After ten weeks retrograde, Mars will finally turn direct today at 23 Scorpio. Phew! Let’s break this down.
1. Mars is action and will. In its highest expression it’s the planet that inspires us to move forward, defend ourselves, and to show the world how brave we are. In its lowest it’s aggression, anger, and deadly violence.
2. When a planet goes retrograde it’s not able to express itself as it normally does. Cyclically it’s more of a yin phase as the planet pulls inward. It’s my belief that retrogrades are a time for us to reevaluate our past and how we’ve used the energies that the planet archetypically represents, for better or worse. It’s a karmic time, one where we have to rebalance the planet.
3. When Mars turned retrograde on April 17, it did so in the sign of Sagittarius — faith, truth, and a search for meaning. Mars in Sag is a bit of a self righteous crusader and this is the karma we had to work out. So much of the retrograde was really taking a look at where we’re wrong and where our beliefs or blind faith closed us off to other options. Sag is so convinced it’s all going to work out in the end. But what if it doesn’t? What if we made a huge gamble and lost?
4. Mars dipped back into Scorpio on May 27, reactivating a story we were experiencing in mid February to early March when Mars was originally at these degrees. A retrograde says, we’re not quite done here. We have to go back to tie up loose ends. Anything from February/March coming back up for you?
5. Mars in Scorpio, to be honest, is a bit of an intense placement for the planet. While it can be used in wonderful ways — a psychologist, for example, who can go into the psyche with the precision of a surgeon — there’s a lot of darkness with Mars in Scorpio, a lot of skeletons in the closet. We’ve seen this play out on the world stage during May and June. It hasn’t been pretty.
6. Astrology is just another way to tell time — metaphorical time, holographic time. Mars or Scorpio isn’t doing anything to us. It’s just tell us that this is the time to experience these things. When Saturn was in Scorpio from 2012 till 2015, it was time for us to learn powerful, deep lessons in the sign of death, rebirth, shadow, secrets, and power. Mars going back to the last few degrees of Scorpio is reactivating lessons we learned from 2015 when Saturn was in Scorpio. Remember what I said about loose ends and astrology telling us what time it was?
7. For all the darkness in the sign of Scorpio, don’t underestimate it’s powers of total rebirth and transmutation. As Mars turns direct today, use your consciousness to focus this energy like a laser beam. Transform yourself. Cast off old fears, self destructive patterns. This is your time.