Brace yourself — You may be in for a Bumpy Ride! Have you been feeling a shift in your energy levels lately? Find yourself focusing on what you want to achieve and analyzing the steps you need to take you to your goal?
Mars is currently travelling through the logical and analytical sign of Virgo for quite an extended time November 18 to July 4 to be exact.
Mars in Virgo is highly disciplined, it also gives you the ability to separate your emotions and aim hard towards your goals. It is a time of hard work to achieve what you desire and gives you the ability to get a great deal done.
To help you with the Mars energy over the next few months keep an eye on the following dates and adjust your actions/thoughts to use this energy wisely whilst remembering Mars is the planet of war, it rushes in without fear… however, during the next few months a retreat in action may give you your best outcome.
How, you might ask, could this be so? Another side to Mars is anger and how we deal with it, whether in ourselves or others. As Mars in Virgo is the master of logic and analyzing the next move the period that Mars turns retrograde from January 23 to April 13 may be a good time to sit back and give thought to how you deal with anger in yourself, in others and in your relationships.
Mars is not comfortable in Virgo to begin with. The two archetypes are vastly at odds with one another and are therefore hard to synthesize. This is true if it happens to be the sign your natal Mars is placed in. But it’s also true – and just as challenging – when Mars is transiting (moving through) the sign of Virgo as it is just now.
Where Mars is instinctual, impulsive and assertive, Virgo is more nit-picky detail-oriented and perfectionistic. As you can imagine, trying to filter one of the energies through the other can lead to frustration and tension.
People who were born with this placement tend to be workaholics (or go-aholics), exceptionally critical and very hard on themselves. Likewise, when these two archetypes join together in the sky (as they are right now) this energy applies to all of us. You may start to feel like there are suddenly never enough hours in the day, like it’s all work and no play and like the work at hand is never done.
Add to that the upcoming retrograde cycle and you have a whole new set of concerns. During this time, you may feel like you’re taking two steps forward and one step back – especially in the workplace. Or you may see setbacks in some of the progress you’ve been making in matters of self-improvement. You may start to feel listless, unmotivated and lethargic.
The message in all this – and the appropriate antidote – is to surrender some of your most out-dated belief systems to the lessons of this Mars in Virgo retrograde. If you’ve been running yourself ragged (and getting nowhere) it’s time to stop and trust that things will get taken care of without your incessant input. If you’ve been too critical and too demanding and too hard on yourself and your loved ones, it’s time to appreciate the beauty in the unfinished and imperfect.
Your Mars placement can tell you a lot about you and your partner’s anger style (which is also learnt from our earliest experiences and family of origin). It can also give you valuable information into how and why your partner reacts the way s/he does.
Imagine how useful it would be to know why your man doesn’t react to when you blow up at him (Mars in Aries) and he just withdraws (Mars in Cancer). You are all set for forging ahead to the “battleground” (Aries) whilst he has gone “undergound” (Cancer) with each time you forge ahead to fight.. he withdraws more.
You may think you are winning but are you? Are you really? Or do you just have an opponent who rather than fighting you out in the open (Mars in Sagittarius) has gone from sight and may come to “sting” (Mars in Scorpio) you further down the line.
You may have Mars in Taurus and be slow to anger but once aroused are like a bull in a china shop – you find yourself dealing with a partner with his Mars in Libra who wants to know all sides of the argument being discussed – ever tried reasoning all sides with a bull in a china shop? Something may get broken and that something may be your relationship.
Which brings me back to Mars currently in Virgo – cool, analytical, clear and collected. Aiming for a goal and working to get there. You may just find yourself angry with Mr/Ms Virgoan Logic and if you don’t want to take control of your own anger issues then its one way to find yourself hitting your head off a brick wall.
Fortunately, help is at hand. In the next part of this article different anger styles will be explained and which of these may work best for you during this period. A “General” (you!) needs a plan of action (Mars energy) and if you know how to use this energy to your advantage you can accomplish wonders.
NASA has a beautiful rendition of an earlier Mars retrograde cycle in their Astronomy Picture of the Day archives.