Mars, mud, and moving forward
We’ve turned a corner. Can you feel it?
I sure can—a soothing balm of tingling, fresh energies has emerged after the grit and sluggishness of the past winter months. There’s a freshness and a lightness in the air right now, and the natural world is feeling it too. Villages of chubby birds suddenly popped out of their nests, filling trees with both excited chatter and heated discussions. Small purple blossoms quickly reached out from the fingertips of branches.
What shifted? Mars (action, drive, energy) finally stationed direct this week on Tuesday, February 24. I’ve been waiting for this since early December 2024.
As an ambitious double Capricorn, I’ve been ready to rock, but unable to roll since Mars first turned retrograde back then. I felt the wheels of our cosmic car roll to a stop at a red light, as all momentum sank into the retrograde mud. What’s a workaholic sea goat to do without a vertical wall to climb? Just standing on the rocks gets boring, let’s get going already!
The astro goat in me is strong and determined, indignantly butting heads with the various energies and forces of nature headed in the opposite direction. Most of my life I lived in this stubborn delusion that I could part the Red Sea to get to my goal.
Naturally, after choking on billowing clouds of cosmic dust while creating my own suffering, and having grown accustomed to the bitter taste of humble pie, I think I’ve finally learned some hard-won lessons.
Here’s one of them.
We’re all little boats on this ocean of consciousness. When a storm hits, we all feel it and ride it out in our own unique way. And when the dark clouds break and the warm sun emerges, we all look up, soak it in, and take a deep breath.
There really is a rhythm and a flow to life, as mysterious and seemingly unpredictable as it tends to be. Through studying astrology, not only can we understand these rhythms, but also harmonize with them so we can participate with life’s unfolding in a deeply meaningful way.
Because we’re just the boats, we’re not the ocean. Just as smooth seas don’t make skillful sailors, we too must learn to successfully navigate the constantly shifting weather on the sea of life. (Not shake a fist at the ocean for disappointing us and demand it shape itself into our neat little bottle.)
There’s a time to drop the anchor, and a time to raise the mast. A time to take a nap, and a time for the night watch. A time to swallow salty seawater, and a time to bake out in the hot sun. There’s a time to take action, and a time to cease from action, or at least, slow down, look around, be aware, and take intentional steps forward.
Now that Mars has stationed direct, it’s a time for action, to pull out of the mud, and integrate what we’ve learned, reviewed, and reassessed since December as we move forward. What do we take with us, and what do we let go? What do we need to shed so we can powerfully step forward in this new Mars cycle of action?
Yet, a word of caution: We’re in a retrograde corridor. So while Mars begins its forward motion, Venus and Mercury will soon station retrograde.
Life isn’t linear, nor a neat and tidy formula. Somehow, time and motion moves in all directions at once. Some things take a big step forward, while others take 2 steps back.
