How to Avoid Astrological Burnout: Don’t Be Afraid of Mars- Episode 6

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology, and today, we are continuing with our series on how to avoid astrological burnout by talking about the planet Mars.

Now, I wasn't originally intending to include Mars in this series because, honestly, I don't hear people freaking out about Mars all that often. But in the comment section of the previous videos in this series, Don't be afraid of Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Saturn. I noticed that there were a lot of comments saying, please do one on Mars.

Okay, I already have a bunch planned for the houses; we're going to look at the eighth house, the 12th house, stuff like that, the sixth house. I was sort of surprised to see that people were really pining for a video discussing Mars.

But actually, the more I thought about it, the more I got it; I was like, Yeah, I mean, Mars is definitely one of those planets. When it comes up by transit, it's a little bit faster moving, and maybe people tend to focus on the outer planets because the aspects that they make in our natal chart are so long-lasting.

But Mars can still be a planet that gives people some anxiety, and the purpose of this series is to help us alleviate anxiety by deepening our relationship to the symbols and trying to understand, you know, what there is to learn from them, how to work with them, and how to turn the archetypal jewel, as I like to say so that we catch images and impressions of the archetype that are a little bit more positive or even more process-oriented so that we can understand what we're learning or how we're changing or growing or evolving in relation to the transits of the planets, even when some of their more challenging significations do show up in our experience.

Anyway, it's been a real joy to do this series. I hope you guys have been enjoying it. If you haven't seen the previous videos in the series, you can go and check those out as well. They're in the archives How to Avoid AstrologicalBburnout. We're on part six. So there's a bunch of videos from the series that I think you might enjoy. Today, we're focusing on Mars.

So before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe share your comments and reflections, especially if you have a Mars placement or Mars transit. A good story that you can share with us, you can always use the hashtag #grabbed or email your stories to grabbed@nightlightastrology.com.

I should have after a clip season has wrapped up; now I'm getting ready for another grabbed episode. Those always take longer because we have to go through hundreds of stories and reading all of them, and then narrowing it down to a set of stories that will really make for a really good episode is a time-consuming process. So they don't come out all that often for that reason, but we're hoping to do one soon.

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Okay, so on that note, let us switch our view here and today, as I said, we're gonna be talking about Mars, and you know, I want to say just two things about why we're doing this series.

One is because sometimes, when you're consuming astrological content over the course of many years of your life, you will come to develop low-grade anxiety in the same way that people who I don't know who watch a regular gossip column or the news or whatever, even sports will get have like low-grade anxiety, because, you know, in sports gambling, they say, make the game better this Sunday, but get your sweat on and put a bet down on these online sports gambling websites. Like we need anything more to get us anxious and, you know, get our adrenaline going.

But the truth is that astrology can be just like a get your sweat on this week; it's a Mars-Pluto week or something like that, you know. So we have to be careful that we're not feeding into the tendency that we have to want to stay hooked on. Something dramatic, I think life is dramatic; life is drama, life is meant to be. It's like I'm a very Carpe Diem kind of person, you know, let's, let's live on the stage of life to the best of our abilities, let's get invested in a life that we're living. But I don't think that, in addition to that, we need to amplify what is already a dramatic experience of just being alive by making everything seem more dramatic than it has to be more than it really is, and I think we do that with astrology.

So the first reason we do this series is to help you, you know, just to not do that; this series is meant to help you catch yourself if you're investing your interest in astrology with more existential anxiety than there needs to be.

The second reason that we do this is also to educate so that people can get a more well-rounded understanding of the planets. Maybe a more positive, constructive, optimistic view, if that's what you want to call it. I try not to make this like, you know, unicorn poop. You know, like, let's try to be real, but also constructive, and if the series can help you see, I mean, at this point in my life, for example, I would no longer describe Mars as a terrible, vicious god of war, who's just here to make my life miserable with conflict and hostility.

