Going Backward in Time: Unpacking Mars Retrograde in Gemini – Part Two

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today we are going to take a look again at Mars' retrograde in the sign of Gemini. This time we're going to do it from a historical perspective. We're going to take a look at two of the most recent Mars Retrogrades that have spent either a little bit of time in the sign of Gemini or a longer time in the sign of Gemini; we have two of these periods to look at today. And by doing so, we're also going to take a look at some of the events happening in the collective that were emblematic of the Mars Retrograde in Gemini to get a sense of how that archetypal combination has sort of shown up historically. Now by doing that, I'm not exactly trying to make any predictions about what's going to happen now, say in the collective or in current events, but more so to give us a feel for what kind of archetypal themes to watch for both in our own lives and around us. And sometimes, looking at collective events that have happened under previous transits can be a really good way to do that. After we do that, I also have several lessons or insights that these historical events seem to provide us with in light of Mars Retrograde in Gemini. So that is what we will be doing today.

This is part two; if you missed it, I did some horoscopes on Mars Retrograde in Gemini last week. I also sort of unpacked Mars Retrograde in Gemini from an archetypal perspective. Given the heavy emphasis that this Mars Retrograde has on the square to Neptune. Those were last week. So if you want more, go check those out. But this is our focus for today.

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Okay, so, Mars Retrograde; there have been a few times previously that Mars has in recent memory recent recent-ish memory that Mars has been retrograde in the sign of Gemini. We're going to go back to October 1990 to December of 1990. Now, if you were, you know, alive and there was you know you weren't like three years old or something. You may want to look back at this period in your birth chart. Look at the whole sign house that Mars was in and see what was happening in your life. If you were young, you could even look at what was happening around you and your family. Because sometimes, the transits, especially when we're younger, will show up and make an impact, but it's more so the impact is felt in the environment around us. Anyway. So Mars was retrograde. If you can kind of go back here, we're looking at it coming into retrograde in mid-October. So here you can see Mars is sort of stationing at 14 degrees of Gemini guess this is about by the 21st, and then turning retrograde around the 21st and 22nd. It then goes through its long retrograde period and is going to dip briefly back into Taurus before turning direct at the end of December. And then it comes through again and doesn't fully leave Gemini until it looks like about early April of 1991. So that previous period is one of two that we're going to look at today.

The second one happened around 2007 and 2008. It was more it was a little bit briefer. But, let's just take a look at some of the notable events that were happening around this time that, again, broadly, you could say represent Mars Retrograde in Gemini. We've been doing an astrology of sports podcast for the past two months. Once a month, a couple of astrologer friends and myself have been doing this, and it's been pretty fun. One of the things that happened during this time was unfortunate, but it also was like a benchmark; I guess event in the history of journalism and sports was that there was a woman, a female journalist, who was harassed while in an NFL locker room trying to conduct an interview.

Now, not only was it an event of sexual harassment, but it was an event that sort of forever changed the trajectory. It became an awakening moment and a turning point event in the history of sports journalism. I find that interesting since Mars Retrograde in Gemini could be an indication, for example, of athletic events or anything athletic in nature. Mars, but also in the sign of Mercury in Gemini, a Mercury-ruled sign and Air sign that fits journalism quite nicely. So the Mars Retrograde in Gemini seems to have brought up a significant turning point in the history of professional sports across the board, not just in football, because of the way that a woman was treated in the locker room. And then the standards around locker room interviews and women in journalism, specifically sports journalism, started on a much more progressive path, thanks in part to this tragic event, you know what I mean?

So I don't know if you will thank it. But it brought awareness to something that was really difficult. And I find that to be now. I'm not trying to pick; I pick events that I think really get into the archetypal combination. So some of them are big, and some of them are, you know, you might think, well, I don't really care about sports journalism, right? But it's a good example of Mars in mercury sign going retrograde and shifting something important in the collective.

Number two, during this period in 1990, from October to December, Tim Berners-Lee began his work on the world wide web, and the first known web page was published. So here we have that theme of inventiveness. And did you know that Mercury was the planet associated with invention and Mars Mercury combinations were often associated with math, science, and people who had like really incisive intellects and may have been independent thinkers as well as inventors? So Mars and Mercury sign retrograde is an interesting time for the advancement of technology and new ideas or upgrades or revisions of ideas. And I think this is fascinating because he had actually published a paper on the World Wide Web; I think it was roughly two years previous. And then, he amended that during this time, and also the first web page was published. So this was a significant time in the writing and thinking, and revising of the world wide web concept, as well as the first publication of a web page.

