Mars retrograde: time for a review
Mars will be retrograde between Oct. 30 and Jan. 12. Our culture is driven by anger, competitiveness and faux individuality, all Mars-related issues. It's time to reconsider whether this really works.
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WE ARE NOW UP TO MARS RETROGRADE, the last major astrological event of 2022 and the great warmup to the Pluto in Aquarius era that begins March 23, 2023. Retrogrades — particularly of inner planets — represent review phases. This one lasts between Oct. 30, 2022 and Jan. 12, 2023. I first covered Mars retrograde in an article from July called Rumors.
Retrogrades of distant, slow-moving planets, in my view, represent layered processes of moving forward in an incremental way, so that the work of the transit does not have to be done all at once. They often work in entirely different ways from inner-planet retrogrades. But all retrogrades point inward, and point to the past. They describe what has been suppressed.
Mars is retrograde second-least of all the planets, about 9.4% of the time. Venus is retrograde least of all, about 7.2% of the time, due to its proximity to Earth. For contrast, Mercury is retrograde about 19% of the time, and Pluto is retrograde about 44% of the time. (You can find the sources for this data not on the internet but in an essential go-to book for all serious students of astrology, the late, great Neil F. Michelsen’s Tables of Planetary Phenomena*.)
Mars Issues
Of all the planets, my assessment after decades of practicing astrology is that humans have issues with Mars. We are trained — all of us — to be aggressive, competitive and selfish, and to celebrate those things as holy virtues. This may happen at home; it may happen through cultural conditioning. There is plenty of “screw the other guy before he screws you” included in what we consider the usual way of the world.
Then there is anger. My old friend Debbe on Vashon Island used to say that everyone needs anger management training. Our whole society stews in rage, and this is often baited, provoked, capitalized on and used against people. Every single day, we are confronted with unbelievable developments about which we can do very little. This has a paralyzing effect, and leads people to turn their anger and resentment on themselves, which they experience mostly as guilt.
Many huff rage like shoe polish out of a paper bag. We have come to think it’s normal that people will tailgate at 80 mph, or fly past you on the right without even signaling. Driving is a terrible place to blow off steam and yet that is where a lot of it tends to happen.
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