Mars in Gemini: Enter the Funhouse

2.17.06


Ding dong, Mars in Taurus is dead! (For another 16 months, at least.) Long live Mars in Gemini!

Okay, I admit I'm being downright silly in advocating for one Mars sign over another… but come on, folks, who here isn't ready for a breath of socially stimulating fresh air? Mars hung on to Taurus for what seemed like an eternity, after all. Since late July, he's insisted on painstakingly exploring the realm of super-slow-and-steady and ultra-pragmatic-and-practical… without a moment's reprieve.

So don't get down on me for celebrating today's (Feb 17) sign-switch to craftily-quick-and-clever and flowingly-friendly-and-forthcoming… otherwise known as Gemini. Enough, as they say, has been more than enough.

For the astro-historians among you, let me arrange a brief chronology of the recent Mars-related brouhaha, complete with the necessary links for retracing the whole story—and revisiting how we got to where we now are—so you understand why Mars's movement into Gemini is such a big deal.

Back on Jul 27 05, Mars entered Taurus, the domain of firm resoluteness (or is that solid stubbornness?)… and within a week formed its first square to Saturn in Leo. Right away, we should've known this transit wouldn't be the easiest, as our instinctive physical urges to act were immediately squelched by serious forethought considerations: Too much? Not enough? Inauthentically 'me'?

By early October, the Mars-in-Taurus entrenchment and lethargy was competing against the ordinarily invigorating energy of a solar eclipse. How? By turning retrograde on our asses. The result? Mars helped to set a tone for the forthcoming chapter in our lives, as demarcated by the Oct 3 05 eclipse—the challenge to persevere in personal ventures while balancing the need for interpersonal concessions, even when progress seems to draw to a halt. And this chapter still persists through the next solar eclipse in late March… though now we're beginning to sense its draw to a close.

At that point, the arresting news we were forced to swallow: Hunker down, and plan on things continuing in this frustratingly locked-in manner. As I described it then, 'As long as Mars is retrograde in Taurus, we can expect bodies in motion to stay in motion… and those that are at rest will need some major outside force to get them off their lazy asses.' Whichever way we turned, more of the same.

Though forward movement occurred little if at all, the pressure bearing down on us intensified in November, as Mars entered into a four-way tug-of-war with Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune—a little configuration with major hassling power, affectionately dubbed the grand cross, due to the four squares and two oppositions it formed. Here's where things got downright crazy, as tensions tightened and pulled at each other, until awareness of where we'd been stuck rose excruciatingly into conscious being. I'll grant it this: The grand cross made it damned hard to stay in denial, or to blame all our problems on one simple answer. Everything seemed cosmically connected to everything else… and the only way through, as promised by Saturn in Leo, was to listen to one's true Self. (Easier said than done, alas.)

Even Mars's eventual return to direct motion on Dec 9 05 wasn't enough to lift the lid and release the steam, as the momentum-setting planet still had to retrace all its grand-cross-forming aspects before treading virgin ground. As New Year's came and went, I couldn't help but wonder just how 'new' it was, if all the astrology was merely persisting on its same (and, at this point, tiresome) path. It wasn't until a couple weeks ago that Mars finally left its retrograde shadow and stirred the promise of something entirely different…

… and that something is here now, in the form of Mars in Gemini.

Enter the funhouse. Multiple draws on your attention, but don't bother to choose just one. In this day and age, who wants to limit their possibilities? With the breeze blowing in, there's a burst excitement gusting through the room, undifferentiated between refreshment and hot air—stellar possibilities, sputtering false starts, rebirths, dead ends, the next big thing, the last great chance, the fans, the fire-starters, the seat-fillers, and old uncle Mario. Everyone's coming. What will I wear? What should I tell them? Get the story right, in its thousand-and-one varieties for its million-and-one listening ears, eager to catch a couple of the catchiest verses.

Your days and nights are free for filling with several engagements each, bobbing from occasion to event to mere 'putting in some face time'. No need to hesitate, or even concern yourself with what happened last time. Memory is as short as the last commercial… and with the remote in your control, you can turn the channel whenever you get bored.

Up ahead in the not-so-far distance? The next eclipses: full moon lunar on Mar 14, and new moon solar on Mar 29. Another chapter, and you don't even know what it'll bring yet.

The next few weeks? Getting back out there, into circulation, exposing yourself to a pipin'-hot batch of previously underexplored possibilities. The upcoming chapter may well prove to explore one of these further than you could ever guess. And you've barely yet begun to hatch that second thought…