AP - Musings on Mars

1
27 Jul 2003

Deb:

In the traditional forum, Sue wrote:
I spent a couple of hours last night looking at some quite spectacular sights. I am lucky that I live in a very small place with little light pollution so visibility is quite good. Just on dusk Jupiter and Mercury, which were in conjunction, dominated the sky. It was a truly magnificent sight. A couple of hours later, Mars rose over the eastern horizon, even brighter than Jupiter had been. It was the reddest I had ever seen it.
I?ve been noticing lately how the current trine between Mars and Uranus in Pisces, and Saturn in Cancer has been leaving its impression all around. Trines show an easy release of energy and between such naturally difficult planets we can expect to become more aware of hard reality, conflicts, shocks and sobering thoughts. This Tuesday, 29 July, Mars turns retrograde, perfecting its return trine to Saturn on 13th August and continuing its backwards tread until 27 September, when it almost perfects a conjunction with retrograde Uranus before turning direct again. The BBC website notes: ?The mid-point of this backwards drift is called the time of opposition (which happens on August 28 ). One day before this occurs, the Earth and Mars will be at their closest for over 70,000 years.?

Many people have commented generally about how they have felt unnaturally irritable, down or unsettled lately. Just a couple of personal observations I?ve made over the last couple of days include witnessing a post about the general meaning of Saturn turn sour and cause unintended distress; and although I am not a ?news watcher?, picking up my daily paper yesterday to the frontpage headline ?The Evil Dead? posted over two very disturbing close-up images of Saddam?s sons? mutilated faces. This set the tone for a strange day filled with old things breaking suddenly and causing problems, a trip to a church that ended up as graveyard maintenance, plus many more personal and trivial impressions that are hardly worth posting here but struck me as being reflections of the same theme.

Astrologers can learn a lot when they actively monitor and observe planetary effects as they take place around them at a personal and social level. Sue?s post is a reminder that the original intent to understand the meaning of the planets was prompted by the way they pull our interest to their altering appearance in the sky. The increased vivacity of the colour of Mars is more than a matter of passing interest. Ancient astrologers may not have known that Mars was getting phenomenally close to the earth, but they would have seen that it was calling out for our attention. Astrology is founded on long generations of individuals watching, noticing and recording.

This Mars is worth keeping your eye on.