Mars (Action) turned direct in Libra (Partnership): May 19, 2014

"Mars stations to turn direct on May 19 and continues to travel through Libra till July 25.  Between now and the end of July, you’re putting in place all the plans you’ve been working on and struggling with.  It’s important to be clear and define how you want to partner. How do you want to partner with everything!  Your food, your cat, your coworker, your child, your job, your house.  You get the idea. Your life is full of relationships and partnerships.  Since December,  Mars in Libra has been making you look at every relationship you have.  Now that he’s going direct, you’ll be asked to implement the various plans you’ve been forming, doodling, dreaming or stirring around in for the last 6 months.  His station can mean it feels like nothing is moving for the first five days of the week.  Underneath, though, there are earthquakes.  Big things afoot beneath the surface as he shifts his direction." - Anne Ortelle, Astrologer

Sorting through the deep explorations this is what comes ...

Mars and Pluto (the close-to-Earth planet and the far-from-Earth planet that scientists have 'demoted' to a not-real planet) rule the sign of Scorpio, a sign that is famous or infamous depending on your thinking. Famous for the depths, secrets, and power experienced in a day, a night or lifetime Scorpio is the sign of intensity. Infamous in part because of the animal association, the scorpion looks much like a dragon with powerful claws and a stinging tail. Many fear the Scorpion, and yet if you're in battle the Scorpio as your backed-up is to know loyalty uncommon and unmatched. Pluto, is the planet that embodies death and rebirth: what is not working/serving growth in the collective energy of Earth, as well as the energy of personal evolution will go through the process of dying. Whether in your natal chart (you were born with this signature) or during transits (when the planet moves in the sky in 'real-time') Pluto, or in my Hawaiian mythology, Pele, will bring up deep and powerful magma in the process of making new land/new self.  Mars is the embodiment of action: he wants to go, go, go after whatever he wants. With Mars, the planet of action in the part of the sky where Libra resides, individual actions have been caught in the scales of balance ... not Mars' favorite position! Consideration for other (people, situations, processes) has been the order of the day for several months. Earlier this week, Monday, May 19, 2014, Mars from our vantage point on Earth looks and feels different. The movement begins to turn direct, rather than retrograde.

Everyone and every process or system, project and growing cycle has been slowed up. For people, like me, with heavy Scorpio influence, the slow up has been magnified. Depending upon where Mars transits (which house in your chart?) the business of weighing and considering how you relate to people, situations, challenges will have a flavor associated with the house. In my case, Mars in Libra means Mars is transiting my 9th House of Higher Education. In all levels of the phrase "Higher Education" has been my additional training ground for many months. On a technical level, my learning about communication on the internet, the use of blogs, and the formats that allow my work/writing to reach people is a challenge. I have learned how to include other people in my audience as I write and share mythic-medicine stories: I get feedback and integrate what others have to say with gratefulness. The new style of writing bridges non-fiction with that of mythology, personal myth and the ancient myth that feeds me outside of logic. Sharing this way makes me vulnerable, different, unsure. That uncertainty is probably just what Mars in Libra demands of us. Are the actions I resume when Mars goes direct the ones born from Higher Education (that which is more than materialistic)? The other part of that question is: Will others understand the story/message when it gets out there?

While Mars moves through Libra through July, giving us ample opportunity to come up with a clearer sense of an action plan (Mars acts with Libra's deliberating nature) Saturn continues to demand Earth School of Hard-knocks discipline. Are you the one you have come to Earth to be? Are you using the gift of Life everyday? Angeles Arrien, the teacher I have come to call "My Angel" is one of the Saturn figures and guides for me as I deliberate my plan of action as a makua o'o ... an elder in training poised on the crossroads of applying what I've learned so far. How will I act with the lessons I am learning about being a public figure? I ask myself this question as Saturn transits Scorpio in my 10th House, the 'career' or public face position. While I grieve the loss of my brother, and come to terms with my physical limitations to travel on a plane and be in environments my immune system cannot manage, I continue to study: I am reading Angeles Arrien's The Four-Fold Way and ask myself the hard questions necessary to be the person I came to be. To be the one who brings the good, true, and beautiful that is my ancestral legacy, I look at the shadow of myself, the dark and light and pray to be open to outcome, not attached to outcome. Within the community in which I live I have reached out for help from the bone-mover, a local chiropractor. After more than four years, I am able to ask for this help, step into an office for his service, and he moves the ribs in my back into place. "Ah, thank you," he says as I relax and give over the resistance and tension that has displaced my balance. Together we move the bones, together the ancestors who sit in my left-side find their rightful place within me. I soften the ground of my being and my heart opens to the goodness.

The passing of my brother challenges me to feel the grief of loss from a distance. The test of distance is both yin and yang. Though far, I am never-by. As Mars prepares to move into his normal fast-pace I pray for the wisdom to act responsibly, truthfully, with a full-heart of gratitude for the life I have, where I am. Saturn in Scorpio is about deep and hard lessons. Mars acts. Libra deliberates. There's more in the heavens and on Earth to boot. But for now, that is plenty. I am grateful.

"What we mistook for a limit proves to be a horizon."

- Br. David Steindal-Rast, OSB