Mars conjunct Saturn: Rightful-Action for the Win

8.15.14


Those long-in-development advances now manifesting themselves, the relief and the shock of finally moving-on-to-the-next-thing…

… all these palpable extremes of experience, often laced with egoic showboating and not a small amount of contentiousness, we've felt just in the past month-or-so since our year took its 'sharp turn'…

… and now, over the next couple weeks, it's all coming to a decisive head. After his momentous entrance into Scorpio late last month, Mars currently approaches a potent conjunction to Saturn (exact on Aug 25).

The lesson is clear, though not so painless to master: Our actions have lasting consequences, good and bad.

If we wish to demonstrate rightful action, we must integrate our psychological authenticity at any given moment with our longer-range intent. Otherwise, immediate surges in emotion can overwhelm us, inspiring behaviors which ultimately undermine other goals we have. Or, on the other hand, too resolutely unyielding an attachment to plans we've already made, despite changes in our emotional temperature, could cause us to ignore our heart's wisdom in the heartless process of 'soldiering on'.

Together, Mars and Saturn expect nothing less than an appropriate, well-considered use of personal will: Not too irrational, tyrannical, or vicious. Not too insincere, passive, or self-effacing.

Mars in Scorpio is a powerhouse, as we've all presumably noticed during these past few weeks. Operating in one of his fiercest guises while in Scorpio, this Mars doesn't halt or retreat at the first signs of difficulty or despair. In rousing us to assert ourselves, Mars in Scorpio compels us ever further onward, right into the touchiest, steamiest and/or seamiest core of whatever's going on… dispensing with the well-mannered bullshit, driven by awareness that the big game-winning moves demand unflinching engagement with our fraught-and-charged core issues.

Flooded with the Mars-in-Scorpio passion to snatch our coveted prize no matter what's required, our reasonable minds can often become blinded to the fallout we're accumulating in the process of stalking our prey. Mars in Scorpio is virtually undefeatable in whichever battle-of-wills it chooses to saturate with its smoldering, stinging strength. But that 'battleground' is only one locus within a wider landscape of interrelated life-considerations. And too often, unfortunately, only after we've taken our hunt to its logical triumphant conclusion—and taken a few moments for our blinding passions to recede—might we notice just how great the collateral costs to these other considerations will be.

Saturn is the planet-guy who lays down the law of cause-and-effect. He aims to teach us responsibility and restraint, rewarding our hard work and our careful attention to relevant extenuating factors, meting out sanctions and retributions when we cut corners, overreach our earned authority, or otherwise conduct ourselves carelessly. Hit up against his regulatory rings, and you're remedially snapped back into rank.

A Mars-Saturn conjunction, then, is always a warning of sorts. We have far less leeway to be hasty, sloppy, or needlessly excessive in our assertive manner. The array of rightful-action options available to us is narrower than usual. We seriously must be on top of our game. One false move, under this astrology, could cause irreversible harm. As such, those of us who aren't as willing or able to be as precise or principled with our actions as a conjoined Mars-Saturn expects may well feel as if their hands are tied, as if they somehow can't do anything but grin and bear it. That, however, is not the case; we just have to strive harder to find the approach that both honors our truth and creates no extraneous upset in the process. No one said this would—or should—be easy.

Saturn's been in Scorpio for nearly two years, so the place in each of our birthcharts where his impending conjunction with Mars will occur has already been a challenging zone for a while now. Wherever Saturn's traveling indicates the facet of our lives which, for the time being, requires more concerted effort and consciousness than the others. It's the area where we must overcome obstacles, fortify our foundation, and demonstrate determination.

For those of us who have toiled to meet Saturn's challenges, Mars's arrival to this same zone (after months of relative ineffectiveness and irritability in Libra) brings a welcome occasion for exhibiting the fruitful wisdoms of our effort. After having had to dig deep to understand the psychological roots which underscored any excesses and/or suppressions Saturn was nudging us to tidy up, the hard-workers among us are now able to proceed with greater awareness of our underlying motivations—and thus, during this time, are likelier than ever to resolutely pull off impressive feats and/or cement our asserted stance without our unconscious sneaking up on us. This is the logical conclusion, what we've labored toward… earnestly earned, well-deserved, and ours to keep.

The painstaking conscientiousness with which this Mars-Saturn conjunction insists we act, alas, simultaneously bumps against the exacerbating influence of a square to Venus in Leo (where she arrived on Aug 12 and will stay through Sep 5). This clash between Scorpio and Leo planets has already been in effect during recent weeks, with Jupiter (having landed in Leo mid-last-month) and both the Sun and Mercury all having squared Mars and Saturn. As an influence on planetary behavior, Leo energy eggs us on to put it all out there… to unabashedly be ourselves, to generously speak our minds and share our hearts at every opportunity. More than anything, Venus in Leo wants each of us to be appreciated and adored in our full shiny splendor as individuals. She doesn't respond well to being ignored, undervalued, or confined to a box. Venus in Leo seeks connection and love by showing you all her cards, wearing her heart on her sleeve, expressing outwardly.

Though such unrestrained self-expression is generally thought to be a good way to behave, there are plenty of instances in which it can get us into trouble—most significantly, when we feel our pride is at stake, whether we've been offended by someone else's affronting actions or are defending ourselves against accusations that we've offended them. In either case, as seemingly-righteous victim or unfairly-accused perpetrator, our desire to stand up for our own good name in heated encounters can spark hot-headed egocentrism: We become so consumed with how we've been 'wronged' (i.e., misunderstood, misrepresented, unseen for our good-heartedness), we fixate on how to reclaim our honor and/or exact revenge, while dangerously overlooking the other player's perspective and how our 'corrective' behaviors might be problematic and/or permanently damaging to the relationship.

This would be the sort of worst-case scenario wrought by Venus-in-Leo's square to Mars-and-Saturn-in-Scorpio (exact on Aug 26-27): irreparable relational damage caused by a refusal to take rightful action in asserting one's will, due to an emboldened self-importance in promoting one's 'good name'.

A far more productive version of this tension would recognize each party's right to 'be seen' in their splendor, while also respecting that the core inalienable differences between you can, and should, be asserted up to a reasonable point… but mustn't devolve into a nasty bloodbath, not unless you've undeniably reached the end of this rope, and, even then, with only the minimal amount of force required to safely extricate yourself. Maturity demands we either respectfully accept our core differences (rather than attempting to browbeat anybody into submission under duress), or bravely acknowledge the incompatibility and go our separate ways.

And sometimes, the absolute best way to, ahem, express these tensions which build up between Venus and Mars involves a sexual release. With Saturn along for the ride, though, even that could bring its own ramifications if you're not responsible.