Managing Mars, Finding its Magic
Oh, Mars!
We love you.
Seriously, we do.
But what are you doing here?
Seriously.
You have been dominating our astrological landscape and gate-crashing our material plane existence in one way or another since October. And, by extension, gate-crashing our harvest season, our holiday season, the fiscal 4th quarter, and now, by virtue of your stellium with it, our Sagittarius New Moon.
Seriously. Why?
And what—exactly—are we supposed to be doing with you?
To your credit, as with all the signs and planets, you rule a broad and powerful spectrum of qualities and characteristics. But while yours are the most necessary for human life and achievement, yours are also the most dangerous. Straight up.
Your realm is that of anger and action, impatience and irrationality, bravery and bravado, violence and cruelty, ambition and accidents, breakthroughs and bold new beginnings, strength, and passion. Successfully governing that realm requires ungodly amounts of discernment, self-awareness, and self-control. The better part of the last two months has provided us with an object lesson in that.
On a good day, you help us to rise and meet the moment. On those days, we can integrate and actualize the energies you provide and become alchemists. We can convert those darker, baser energies into constructive forward motion and healthy, sustainable progress. On a good day, your Martian power and strength—especially combined with the spiritual and political vision of Sagittarius—empowers us to be tender-hearted yet revolutionary in our approach to humans and moments. Thank you.
On a less good day, you throw us into the great cosmic spin cycle of stuck emotion and paralysis. As one of the rulers of impulsivity and erratic and antisocial behavior, you and your transits are a training ground for anger management, self-control, and patience at any time of the year. On a bad day, you are the proverbial devil on our shoulder, who puts the match in the gas tank or hands us a Molotov cocktail, lights it, and shows us where to throw it.
Given that, dear Mars, your extended stay in our astrological spaces this fall and early winter have been quite an experience. Emotionally and financially. It has been a while since you were such a positively pestilential menace for so long in the fiscal fourth quarter. To that end, you have blown a lot of holes in a lot of budgets. You are blowing a lot of holes in a lot of budgets. To be fair, I cannot blame it all on you, for you have had a lot of help. The four to five planets in retrograde for the better part of eight weeks does take its toll. But you are the instigator.
Your presence during the holiday season presents us with a singular choice. We can let our unchecked emotion wreak utter havoc on the social events and family gatherings that—even under the best of circumstances—are already fraught with dilemmas. Or we can, in the most Sagittarian of ways, learn what we need to learn in order to be who we need to be in order to sow the seeds of love, teach peace, and create more caring, kind, and inclusive moments and spaces.
And so, dear Mars. Enough of you for now. It’s time to turn to our attention to the more jovial Sagittarius and the many ways it can help us. His New Moon on December 19 can potentially offer a lot of relief. Or, at least, humor.
A male, mutable, fire sign, Sagittarius rules the spiritual reverence and ethical, open-hearted understanding that is so desperately needed now. On a good day, Sagittarius can be counted on to be the man of the hour, the belle of the ball, and the brightest light in any room. When actualized and integrated, Sagittarius energy can provide the compassionate leadership required to disarm and transform the most difficult of moments and people.
On a bad day, Sagittarius craves attention for attention’s sake. Its insatiable need for the spotlight and the limelight can take any train off the rails in record time. As such, they are the physical embodiment of the way Alice Roosevelt described her father, Teddy, our 26th President. She said he was the bride at any wedding, the corpse at any funeral, and the baby at any christening. Let’s make it a good day.
In closing, the holiday season is always fraught, but this year is exponentially more so. You are undoubtedly already feeling it in some way. Given the surging levels of poverty and homelessness, our national mental health crisis, increasing political polarization, and the changes in different aspects of our society and our population, the pressure we are all experiencing is historically unprecedented. Now, more than ever, people need practical solutions and spiritual food.
Let’s provide that. Remember that you are not alone. Ask your Gods, guides, angels, and ancestors to help you to be more judicious, intentional, and facilitative in your thoughts, speech, and actions. Ask them to guide your thoughts, your actions, your words, and your deeds, so you can be the change agent your families and your communities need you to be. Listen to what they say, listen to the answers you receive, and trust them. Say yes, say thank you. And go through the open doors; take the actions you need to be that human. And if you get stuck, call me.
We’ll figure it out.
Calendar:
Below are some of the dates when your opportunities for wizardry, magic, and alchemy will be the greatest.
December 19
New Moon in Sagittarius
Mercury Retrograde Shadow Period ends
December 21
Sun moves into Capricorn
Winter Solstice/Yule
December 22
Hannukah ends at sunset
December 24
Christmas Eve
Venus moves into Capricorn
December 25
Christmas Day
December 26
Boxing Day
Kwanzaa begins
December 30
Fast of Tevet begins at sunrise and ends at sunset
December 31
New Year’s Eve
January 1
Mercury Moves into Capricorn
New Year’s Day
January 3
Full Moon in Cancer (also known as the Wolf Moon, Storm Moon, Snow Moon, Old Moon, Holiday Moon, and Moon after Yule)
January 6
Dia de Los Reyes, Epiphany/Feast of the Epiphany, Feast of the Theophany, Three Kings Day
January 17
Mercury moves into Aquarius
January 18
New Moon in Capricorn
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