as it times out those moments and periods when we learn not to expect and not to project ... but truly to get up every morning, prepared to accept.

The ‘object’ in this t-square puzzle is represented by Regulus, the Black Moon and Orcus - a success or successful effort which proves that not only were we right in doing what we’ve done, but in our reasons for doing it to begin with  - which means the Saturn-Pallas (at 1 and 6 Sagittarius, respectively) hurdle standing in the way of getting to that goal has something to do with a ‘responsible perspective’ or the ability/inability to take the time to function from (or structure/create) answers or plans based on cool or well thought through perspectives inclusive of what will be ‘earned’ in real-time everyday life (Saturn always refers to our real world life, time and lifetime).

Unfortunately Mars in Pisces is not always into earning simply because this is not Mars in its most energetic mode, meaning the non-resistance quality associated so strongly with Pisces may, over these next five weeks, indicate lethargy or discouragement as easily as instances of passive resistance - and this would be a classic sort of indicator of widespread weaknesses, be they of determination or physicality - which suggests this Mars in Pisces passage as a good time to watch out for health matters and when lackadaisical or sloppy efforts can lead things not getting done in a (Saturn) timely manner.

Despite all this, Mars in Pisces is a positive for the arts and artistry. Given the Piscean tendency to ban and bar ego, it’s also a time when compassion rises - along with (unfortunately) a need for compassion. Committing to ‘faith in the process’ would be positively Mars in Pisces, but it’s to expect some level of ‘fatalistic’ thinking - which may in itself inspire feelings of loss (of options or control - the tools of ego).

And yet despite all, it’s though such moments of darkness as well as the light and bright times that Mars in Pisces inspires faith. Going back to that ‘dust bin’ notion about Pisces, this is the sign of hitting emotional bottom just as Virgo (Pisces’ polarity sign) can be the sign of moral destitution - the solution we choose which doesn’t give a fig for others.

For many this transit of Pisces by Mars is also going to evoke a sense of aloneness. Never mind that some degree of loneliness goes with uniqueness as its  inevitable ‘other edge of the same blade,’ and not excluding those who tend to do just fine on their own a-la terribly solo, Mars transiting Pisces always manages to find that hole in our canopy, be it that one place where our emotional carpet has become shabbily threadbare.

And for the most of the world which has come to think emotional tattering is life’s norm?

Mars in Pisces in the yearning to know and feel ourselves knowing better - and feeling better now that we know if only for the having learned what we needed to learn (whether or not we knew we needed to learn it.).

Mars in Pisces also serves as a 'relief' valve on pressures built up under Mars in Aquarius (the post for which can be found HERE) ... which in metaphysical terms would be relief from all the stress and strain that Mars moving through the previous sign (Aquarius) would have built up - and which for many took a turn for good or ill around the time of Eris' station (see previous post), the two being astro-technically connected by Eris taking its turn to direct in Mars' primary sign of rulership (Aries) with Mars still opposing Jupiter.

It's part of the yin and yang of signs, degrees, cycles and life, in other words.

Mars in Pisces exercises our need to have faith. It also provides us with the need to test that faith at an emotionally cellular level. We know we’ll get through but we wish we didn’t have to ‘do this.’

And still ‘this’ happens, which means our only choice is that of ‘going with the flow’ or the marshaling of our most human Self, our courage and our faith in being self-determinative both about our goal - and why we believe in the good and goodness which will be achieved by getting there.
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