Mars Fires Another Shot

12.9.08


Grumpy yet? Edgy, perhaps?

Maybe you're feeling the pinching squish of time quickly disappearing, and the urgent impatience that accompanies it? Hurry, hurry, hurry…!

Who can get it all done in time?!? Who will sit passively by, while others twitter and fiddle, pretending not to notice the flames of Rome burning in the background?

Even if the planets merely bring you unstoppable initiative, without the surface-level agitation or nervousness that sometimes comes with energy-surges, there's still an increased likelihood of bumping smack into an individual, obstacle or issue that's threatening to disrupt your thrust—and, consequently, of growing ever more annoyed with these time-wasting slowdowns.

Chalk it up to the Sun and Mars traveling so close together through Sagittarius, a conjunction that, despite having hit its peak last Fri Dec 5, remains in majorly obvious effect all through the week ahead. Any Sun-conjunct-Mars environment is fast-paced and forceful, filling us with impetus and moxie and might, sending us to chase our impulses and direct our will to whatever has us fired up.

Dare we be halted in our tracks during such a warrior-inspired moment, we're likeliest to fight our way through. Is what we're doing angering somebody else? Oh, well. If it's between him and me, I choose myself. Later, dude.

The Sagittarian influence, more fire for the Sun-Mars flame, adds greater enthusiasm and fervor to the value-driven reasoning behind our latest actions… and, at the same time, thins our patience levels down to near-nothingness, when it comes to those things and people which seem frivolous or irrelevant to our Main Driving Purpose.

'Sorry, no time—or should I say no desire?!?—to hang around partaking in your trivial crap when I have more important things to do.' Though we may (or may not) refrain from actually saying such things, the attitude still emanates off our aura, as we silently roll our eyes or let our minds drift away from their hollow blathering to what really matters to us.

Folks with fierier temperaments, typically high amounts of physical energy, and self-starters are liable to find themselves thriving under such Sun-Mars conditions… so long as they enjoy relatively free movement to expend the extra stimulus into something personally meaningful or exciting.

And those who aren't generally accustomed to channeling such powerful flows of life-force fire? Physical nervousness, difficulty sitting still or sleeping, heightened mental anxiety or worry about which decision to make… all these are natural effects. Try picking yourself up and moving your body. Take a walk, run or swim. Expel the excesses from your body. Recognize that, almost always, any decisive action will be healthier than no action at all. If you make a 'mistake', you can fix it later.

The potential of the Sun and Mars to provoke actual conflict, which is already heightened by the very nature of a Sun-Mars conjunction, continues to escalate throughout the week… toward a climax at Friday morning (Dec 12)'s full moon in Gemini. This one is a doozy, people, insofar as the lunation event brings together (1) the passing Sun-Mars conjunction and (2) the longer-term Saturn-Uranus opposition, into one major astro-configuration which links our (1) immediate initiative, impulsiveness and/or impatience with (2) the larger balance between stability and innovation we're each needing to establish and/or maintain.

Here's the T-square being formed later this week by the Sun and Mars in Sagittarius, the Moon in Gemini, Saturn in Virgo and Uranus in Pisces:

We're already well aware of the pinch we find ourselves in, attempting to figure out which parts of our lives to clutch tightly to and refuse to let go of, as they are the pragmatic building-blocks of our future security and require diligent detail-oriented protection (Saturn), and which demand a nothing-is-sacred breakup-and-breakthrough, where we walk defiantly away, looking only forward to the new-and-improved alternatives and never glancing back at the withering past (Uranus). This is not an easy distinction to make, between two radically different approaches, and there's only a rather narrow range of middle-ground in which to make our moderating choices…

… and damn! it's starting to get frustrating, trying to finesse our lives between clinging too desperately to yesterday and jumping too recklessly into the unknown. How the hell are we ever to know which is which, what's 'too little too late' and what's simply too outrageous to entertain? After a while, we realize we may be damned if we do and damned if we don't, so we might as well JUST DO! (Sun/Mars). Our best bet? Do that which we believe most strongly in, knowing that even if we mess things up along the way and/or go way too far, at least we're headed in the general direction we want. Better a fevered pitch than playing dead.

But, of course, if we're all in the same boat, reacting to the same stimuli with the same spontaneous 'when in doubt, follow your heart' attitude, we are bound to run across each other's opposing motivations. We'll crash right into 'em. We'll collide.

Then—and only then—are we face-to-face with the other side, the equally-as-emotionally-convincing story that somebody else is responding to with such a wildly different approach than ours (Moon). It wouldn't be surprising if such collisions prove infuriating to certain folks unable to wrap their minds around another way of looking at the same situation. Until such types can listen and learn, they'll merely fight.

Yet, for those willing to confront the truth that many of today's problems (micro- as well as macro-) will not get solved by drilling home the same one answer, we recognize such collisions as a necessary step in our collective evolution. We need these gifts of disagreement to open up the bigger conversations. The Saturn-Uranus balance is never easy to strike, even for the most talented among us. Only once we take an unmistakable step in one direction might we discover what the step we didn't take would've given us… by looking across the chasm from where we stand to what we're missing over there. Only then do we even begin to realize we have bridges to build.