Tom Jacobs
Ah, Mars in Aries. The planet of action, desire, passion, and aggression returns to home territory, the sign of immediate, unmediated response and acting without thought. There are so many wonderful opportunities here as well as pitfalls and my aim here is to set them out for you. If you can sit still long enough to read it is another story.
Mars in transit can serve to wake us up to what needs doing and reacting to. It asks us to evolve our understanding of self-interested action and stirs us to respond to situations around us without thinking about it too much. We’ve been dealing with a Pisces pileup for a few weeks and Mercury is retrograding in that sign, indicating that a more languid, slow, relaxed approach has been the ticket lately.
Mars being the first inner planet to enter the sign of Aries this season means that we will be inspired to act before we’ve had much time to think about what we’re doing, before we’ve had the opportunity to obsessively plan and strategize what might get done. The effect can be of injecting vim and vigor so that we feel as though mainlining the vibration of the athlete, warrior, defender, and/or god of desire, passion, and sex.
The energy is best used by allowing instinct to connect you to life through the unedited use of your physical body.
If you inhabit your physical self then you are able to move energy through your body. If you do this then you can learn to move emotion. Moving emotion means becoming able to feel all you can feel but clear about what is worth responding to and but really that nothing is worth holding on to.
Mars all around the wheel can teach us to relate better to our bodies by reacting to what they tell us they need. It comes in the form of a feeling that you need to move or to change something in your environment or, more specifically, that you need to change something that touches you on a regular basis or is touching you right this instant.
If you are willing to make peace with what your body is telling you to do with yourself then you open the door to be more whole. You want that, don’t you? Well of course you do! We all want that. But how many of us are willing to come out and say “no” to what doesn’t work for us? I argue that clearing out of our space what does not work best for us is in part a Martian process because we have to be able to flow in the moment to do Mars well. We have to be free to move as we need to and to reach out in the directions we want to.
It’s all about the flow. But if we let our minds get us into non-movement and non-action, we limit our movement. I’m talking about responding to your environment in all ways but also just simple movement – exercise of all kinds. When does your body need to move? When do you feel an undeniable need to change something in your world or regarding your body? How often do you deny, stifle, and put off your undeniable needs?
This carries over into how you deal with all in your life. Mars action is, yes, a counterbalance to Venus issues and I couldn’t in good conscience finish this post without mentioning boundaries. When we approach them from the Venus angle we see them as invisible lines that become visible when someone crosses over into our space and we are offended, injured, or put out in some way. Boundaries from the Mars side of the conversation have to do with generating a self-interested field of energy around the self through appropriate action, making definitive choices, and forthrightness, which is a fancy-schmancy way of saying telling the truth and being direct. It is your responsibility to develop healthy boundaries for yourself through proactive, affirmative decision making that honors your needs as a unique individual as well as a biological unit. I write that because when we approach boundaries through the lens of mind regarding chosen modes of self-definition we fail to honor the Mars need to develop boundaries through self-interested action. Mars in you does not care if you are a member of a political party or not, a feminist or misogynist, orange- or purple-skinned, if you pray to animal statues or invisible white men, or even a man or a woman – all your Mars knows is that you are a biological unit with a survival imperative and a need to keep moving to stay healthy and able to hunt, track, and chase when you need to and sex it up when you can.
Mars is critical for overall health as is each planet in the chart. Don’t edit and mentalize your Mars energy into watered-down, indecisive, couch-potatoey, drooly blandness. It will suffer and shrivel inside you and your entire being will be worse off for it.
All that said, Mars entering Aries is kind of an extra-special wake up call after all this Pisces business. As mentioned above Aries is the sign of unmediated action, when we respond without thinking. When we edit this mode within us we are concerned about reacting, being aggressive, too hasty, and putting our feet in our or others’ mouths. When healthy with Aries energy we are willing to go our own way and do what we need to do when, why, and how we need to do it. No more lying around waiting for something interesting to happen. No more lying around waiting for someone else to do what has been staring at you from across the crowded room of your life to do. Time to get busy with self-interested action that clears out the debris from your life and enables you to be on your toes and ready for anything.
Mars-Uranus Conjunction, 3/22
The first conjunction in Aries for Mars this cycle is with Uranus at 8 Aries, the planet of creating freedom at any cost, dying in the attempt, or throwing arms up in the air during the process and becoming cardboardy and lifeless. Already in Aries for quite some time, Uranus has been squaring off with Pluto in Capricorn for almost a year with two more to go. (Check out my e-book on the topic to get deeply into how I view Uranus in Aries and the squares to Pluto.)
Self-interested action to free yourself from what binds you is the need when this unfolds beginning this week, exact on March 23rd. If you are not taking such self-interested action then you might feel energy coming to the surface as frustration, anger, and impatience with a need to overreact. Make the commitment to yourself now to get grounded (download a free 13-minute grounding meditation here) and to take moderate action when you need to in order to avoid things building up under the surface. You alone are responsible for the circumstances of your life and this conjunction will make it clear how you really feel about what’s going down in it. Are you willing to take charge of how things work and own what you’ve created to date? I hope you are because the only remedy to the frustration, anger, and impatience that can come up over the next 10 days or so is to make definitive, unapologetic choices to make your life better for yourself by clearing out what does not work for you.
