Mars Hasn't Been Much Help

7.29.07


With Venus all retrograde and wonky and not in her favorite sign, we might look to her planetary partner Mars to save the day.

Wishful thinking. Mars is also in one of his least comfy signs, Taurus. And more than that, he's gotten himself all caught up in squares with Neptune and Saturn. It's as if he's letting us float out there, but not bothering to throw us much of a lifeline.

Actually, here's a more apt metaphor: It's as if upon Mars first throwing us the lifeline, the air around us is too dark and misty to see the rope (that's the Neptune part)… then, once we finally spot our saving grace, it's so tangled and knotted that we have to spend another chunk of time unsnarling it for actual use (thanks, Saturn).

Last week, Mars in Taurus formed a square to Neptune (Tue Jul 24)… which took our terribly practical and ordinary attempts to do something and filtered 'em through wacky funhouse mirrors, so that two plus two didn't quite seem to add up like the math books told us it would.

Mars-Neptune squares make us very sensitive to such filters, convoluting our clear approach with whatever undue influences are nearby. Have we actually hit the ball, or did we merely rack up another strike? And where, pray tell, did it land?

This week, it's Saturn getting in Mars's way with another square (on Tue Jul 31), slowing us down even more (as if Mars in Taurus isn't slow enough) with some real or apparent obstacle we must confront before free access to progress can continue. Saturn adds another level of intent attentiveness required to be effective, trying our patience with more hoops to jump through and papers that must be stamped by the appropriate authorities. How friggin' annoying.

These dual squares of Mars to Neptune and Saturn can be rather frustrating, adding what may seem like unnecessary complications to procedures that we believe should be relatively easy. But surely we don't know all the facts—it would be impossible for any of us to possess such omniscience. As such, we have no choice but to assume there's some higher-purpose reason why we're experiencing another delay… and we must resist that defeated feeling, so we may persevere until these latest obstructions are out of our path.

Luckily, these Mars transits are short-lived, only requiring us to bear with 'em through, say, the end of the week. It would be easy to overreact, though, considering how familiar this particular type of frustration may've become. After all, the squares are a last-ditch reappearance of the Saturn-Neptune opposition themes I've described at length over the past year-plus. The 'blocked' feeling we may endure over this past week and the coming one possesses nothing much new to report; we've been here before.

It's the possibilities being raised by Venus retrograde that point us to the future… and any fleeting frustration serves only to test our values even more fiercely, because, you know don't you, we don't have to continue in the direction we've been going. We are allowed to pack up ship and change gears dramatically.

The disillusionment of Saturn-Neptune is passing by—and in its place, we'll soon welcome the Saturn-Uranus influence, which is far more interested in action than lamentation.

If you're getting nowhere fast, the next two months may be your chance to get out… if that's what it'll take to get going again.