You know, I don't describe Mars that way anymore. I've learned over the years to understand that each of the planets are, each of the planets is a teacher, and it may be teacher isn't even the right image, a guide, a friend, an aspect of God, a part of my own soul; there's so many different ways of describing what the planets are, other than, you know, like invasive agents of frustration or stress and I think the way we describe planets, at the very least, can become more well rounded or balanced.

Or maybe, just more broadly speaking, we can avoid thinking of planets too narrowly. So we're just broadening our perspective, or we're getting a more positive and holistic understanding of how the planets are here to help us. So that's the second purpose of why we do this series.

So anyway, why people are scared of Mars, it boils down to three main things; I've just put three categories of symbolism that people tend to stress out about with Mars, although honestly, I would say, you know, I get I see the least amount of fear and anxiety about Mars compared to say Pluto or the, you know, the outer planets or Saturn. But Mars is probably still up there, especially the way you guys responded in the comments section. Number one is that Mars brings, this is the perception. Mars, oh boy, here comes the Mars transit; it's going to bring conflict, violence, and anger, just pure God of War stuff.

So, Mars is going to bring conflict into your relationships. It might bring violent, emotional outbursts. It could bring, you know, sort of angry reactions and stuff like that. So, generally speaking, people get worked up about Mars because they think that Mars is going to come in and just terrorize their life. Even if it's just a brief Mars transit in your chart or in the sky, you hear Mars and you think, great, there's going to be turmoil conflict, you know, I'm going to get angry, I'm going to have trouble with my temper, or someone is going to lash out at me. Whatever.

No one wants to hear that you're going into a period of turmoil, crisis, confrontation, and hostility with people you love or at the workplace or, you know, most of us want to be dealing with kind of like, manageable tranquil waves of experience, okay, there's ups and downs, but they're not just that spiking me into you know, some kind of fever range of, anger or hostility or whatever. So that's one reason that people will just get freaked out about Mars. Okay. Mars brings these really undesirable feelings or experiences.

Number two is that Mars brings injuries, accidents, and intense emotions. Again, I'm just kind of camping these together, you know, in ways that make sense, but the big one with Mars is okay things that are outside of your control will come in and provoke you to have a really intense response, or will cause a fender bender, or will break your thumb or, you know, something like that.

It's like a, you know, a missile coming into your life and just wreaking havoc and bringing things that you can't control that will hurt, or that will be unfortunate in some way, or that will provoke within you a response that you don't have control over. Or that is just really, really intense, like boiling water or something.

So, understandably, these are not particularly enjoyable qualities, right? Mars does, in fact, be associated with everything that I've said so far; I think there's going to be you'll see that there's a way we can understand and hold these experiences that's a little bit more well rounded and we'll get to that in a second.

Number three is that Mars brings frustration and hostility, and I've already mentioned the word hostility a few times. But frustration is an important one. Because basically, one of the things that Mars represents is always going to be associated, at least in modern astrology, psychologically with our will or willpower, and so Mars transits are often associated with willpower, but even more, you know, Mars is associated with frustrations of the will, I'm trying to do this, I want to do this, I'm aiming I'm intending on desiring for something, but I'm being met with either hostility or opposition or my will, is being frustrated.

So it's just, well, Mars experience, okay, buckle up for feeling like you're being thwarted, your will is being thwarted, or you're feeling frustrated because something is standing in your way that you have to contend with or somehow overcome. So that's frustrating, and there's something to this Mars is associated, for example, through the joys of the houses with the sixth house, which is a place of hardship, misfortune, accidents, injuries, and things that you have to persevere and overcome. All sorts of things, even things that are ultimately good for you.

For example, if you're going to train to run a marathon, you got to run a lot; you got to train a lot. Well, that can be very frustrating. It can involve a lot of suffering and so forth. But you have to overcome that if you're going to cross the finish line. We're going to talk more about this kind of thing in a minute.

