Similarly to Venus Rx’ recent square with Pluto, this transit between the God of Action and the God of Communication is a theme of the overarching season. We will see this square between Mars and Mercury three times, of which this is the second. The first happened on 2 October, and the third will be on 9 December.
As with all recurring transits with the inner planets in retrograde, the first instance denotes the mistake; the second denotes the revelation (that is, discovery of the mistake we have made); and the third denotes the resolution and tying up of loose ends.
We are in the uncomfortable part with both Venus and Mercury right now, and our lifestyle is in editorial mode. This is pretty succinctly captured in my recent journal post, which I’m finding more reasons to update every day.
The days of retrograde are difficult because we are understanding a lot of problems. For most of us the problems are not that surprising or that difficult to deal with. For me today it’s been as simple as realizing I don’t have enough clothes that fit and buying two more pairs of pants, three shirts, and a winter coat.
There is really a deeper problem at play, because the reason I have so few clothes in the first place is that I habitually deprioritize my living needs for no reason. But the immediate resolution is straightforward: buy more clothes. From there it’s just about making that mindset into a lifestyle. Mindset change is done more effectively through earth element than air element; sometimes spending money really is the most powerful way to tell yourself what matters to you. Ultimately, whatever we believe in as individuals, we do have to accept at the end of the day that we live in a capitalist society where money matters more than anything else. That’s a truth we can easily use as a tool for enforcing our own priorities upon ourselves. Do we put our money where our mouth is? For all that I’ve been telling myself I care about my quality of life, I don’t even really like most of the clothes I own.
Is realizing you don’t have enough clothes that fit really a Mercury Rx eventuality? For the personal relationship I’ve cultivated with Mercury and Venus it reads as a collaboration between all three personal planets. Venus has been explicit that she’s wanted me to update my wardrobe for three Eclipse cycles now; I’ve been putting it off. The way I think about clothes is Mercurial than Venusian in that I see clothing as a lifestyle system rather than a means of self-expression. So Venus needed to get the pressure routed to me in a way that I would accept and channel forward into productive change, rather than just snoozing the alarm.
The inner planets work together very closely all the time, and Merc and Venus just met up on 6 October, right after the first occurence of the Mars square. For all I know, they were waiting for the Mars square to come back around to get him to push me into action. In the meantime they’ve been working on my quality of life systems in other ways that have been stupidly impactful immediately, opening my heart to this escalated pressure for change.
Mars is described by literary types as the God of War, but most of us don’t experience war in a literal sense during our lifetime, so that’s not really how he relates to us. Like the rest of the planetary deities, Mars is a multifaceted man. His role in the group project that is astrology is to light a fire under our asses. Not in a collective sense like Uranus, who blows up entire social concepts. Mars works with each of us individually, lighting us our own special fire for our own special ass. First he takes the time to understand what makes us stop and what makes us go. Then he learns what happens when he pushes each of our buttons by trying them out one at a time. Eventually he learns how to run the machine, and then he can do exactly what needs to be done to motivate us through any flaming obstacle course.
For most people he shows up kind of like an athletic coach. He can read the room and give us what we need in the moment, but mostly he tries to push us to perform at the high end of our capacity in a sustained way that will push us toward personal growth. This man is not an amateur coach like some soccer dad, though – he is a professional. He firmly enforces rest days. He encourages giving up after half the workout because he doesn’t want us to form a mental block about pushing ourselves too hard. He wants us to eat healthy, but he cares more that we’re eating enough. Don’t misunderstand me about Mars. He knows better than the rest of the planetary Gods that the most effective way to convince a human to commit to your agenda is to use verbal affirmation and reward. He is not a trickster type and it takes a lot to get him to use force.
In Leo, Mars relates to us through the archetype of Hercules, the wounded hero. Disney didn’t do Hercules’ story justice – they ommitted the tragic part of the story where Hera possesses Hercules and makes him murder his wife and children, and then releases him back into his life cold and sober, whereupon his self-image changed for life. He came to view himself as a brutal, violent, out of control person who could not be trusted. Nothing ever changed his mind about this, even though the whole world to this day worships him as the greatest hero who ever lived.
There is a way each of us is unshakably wounded in our self-perception, and that’s what comes through when planets are in Leo. The volume is increasing on this archetype as Mars approaches conjunction with Jupiter. It’s like pressure is building, and the pressure will be released under their conjunction on the night of November 15. After that the energy will start deescalating and (maybe) reverberating until it ultimately resolves. This storyline will round itself out before the third instance of Mercury square Mars on 9 December.
Mercury is the Messenger God. They don’t only rule over our communication and mental systems. They also work as the literal messenger between the other Gods. Since they’re the fastest moving, they transit with the Sun and the two other personal planets by far the most often. When there is news to pass or collaboration to be done, their transits are when plans are nailed down and commitments are made.
Each year when Mercury conjuncts Zeus (Jupiter), the King on Olympus makes big picture plans with the Messenger God. Then Mercury speeds off and spends the rest of the year spearheading initiatives on their own, independently enforcing Zeus’ instructions through group work with the rest of the planets. Zeus himself does not need to participate in passing instructions. This is how they have always worked together.
During their Scorpio retrograde, Mercury is likely to be interested in unpacking trauma that has been stored so deep in the psyche that it’s been forgotten. This is likely at first to come through as stuff we don’t have any particular feelings about. Scorpio’s signature is chill, but the dysregulated version of Scorpio chill is dissociation. To transmute dissociation into proper chill, we need to digest all the feelings that are in between.
In my case, I’m not particularly sad that I haven’t been providing myself with enough shirts and pants or what have you. I’m fine the way I am. But being fine with clothes I don’t like that don’t make me feel good about my gender expression is not actually fine. Not liking my body in its new shape between the testosterone and the first year of my life that I haven’t spent wondering whether I’m going to be able to eat enough every day… is not actually fine. These are mindset problems I need to address, and to address them I’m going to have to move through the feelings that I’m not currently accessing.
During Mercury’s retrograde motion, we unpack all the problems. Then, during the post-retrograde shadow, all those problems get resolved. In between the revelation and the resolution there is a period of discomfort while we sit with and understand the extent of our problems. In cases like this, the discomfort can’t be avoided, and it’s best not to try. Building a tolerance for difficult feelings is a necessary part of growing up; people who never learn to do it become insufferable elders.
At the end of the day, thinking about how we’re feeling doesn’t get us anywhere in our processing. To understand that a new mindset is real, we need to take action. That’s what this transit is pushing us to do. But to see the best effects from whatever happens to us under this aspect, we need to make taking action on enforcing our new mindset a regular part of our daily life. That’s how neural rewiring works – through repetition. Instead of doing endless intention setting and thought policing, we simply find ways to integrate action into our daily lifestyle. This is devotional to the future self, the way to build a strong relationship with our Sun.
Squares between the fixed signs can be standoffish, and the way that often comes through is a sort of stubbornness in the face of the self. It’s the stalemate between wilfullness and willingness, the desire to refuse and the desire to do. Ultimately we need to be able to overcome this energy if we want to function, and all it takes is deciding to stop struggling. It’s possible to just opt out of it. All you have to do is perceive it – and then it falls away. It is an illusion of the old school kind.