Invention is a key; it is like a hallmark of Mars in Gemini. Very inventive and resourceful planetary combination Mars in the double-bodied Air sign of Mercury. Similarly, in terms of the double-bodied nature, East and West Germany were reunified During this Mars Retrograde, so you have things that were torn apart that are being put back together. And so anytime that you have Mars in a double-bodied sign, you can think about things that are that tear or break apart and then have to be almost like stitched or put back together. So the idea of East and West Germany reunified, after a conflict, there's a revisitation of a conflict and a re-uniting of two things that have been torn asunder. So you get the idea of Mars Retrograde, potentially bringing things back together, you know, that have been torn apart through war or conflict. On the other hand, weirdly, the exact opposite thing can be true.

The Civil War, the Rwandan genocide, and Civil War begins. So well, I think it's considered at first a civil war, and then it leads to genocide, or however it's defined historically, it's a genocide regardless, but it's between, and I'm going to mess this up the who, the Tutsis and the Hutus, am I getting that right? Someone remind me if not, but because it's been a while since I've, I remember having in an ethics class in college had to read a lot a long book about the Rwandan genocide and the nature of these two ethnic groups that, that and their, long-standing disagreements or something like that, that that was a part of this.

Anyway, so you have the idea, though, of things that old conflicts that can rise to the surface and then tear, you know, lets like old conflicts re-iterated or amplified all over again. So while you have East and West Germany re-unifying, you also have the Rwandan genocide rooted in the Civil War type of tension between two groups. Anyway, and then, of course, we have the Gulf War, getting started at this time during 1990; I believe it was the host Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August, just as Mars was entering Gemini. What's interesting about this is that there are big-time economic implications behind the Gulf War with, you know, oil and so forth. And so the other thing is conflicts around resources. People wouldn't think of Gemini as a sign that has to do with resources.

But this is Mercurys' sign. And Mercury was the god of the marketplace. So marketplaces and economic shifts are often a mercurial thing in ancient astrology. So Mars can in retrograde in Gemini be about the volatility of marketplaces, as we will see when we get to 2007 and eight, Mars Retrograde in Gemini, which, of course, coincided with some major economic turning points, but anyway, conflict again. But this time, there's there are elements of, like, economic resources, that play within it. That's me a, you know, I'm not a historian. So I'm just sort of simplifying, simplifying things.

All right, well, let's go to 2007 and 2008 signature, and let's work on that one for a minute. So, I put the real-time clock up again. Now we go to about late December 2007. Now, this one was mostly in the sign of Cancer, but it does dip into the sign of Gemini toward the end. So here you can see that Mars is turning retrograde in mid-November in Cancer. Let me just highlight this so you can see it. There's Mars in the sign of Cancer, and it is about to turn retrograde right there around November 15 into the 16th of 2007. So one of the pieces about this that's interesting is that you have a retrograde that sort of straddles two different signs. So here you can see that it's about December 31. If I move it back just a little bit, here we go. December 31. Mars Retrograde is entering Gemini. And then that retrograde takes place all the way until about March 4, when Mars leaves Gemini through direct motion. So let's watch how that happens. So you can see here we're going through January. Mars is retrograde in Gemini. And then stations and turns direct, and is going to come forward and not finally leave the sign of Gemini until about March 4 of 2008.

So, again, what do we see around this period of time? And this one's a little bit tricky because you have to sort of pair two different signs, Cancer and Gemini. But there are some really notable events that are, you know, strikingly similar. And also, you know, a little bit different, but also just different ways of getting to some of the same Mars Retrograde in Gemini themes. Well, anyway, one of them is that 89 Major League Baseball players were accused of steroid use. And that was, again, another, another really important, you know, milestone in major league baseball history. And in sports history in general, when, you know, there was a whole steroid era in Major League Baseball. And this was another major turning point in terms of the transformation of that culture around steroid abuse, and use, and so forth. And around the culture of injuries as well, because steroids are sometimes used for people coming back from injuries sometimes to enhance performance, and so on. So, at any rate, you have, this is another major turning point in sports history, though, and, you know, worth mentioning just like the piece of journalism was in the, in the earlier era.

Well, the big one, though, and I shouldn't bury the lead, is that the 2007 to 2008 global financial crisis took place due to subprime the subprime mortgage crisis, which you could really look at in terms of Mars in Cancer, the sign of the moon and a sign related to homes. But interestingly, some of the biggest plunges in the stock market took place; I believe it was right in January of 2008. By the time Mars was in Gemini, so again, that volatility around marketplaces, that's really fascinating. Not a, you know, there was a recession, and, obviously, this huge financial crisis. And that was due to the housing bubble that burst, or however they say that.