But the bottom line is that most people don't experience it like that. They're going to just feel like, oh, a Mars transit is coming. Great. Something is going to be frustrating my will, my desires, my aims, my goals, or my ambitions. So if this was it, we'd have a pretty like, honestly, like a pretty difficult Mars, a pretty difficult planet. Conflict, violence, anger, injuries, accidents, intense emotions, intense responses, things coming in that are sort of invasive and that make us overreact, things that make it difficult to control our emotions, frustrating things that thwart our will, hostility, feeling that something is opposing us or thwarting us, like, none of that is particularly fun.

So yeah, these are probably the main reasons that people would hear about a Mars transit and get anxious or, instantly, like the very significations we're talking about, start feeling frustrated, or it can bring up intense emotions before anything's even really happened and you have to be careful with the planets like this.

For example, you see a Saturn transit coming, and you start getting depressed. You know, it's like, you have to be careful that in the way that you think about planets, you're not sort of, you know, signing up for something, or right away in your psyche, or in your consciousness in the very way that you're thinking about them.

Because as soon as the planet comes up, the field of the planet as an archetype is there; you're entering into it by means of the pathway in the pathway into it is already there in terms of how you're thinking about it and so it's really important to be aware of that.

Not that we always have total control, either not preaching some gospel of utter control, but sometimes we're pretty helpless in terms of the way in which we're going to engage with the archetypally or emotionally, and that might be as a matter of karma or destiny or something we're meant to learn or whatever.

So I'm not even trying to advocate for some kind of hyper, you know, like white-knuckled control of everything. I don't like that. You know, I don't even think that's what mindfulness, like we talked about mindfulness. I don't even think that that's what mindfulness is; well, just be so zen that you're in control of everything.

I think it has to do a lot. Mindfulness, in my opinion, has more to do as someone who has been a long-time meditator and someone who's incorporated prayer into their life for a long time. I think that, um, These practices are meant to help us catch ourselves going down sequences of thought-action behavior and to reflect on being reflective so that we can adjust and sometimes, you know, the ability to adjust is not like, you know, it's not some radical readjustment. It's a slight adjustment that will be slightly better than where we were going, you know, but we'll take that, you know, so anyway.

So, what does Mars actually bring? Or, what are some ways that we can hold this archetype that are perhaps more constructive, looking at them from the process-oriented evolution or unfolding of a soulful life? Most of us would frame a soulful life in terms of learning growth, reflection, depth, and deepening intimacy.

So, from this perspective, how can we understand what Mars is doing? Well, number one is that Mars is always bringing opportunities for courage under fire.

So, I want to share with you guys that I love my etymologies. So I brought some etymologies today. So the word courage has to do with the heart and its innermost feelings, which comes from the old French and from the Latin core, which is the heart, and we also have the idea that there is something in here about the strength and innermost quality of the heart. This is what Mars brings. You don't often think of Mars as a planet associated with the heart. But consider that Mars's sign of Aries is also the sign in which the sun is exalted in.

So the extent to which we respond to challenges to adversity to what feels like a confrontational force, quality, thought, emotion experience, and we and we respond to something incoming, that feels intense, or maybe hostile and we recognize I am going to respond in this moment from my heart, from a position of strength, not dominance, from a position of a humble but strong heart, a humble, strong heart, that's a good way of thinking about it.

I'm going to respond from that place right now. Oh, I didn't; I got mad, I got angry, I overreacted. But in those moments, what is our conscience really telling us? You didn't behave according to some kind of moral code? No, you didn't behave according to your heart. That's if there's anything to feel, I don't know, a little bit embarrassed or ashamed of if we overreact or we get angry, or we get hostile, or we get brought into some kind of conflict where we really lose ourselves. It's not that well; you got something wrong, you know, you missed the mark. No, it's that you lost your heart.

Courage is really about being in your heart and being in the truth of your heart. Especially when the stakes are high. The intensity is high. It's easy, in other words, to sort of be in our hearts and act from the heart when things are calm and tranquil. But when things are very intense, and we have to make that decision to stand in the heart, which is a soft, loving, compassionate, open space, we can stand in there with a heart that's on fire.

