Grab your soapboxes and all the abstract concepts you’ll make an eternal stand for: it’s Mars in Aquarius season.
The planet of war and assertion makes a dramatic entrance into Aquarius on March 6th, crossing from Capricorn with Venus in an exact conjunction after both of them have aligned exactly with Pluto on March 3rd.
You probably don’t need me to spell out that war (Mars) and transformative change (Pluto), as well as financial warfare (Venus’ contribution to the mix), are in the air.
It’s unfortunate when the astrology is so on the nose, and my heart goes out to those suffering in Ukraine now, as well as everyone else suffering unnecessarily — in Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Ethiopia, Haiti, and elsewhere.
The eternal question persists: why do humans do this to each other?
If that’s a question we can’t ultimately answer, astrology posits that Mars, in our own charts and collectively, has something to do with it.
Which brings us back to Mars in Aquarius, where the planet of war will be until April 14th.
Double Trouble
In Aquarius, Mars finds itself in arid territory without a lot going for it. While Aquarius isn’t one of the signs in which Mars actively struggles (that would be Taurus, Libra, and Cancer, the signs opposite its domiciles of Scorpio and Aires and exaltation in Capricorn), it’s not a sign of particular affinity for Mars either.
This is, after all, a malefic ruled by the other malefic. The only other combinations like this are Mars in Capricorn, in which Mars is exalted, Saturn in Scorpio, which is somewhat neutral like Mars in Aquarius, and Saturn in Aires, in which Saturn is in fall or depression.
In a natal chart, much depends on the placement of Mars’ ruler, in this case Saturn. If Saturn is relatively well-placed in one of its comfortable signs (Capricorn, Aquarius, and Libra), it can help, since Mars in Aquarius will have some resources from a well-resourced ruler. (As always, there are many mitigating factors that can help or hinder a placement, and each natal chart is unique. To find out more about your own chart, book a consultation with me — my bookings are open!)
Rebel With a Cause
What Mars does have going for it in Aquarius, a fixed sign, is its utter tenaciousness. Once Mars gets going here, it doesn’t let up. In an air sign, this is expressed through the social realm of ideas and concepts.
This is a warrior who fights for abstract ideas often through unconventional warfare.
While modern astrology associates Aquarius with Uranus, the planet of disruption, it’s actually Saturn, the traditional ruler of Aquarius, that provides the revolutionary energy that so often characterizes this placement. But this isn’t Mars in Sagittarius’ religious or philosophical zeal, which carries that placement off on its campaigns and crusades (they’re also fond of soapboxes). Mars in Aquarius instead finds itself a renegade through a rigorous and saturnian thought process, not jupiterian belief.
The key to understanding Aquarius’ unconventional nature is to understand how its ruler, Saturn, operates in this air sign and how that differs from Capricorn, Saturn’s earth sign domicile. In Capricorn, Saturn builds material things within accepted institutions and hierarchies — governments, bureaucracies, and chains of command — until it becomes the institutions itself.
In Aquarius, however, Saturn builds things out of ideas, abstract concepts, and social networks. Aquarius thinks itself outside the box and then often finds itself outside of Capricorn’s institutional structures. If Capricorn is the imposing New York Public Library with its stone lions standing guard, Aquarius is the internet.
Once you add Mars to Aquarius, you can see how we can end up with contrarians who argue (endlessly) about . . . whatever abstract concept is on their mind. They can easily find themselves in the role of devil’s advocate, just for the hell of it, thanks to that fixed sign inability to change directions. And once they’ve painted themselves into a corner rhetorically, they’ll just cross their arms and not give an inch. These tendencies can lead to the sense of being an outsider, a political exile, a dissident, or an insurgent.
Do Your Own Thing
This outlier status is why you often find Mars in Aquarius standing on the sidelines while everyone else is jumping into something — whether it’s a popular television show, a new technology, a health craze, or some type of campaign.
Mars in Aquarius has to come it its own intellectual determination about whatever the topic at hand is, and will take its own sweet time to get there. Early adopters, they aren’t, despite Aquarius’ reputation for being future-oriented. Saturn’s unemotional, innately conservative, and skeptical orientation compels Mars in Aquarius to do their own research, and then, ultimately, their own thing.
Fighters for Humanity
On the positive side, this stubborn reactionary bent can be harnessed, once Mars in Aquarius has decided to pick a lane, as a reliable force in support of said principles. Often, these principles are for the common good, as Aquarius is ultimately a social sign, with a distinctly humanitarian orientation.
Its symbol, the water bearer, is one of the few human ones of the zodiac, along with Gemini’s twins and Virgo’s virgin. The rest are animals (Aires the ram, Taurus the bull, etc.), a mythic creature (Sagittarius’ centaur, a half-human, it should be noted), and an inanimate object (Libra’s scales).