Number three is that WikiLeaks was taken offline. But then, because of overwhelming public upset, in part, it was brought back online after a major dump of information. I think that's really interesting because, again, you have something tied into journalism and questions about what is or isn't appropriate to be shared or what kind of documentation or information should be shared or not. And I'm not making any comments on that. I'm just stating a fact that this happened during that time.

Number four, is unmanned cars like navigational cars that navigate themselves being tested or scheduled to be tested for the first time? See, I think that's really interesting because it's another example of like a major technological development whose seeds were being planted. I mean, the World Wide Web didn't take off in 1990. And that little period that we just talked about, but it certainly does. The seeds are being planted. And the technology is sort of being tested and written and rewritten and things like that. And so we see that's a pretty big shift around this time; there were also a variety of, like, unmanned space operations that did some interesting thing, like a probe that got the closest we've ever gotten to Mercury was, you know, unmanned probe or something like that. And, you know, a bunch of things like that, that I thought was interesting. But here's another one.

Number five was that the Writers Guild of America went on strike. So you have, you have angry writers; I mean, think about protesting writers. And I don't mean to say angry as in, I'm not trying to be condescending, you had people who were striking, who by craft and trade were writers. So there's Mars in Mercury's sign retrograde kind of thing. Anyway, I find all of these themes to be really fascinating examples of what you may see in the collective, but I take from these three lessons. And I want to go over those today. Because I think that there's something we can learn from these examples in the collective, and there are many, many more like if you find more, here's the thing to do is to look on, if you type up world events, 1990 or world events, you know, 2007-08 during these periods, and look through them, you'll often be like, Oh, wow, like, look, that's Mars Retrograde, you know, incredible examples. I tried to pick ones that were kind of fun and quirky and like sometimes really big and obvious. The writer's strike, for me, is kind of a fun, quirky example. Not that it was necessarily wasn't a serious event, but you get what I'm saying.

So three lessons anyway, number one with Mars Retrograde in the sign of Mercury, you have to remember that this whole Mars Retrograde is trying to Saturn, and Saturn is still separating with the square from Uranus. And so I get the feeling that necessity, a very saturnine word, and invention are tied together, what kinds of things come up and sort of demand or necessitate that we come up with a new idea, a new invention, new approach revision to an existing system because we have to. I think that Mars in Gemini is the inventiveness that is demanded because of pressure. And especially when Mars is trining to Saturn, I feel like whatever necessity demands right now may feel like a bummer. But the inventiveness is sort of in the air, you still got Saturn and Uranus closely square to one another, ready to break from conventions, Mars Retrograde, a very inventive placement in the sign of Gemini.

So it's, it's a little easier to trust the blocks that we experience or the frustrations visited upon us, or the breakdowns of familiar structures are ways of doing things when we trust that necessity is the mother of invention. These moments are exactly the kind of material that somehow ignites a Mars Retrograde in Gemini and allows it to make important discoveries, breakthroughs, or facilitates, you know, experimentation and inventiveness. So just keep that in mind right now because I think the last thing you would want to do is become frustrated by a limitation or a prohibition and then rush rather than trusting the moment to be fruitful and creative. So kind of remember that necessity and invention are often they come close together in a pair.

Number two is to be careful of taking offense. One of the things I noticed is that there are certain kinds of conflicts that come up during this time. I know that this is I'm not suggesting that there is never anything to be offended about or that we should become cold or shut down to our actual human responses. But it's amazing how much violence in our world comes not so much from someone just deciding to be an aggressor but rather because of someone's choice to be offended, which then leads to the feeling of needing to get someone back or level the playing field, carrying a chip on our shoulder, a feeling of righteousness. So the cycle of violence can be cut off.

In a sense, when, although we have been offended, we choose to look at the situation or whoever has offended us with a merciful, compassionate understanding, I recognizing, yes, I've been offended. But my response is not going to be one of continuing or perpetuating a circle or cycle of violence verbally, mentally, etc. So, you know, the strong person is strong, in part because they are very slow to take offense and inclined to forgive even if it takes a minute. And we can still allow ourselves to go through the process of being offended or hurt. So we're not saying, you know, develop some kind of thick skin inhuman or become a neutral automaton or something. But I think the advice is how many conflicts would change in our life or would be avoided altogether if we cut ourselves off at the pass when it comes to taking offense. So be careful of being offended or staying offended, or developing grudges.