If I reflect back on the most significant Mars transits in my lifetime, when planets are transiting my natal Mars, for example, every time that was the lesson, you can be strong and soft, you can be gentle, kind, strong, and firm at the same time. Okay, you missed the mark a little bit; the embarrassment and shame isn't that you you didn't act according to some kind of moral code written on stone tablets somewhere.

It's that you are strong in your heart, and you fell out of that place. What a sweet, loving, compassionate message to receive actually, I do have a strong heart, and the reason I know I have a strong harvest is because I know that I could have responded from that place, maybe a little bit more or a little bit better and that's the call of the heart. It's like a place that we're always being trained to stand in when times are hard and when the stakes are high.

So that's one way of looking at more ours; it doesn't always happen in the moment. Because in the moment when you're being tested, it's really hard to have that kind of reflective distance to see it that way. But over time, if we look at Mars constructively, when something's coming at us in the times, you remember where you, you kept a clear boundary, you spoke truth, but you spoke it in kindness without any, you know, vindictiveness or aggression, you know, you didn't try to demand something in exchange, or, you know, you didn't become a tyrant somehow, though, you know what that's like, that's a feeling of like, I was strong in that moment, and it could be just a little micro moment, I was just, I was strong when I felt like someone was coming after me in a certain way that was really uncomfortable, even just with their tone of voice or something.

Okay, you know exactly what it's like to feel that strength. That's the strength of the heart, and Mars is about finding that and learning how to live from that space when the heat gets turned up.

Number two, Mars cuts, frees, and empowers. So one of the things that Mars does is it severs; it cuts things like a knife or a sword. When Mars cuts, it also frees. It's sometimes painful for chords to be cut. But most of the time, in reflection, when I hear my clients, and I look back at my own life or students, are all of you out there and the stories that you've shared, go through a time where Mars has severed something, it's cut a bond or relationship, it's severed a tie or an attachment.

You feel stronger; you feel like you have the word, maybe the word is individuated, that you've taken a step forward in terms of being more independent and capable, and you feel like unhealthy attachments or entanglements were cut, and there's a freedom in that there's an empowerment in that.

Now, not always; sometimes, when Mars cuts things, it just really hurts, and there's no need to spin the experience in some ultra-positive way. But in time, what I've noticed is that the things that Mars cuts in severs usually have the effect of empowering people and helping them to feel more free, or, you know, I just would get so annoyed by the word sovereign. It's just such an annoying word to me. But, um, but it is a little bit like that. I'll give some credit right now to that word; you feel like you have a little bit more sovereignty.

Sometimes, when things are cut or severed, you have to learn through the pain how to stand alone or to stand on your own when something is taken away or someone is taken away. Even if it's just brutally painful, one of the byproducts over time is that you often learn how to be resilient, how to be independent; you learned that you're more capable than you thought you were, and so Mars, in that sense, is like cutting an umbilical cord and there's a lot of that that happens in life, I think it's sometimes the most painful experiences we have are the ones where cords are cut.

Cords that bind are often cords of love, and yet love is this interesting dance that's always taking place between independence and dependence; we have to separate and be apart in order to fully appreciate the object or desire of our love or affection.

There's always a need for individuation and then coming back together. This is why Venus and Mars are also opposites; people don't have a problem with Venus because, generally speaking, people like coming together; you know, we don't like Mars so much because Mars is about the pushing apart.

Well, if that's personally empowering, then we love it. You know, if it makes us feel strong and awesome about ourselves, we love it. But if it takes us apart from something that has been the object or desire or an attachment that we've had, then we find it to be incredibly painful, and yet, over time, those moments of severing or separating are often some of the things that empower us the most and end up making us more capable of being in healthy cooperative relationships with other people or participants in collaborations. Individual strength is necessary for cooperative for cooperation as well.

So, over time, I've learned that when Mars cuts things, to just feel the pain and don't try to make anything out of it, but to trust that in time, whatever I'm now being asked to do more independently or apart from something that has been it's been painful to be separated from that this could be a good thing in time. I have to trust the process.