For some this will be physical clutter in their living or work space. For others it will be comprised of expectations, assumptions, and agreements in their relationships whether spoken or not that do not work well and make them feel trapped or limited. For a great number of people it will be about how they treat their bodies in any and all ways. Again, you alone are responsible for what is going down in your life and Mars conjuncting Uranus in Aries in soon is the perfect time to accept the reality of what is happening without shame or judgment and just doing something already to change it. Just make a change – just move the stagnant, stale energy by making instinctive choices to change what is happening.
Mars-Pluto Square, 3/26
As Mars makes this conjunction it will join Uranus in squaring Pluto at 11 Capricorn. This is a setup for failing to take responsibility for what makes you unhappy if you blame others for anything in your world. Own what you’ve created and commit to making proactive, self-interested choices to alter for the better what you can’t stand and can no longer take about your life on Earth. It’s not about anyone else! It’s about your process learning as a human and trying to figure out how the hell you got yourself into this or that pickle.
Mars-Saturn Quincunx, 3/25
As if this is not enough, Mars will make a quincunx to Saturn at 10 Scorpio during this time. This is a minor aspect of 150 degrees that is at best wildly uncomfortable. The two energies can feel like they can’t be in the same room together. This underscores the need to take full and complete responsibility for all that you experience past, present, and future so that you are not caught up in some silly power struggle with some authority figure about something that has nothing to do with them. You are the boss but you can be clear only if you are taking self-interested, self-responsible action to change what doesn’t work for you and keep on the move to ensure there is no stagnation.
Mars-Jupiter Sextile, 3/26
This happens at 11 Aries-Gemini. Jupiter touching things makes them big and in this setup can trigger your Mars reactivity if you have not been developing responsivity. (Is that a word? I think it is now.) It’s a matter of setting off your unwillingness to sit still in the face of boredom, stagnation, and — if relevant for you – any sort of abuse dynamic in any relationship. The Jupiter trigger can come in the form of new information at best or chaos at worst (Gemini) and either way, you need to respond. This entire transit should be taken as a cue to learn to discern the difference between reactivity and responsivity and this sextile can bring stimulation to your getupandgo self (Mars) – set yourself up for this by being willing to curb reaction and make self-interested responses given the new information or stimulus that comes your way.
Mars-Venus Conjunction, 4/6
Venus catches up to Mars at 20 Aries and this brings the need for this self-interested warrior energy to be focused on relationships. Recall the boundaries bit from above and understand that explosiveness can come in the form of things coming to the surface that have needed to be said for a long time or as passionate scenarios with two primal beings uncovering layers of desire or – highly likely – both. Decide to own what’s yours and bring new levels of unmediated, unedited honesty to all of your interactions with others while allowing them and yourself any discomfort that might arise from dealing with the truth. Trust that airing things is always the best policy because in that case you know what you are dealing with. Mars in Aries can tolerate no subtext and your job now is to identify feelings and desires and do something about them.
Mars-Eris Conjunction, 4/9-10
As Mars connects with Eris at 22 Aries, Venus will have just perfected its own conjunction with the planet of strife and discord. This is about having your buttons pressed and pressing the buttons of others but, actually, about how you and they respond to this. Eris action involves having an insecurity or vulnerability revealed purposely or accidentally by another or a situation and feeling exposed. In this type of dynamic we have a choice about how to respond: blame the other for making us feel exposed or taking responsibility for something coming up from under the surface that we need to learn to deal with.
Mars conjuncting this planet increases the potential for quibbles and spats as a result of this type of interaction. The remedy is to own what comes up in you and see all others and yourself as teachers for each other. We need others to reveal our soft spots because we don’t ever want to! Doing Eris stuff for another is a great way to be of service to others but we need to be sure we’re owning what we are feeling and not projecting or throwing our hurt at others in the form of blaming them for what we are experiencing.
New Moon Conjunct Mars-Venus-Eris, 4/10
And then the New Moon at 20 Aries in the middle of all of this! Time for planting seeds. Make sure they are the right seeds and for the right reasons. Take back all you project on others and own the entirety of your creation on the planet as a human. The NM stellium will sextile Vesta in Gemini and Nessus in Aquarius, adding notes on service/dedication and learning to live in two worlds (instinct as animals versus civilized) in unique, original, free ways, respectively.
I’ll write more about the New Moon opportunities as the time nears so stay tuned.
Tom Jacobs is an Evolutionary Astrologer, Medium, and Channel helping you understand what your soul is here to do and how to make it happen with grace, ease, and joy. Book your private consultation, get a Soul’s Journey Soundbite, and explore intuitive coaching and astrology tutoring by visiting tdjacobs.com. Jacobs offers 12 books including the new The Soul’s Journey II: Emotional Archaeology. The Soul’s Journey radio show airs live each Thursday at 6 pm Pacific on Contact Talk Radio.