At its best, Mars in Aquarius can marshal Saturn’s discipline and work ethic in service to concrete actions that (hopefully) benefit the collective.
An idiosyncratic list of famous Mars in Aquarius includes many innovative every(wo)man types: Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Vivaldi, Bessie Smith, Mae West, Isadora Duncan, Cary Grant, Maya Angelou, Tennessee Williams, Kurt Vonnegut, Queen Elizabeth II, Jimmy Carter, Lauren Bacall, Truman Capote, John Cleese, Jane Fonda, Ian McKellen, Alec Baldwin, John Belushi, Andie MacDowell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Walken, Edward James Olmos, Michelle Obama, Axl Rose, Gary Oldman, Jon Bon Jovi, Tupac Shakur, Elon Musk, Matthew McConaughey, Sacha Baron Cohen, Mark Wahlberg, Snoop Dogg, Jamie Foxx, Jay-Z, Sofia Coppola, Winona Ryder, Adele, Julian Assange, Elijah Wood, Scarlett Johansson, Kristen Stewart, Emilia Clarke, Alicia Keys, Emma Watson, Justin Bieber, and Dakota Fanning.
2022: A Space Odyssey
Mars’ dramatic conjunction with Venus at zero degrees Aquarius, on March 6th, acts as an exclamation point to the last couple months of the Venus retrograde. This happens just after the cosmic lovers’ pass by Pluto, on March 3rd, which signaled themes of war, transformation, and peace in a potent interplay.
The switch into Aquarius is stark for Mars, going from its sign of exaltation into one in which it doesn’t have any essential dignity. In Capricorn, Venus was helped by Mars’ exaltation there; in Aquarius, neither has much to offer the other. In Aquarius’ moonscape landscape, they both must rely on their ruler, Saturn, which is nearby and fully-resourced in Aquarius.
The main focus in March for Mars is its square with Uranus on the 22nd, just a couple of days after Venus makes her square (she’s enclosed for most of the month between Mars and Saturn, which is rough). Mars in a tense aspect with Uranus suggests sudden actions or aggressive surprises. It’s a time when headlong action seems to win out over cool calculation. The sun, newly entered into Mars-ruled Aires, only accelerates the high-octane energy.
In any event, the old tensions of the Saturn-Uranus square are aggravated as Mars makes his way towards Saturn. There’s an intensification of tensions as Mars is pulled between uranian shake-ups and saturnian order. Mars conjoining with its ruler now suggests that institutional order has the advantage over disruption, through how that plays out, and if that’s what we want, is another question.
Mars’ meeting with Saturn at 22 degrees Aquarius on April 4th is the denouement of Mars’ journey over the past couple of years. It’s worth remembering that two years ago, on March 31, 2020, was the last time Mars met Saturn in Aquarius, just after Saturn entered Aquarius briefly during that pandemic spring and early summer.
Their meeting back then at zero degrees Aquarius, the same degree as Venus and Mars’ meeting as well as the “great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn in December 2020, which signaled a new era, is significant and the prelude to their conjoining this spring. The second meeting this April is thus an ending of that cycle. These two won’t meet again in Aquarius until 2050.
And then Mars will enter Pisces on April 14th, where its martial instincts are overtaken by Jupiter’s beneficent tendencies. With Jupiter in boundary-free Pisces and conjoining with dionysian Neptune in mid-April, just before Mars changes signs, it looks like Mars cannonballs into a merry pool party. Expect a sharp tonal shift out of the dry coolness of Aquarius and Saturn in-charge-of-everything-all-the-time. Fun and games (and pool parties?) may be on the horizon.
Warriors, Come Out and Play!
Finally, we can’t leave this discussion of Mars in Aquarius without shouting out one of its most dystopian (and entertaining) archetypal manifestations, that 70s cult classic film, The Warriors.
This movie has all the Mars in Aquarius things — from a past-meet-future urban dystopia (it’s amazing how effortlessly Aquarius can tilt from utopian dream to dystopian nightmare), de-centralized gangs of fighters who are so motivated and disciplined (hey, Saturn) that they wear matchey-match outfits, an attempt to broker a gangland peace based on a utopian ideal, and, the Warriors themselves, a group (aquarian social ideal) of everyman types just trying to catch a break as they fight their way home to Coney Island through the mean streets of the saturnian city of menace. Not to mention, a subway brawl with a gang wearing overalls and roller-skates. . .
Did I also mention it’s the quintessential NYC film? I will die on this hill.
**Correction: an earlier version of this newsletter, emailed out to subscribers, mistakenly had the date of the most recent “Great Conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn listed as December 2021. It was, in fact, in December 2020. My apologies for any confusion. These years are just blending together, honestly.