So Mars is a planet that's also always helping us to become stronger in ourselves. It's a planet that, unlike Venus, is very much about individuality, and, again, we like that if it feels good. We don't like that process, when it's when it's painful, and yet, they're almost always both. In both instances, the same thing is happening in time.

Number three, Mars brings perseverance, sacrifice, and passion. I don't know what it is that there's anything in life that is really deeply substantive that doesn't require passion. Passion literally means the etymology means again, to suffer alongside of or just suffer with, or to suffer with what we carry in some kind of love and attachment.

Now, I just spoke to the fact that we don't like Mars because it separates us. But there's always a little bit of Venus in Mars and Mars in Venus, just like the yin and yang circle has a speck of black and the white and white in the black opposites archetypically in ancient astrology are always fundamentally connected in ways that are not immediately apparent to us. But if we spend time reflecting, we'll see.

So, for example, Mars is very much about what we are attached to, in suffering. For example, I'll just give a timeless example. The soldier who goes through boot camp, and the soldier who fights for a cause, or the activist, or whoever is fighting for something, they are suffering, and they're holding something that's burning their own hands; passion is what allows us to carry things that are sharp in our own hands.

For example, people who study astrology, people who study art or music or medicine or anything, you'll suffer for long periods of time in the process of apprenticing of long day's reading, struggling to understand, you're pouring metaphorical blood, sweat, and tears into something that you love because you love it, you're willing to experience the pain, the hurt, the burn, if you like working out, I love working out because it helps me.

Either you're in touch, and this is just my experience speaking, you are either in touch with something in your life intentionally that requires passion of suffering alongside, or life will sort of force you into it because it's archetypal. I find that I have a very nice outlet at times and prayer and meditation; I will be honest, sometimes I hate doing those things, and yet, it's the discomfort, the feeling of being with that burning discomfort. That is actually the most empowering and beneficial part of the practice. Not always, but sometimes.

Similarly, for me, working out, it's not like it's fun. I mean it, but it is, in a way, because I like the burn. You know, up until the moment that I don't, in which case, then I have to dig deeper and find a deeper level of passion and commitment to something that's hard. Doing hard things. It's the name of a podcast that Ashley likes to listen to. We can do hard things; I think it's called anyway; doing hard things almost always requires sacrifice.

Mars is related to the word martyr, which also means to die or sacrifice oneself on behalf of something that one believes in. So Mars is also asking us to always suffer with this; right now, carry this hot thing in your hands, your metaphorical hands, and if you do, you just get through it. You will find that your whole life has more passion available because you become more willing to passionately persevere and sacrifice through anything you're doing, which usually lends tremendous soulfulness and depth. You don't think of Mars as a soulful planet.

I think, for example, of the song, Summer of 69 by Bryan Adams, I think it's Bryan Adams. He says I was talking about I got he got a six-string guitar. He's like a high schooler in the song, I think it is. I played it until my fingers bled. Right? That's it, and we all need that in our lives. We need something when Mars transits come up. They might just feel like, man, Mars is just messing with me in this in this way, making everything really intense and dramatic.

Yes, but Mars is also reminding us that a soulful life is a life filled with passion, sacrifice, perseverance, and burning with things. It's better than just thinking of Mars as a fever. So sometimes we, you know, what's the song, you know, that jazz song or that blue song? You give me fever? I think that's how it goes.

This is Mars. If we can remember these things about Mars, not always in the moment, but if we can hold that kind of bigger picture of Mars. What initially seems like nothing more than conflict, violence, and anger becomes opportunities for courage under fire when we think of nothing but injuries, fevers, intense emotions, and accidents.

We can also think of the freeing, empowering, and individuating qualities when we think of Mars as bringing frustration, conflict, and separation. We can also think of Mars as bringing perseverance, sacrifice, and passion.

Even just holding all of these things rather than just the negative things will help us to alleviate anxiety. I hope that this has been a useful exploration of Mars, that you feel a little bit more empowered, and that you feel strong in your heart for hearing these things; that's it for today. Hope you guys are having a good one. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.