It is possible that there is more violence in our world. I have no idea, but I think it's possible that at least a good amount of violence comes not just because someone has been a jerk or has been an aggressor and victimized someone else but because in being hurt, we say, oh, and I was hurt. But I'm also now offended, and I'm going to act and choose from that place of my offensiveness, which often results in us becoming defensive or offensive to others in the way that we think and perceive more than even in the way that we act or move about the world sometimes.

So I would just like one of the things that I've noticed in myself because I'm a natal Mars retro Mars in Gemini, not retrograde, is that I find myself examining the mechanisms of offensiveness in my own psyche. How am I offended? Who am I offended by? And what kind of patterns develop once I feel offended by something? So, anyway, I think that's something just to think about. And, you know, everyone may have a completely different life experience right now with regard to who or what is potentially offensive, right? So it can be more or less challenging, depending on the situation, to look at something like that.

Anyway, the last one is heroic inflation and generosity of spirit. So it is possible during a Mars Retrograde for there to be, you know, look at the steroid use, the 89 players accused of steroid use, or look at the athletes who harassed the journalist while in the locker room, or look at the genocide that took place over a puffed up sense of righteousness with one group of people over another. We can become convinced that our way, our will, our mission, our quest, and our idea is, is good and true to the point of it becoming inflated or amplified to some unhealthy level. A sign of the heroic spirit is its willingness to create for the betterment of the world and others and its willingness to give of itself generously.

Heroic people and I don't love the hero image or myth. I'm not obsessed with it or anything. But if there is a hero in us, if there's a heroic wing, Tino in the, in the mansion of the psyche, then I suspect that that wing is not filled with people who are all about their own success, the righteousness or strength of their own ideas, as much as they are interested in being generative. By that, I mean creative and concerned with following spirits in service to spirits of creativity. And to follow those spirits of creativity bravely because you know that what you're creating is life-giving for yourself and for other people. And when we're in a creative flow, in a generative flow, our very presence is supportive. And other people are, are nourished by our simply being healthy and following a creative flow. There's a natural generosity and overpouring of a generous spirit that happens when we're following that. And I think that's closer to the meaning of heroic, as opposed to trophies on the shelf victories and emblems of strength over others.

The hero is generative and generous. And so, and maybe to the point where you know, the ego can get involved and become a martyr or become like a sacrificing hero. Look at me, I'm giving everything you know, we're not talking about that. You know, the ego can twist anything, true generosity, you know, true generosity of spirit. I'm not entitled to anything. It's not about me; it's about this thing that I'm in service to, the muses in my life, the spirit of creativity, the idea that I have something to pass on to other people through the way I live my life and the kinds of things I create with my life, even if they're small things than just a small circle of people are impacted. I'm concerned with following that spiritual calling, that's the energetic calling, living in alignment with that and creating goodness and gladness in my heart, and then watching that overflow to other people. That generosity of spirit is important. And the reason I mentioned it for this Mars Retrograde is that during a Mars Retrograde, it is as if all kinds of Mars issues come up, and one of them is going to be heroic and egotistical inflation, especially around rightness in a sign that has a lot to do with ideas.

And in and also in terms of dominance, just in general, with Mars dominance and correctness. I'm right. I'm good, I'm true. And that makes me mighty over you. So watch for those things and think more during this period. How can my will be aligned with a way, and the way is something I serve? It is not something that I don't get identified with it because then I get inflated. Instead, I see myself in service to the creative spirit. And then from that, I have a generosity that's naturally shared with others and, rather than taking attention for myself, it gives attention to those energies that are life-giving, and people are attracted to that. But we're, it's something that we're helping people share in and experience themselves rather than hoarding and drawing more, trying to draw more attention to ourselves in some way over others. These are the subtle things I think we could see, especially around ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and things that come up across the axis of Gemini and Sagittarius and Gemini in particular.

So anyway, a few lessons to watch for, and I hope you have found this to be a useful exploration of some of the previous historical periods of Mars in Gemini, not making any predictions based on these things. I'm just putting some events out there so we can see the archetype in the collective and then reflect on it again personally. Don't forget this weekend, the new class starts, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic, which begins November 12. So we have a few need-based tuition contracts left early bird ends on Friday. You can find all of it on my website, nightlight astrology.com and I will see you again tomorrow. Take it easy, everyone. Bye.