Like a Knife Through Water: More on Mars’ Long Square to Neptune

Hey everyone, this is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. And today, we are going to take another look at Mars square to Neptune. And we're going to do it by looking at one of my favorite texts and a really a couple of really cool passages and descriptions that come from one of my favorite astrological cookbooks called The Archetypal Universe by Renn Butler. I like this as a desk reference. It is something that I often go to as a way of just kind of conjuring of images and themes that helped me understand the transit. And I was re-reading the passage on Mars Neptune today and just thinking this would be great to go over some of this with you to point you to someone's work that I really like, who you may also enjoy if you haven't ever checked him out before. And yeah, to get a little deeper read on this aspect, which is perfecting now not only now but through the retrograde process, which Mars will begin at the end of this month. Mars will station at the late Gemini about 25 degrees turn retrograde, and back into the square with Neptune again; in fact, that stationing is really in a square with Neptune.

So this is going to be around really all the way through November, and I thought, let's take a dive into the watery Mars-Neptune combination. It's an interesting thing to even consider a watery Mars. But I think there's some really rich material in this passage today. So I'm going to read through it and, hopefully, riff off from a bunch of things that Renn has to say about Mars Neptune.

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All right, so let's take a look at the Mars-Neptune transit. Here it is again. And Mars is. See Mars squaring Neptune perfectly. This is about 1:38am New York, East Coast time, October 12. So early Wednesday morning. But you should have been feeling; we did a video on this last week. And the likelihood is that you've already been feeling this energy and are noticing it for a while. And you will continue to notice this energy for a while because it's got a shelf life. Let's just draw this out a tiny bit. In fact, let me share my screen again and show you so this transit; keep your eye on Mars and Neptune now; actually, I'll just maybe I can draw it in here so that you can actually see it; it's going to move.

So watch Mars and Neptune. You're gonna see first of all that Mars by October 31 there about stations, you see a little s under Mars, and then it turns retrograde. And then after it retrogrades, it's going to come back through the square to Neptune, which it does by mid to late November. And then it's going to keep going for a while, but it is within three degrees of Neptune all the way till the end of November. That three-degree engagement range is really important. And then, finally, through its direct motion, it comes back through the square mid to late March. So it is the Mars Retrograde is really also the story of Mars' square to Neptune.

Here are some of the things that Renn Butler has to say. Which I find really on point, and I'd like to let you know I'll read but also elaborate upon. So, Mars Neptune, this comes from his book again, The Archetypal Universe, which I couldn't recommend more highly. Renn is a colleague, and I consider him a kindred spirit. I really like the way that he opens up the archetypal dimensions of planetary combinations and just sort of spins the jewel let, letting the light catch off from it in different directions.

Spiritual and creative vitality. So I like that he says spiritual and creative vitality. There's a sense as it's as though Mars is being bounced off of the imaginative, prismatic uplifting qualities of Neptune and feels vitalized and fresh, like a warrior who's just been baptized or something.

Magnetic warmth and charisma, there's a sense of charm, you know, like, for example, did you know that the magician as an archetype has often been related to Mars Neptune? Liz Green famously related Mars and Neptune to the magician archetype, someone who has the ability to, you know, it's like, at worst, it might be smoke and mirrors and deception and tricks. But at best, it's showmanship and inspiration and magic and sort of creative like David Copperfield.

A gentle and sensitive strength. So you're taking strength, and you're making it more subtle, gentle, compassionate. That's the combination of Mars and Neptune. Gifts of compassionate action and enlightened nonaction, knowing when to act and to do so from a space of deep empathy or compassion. That's the Mars Neptune quality but also, maybe realizing that right now, I need to surrender something, or my will needs to, I need to let go of the desire I have, or it's like, you know, the strong, assertive, aggressive qualities of Mars sort of lay back and says I'm letting go of an action.

Strange feelings of pointlessness and futility. Now that can be the frustration of Mars with Neptune. I talked about that a little bit last week when I talked about weakness and feeling inept or impotent. Toxic blah, malaise. Yeah, the feeling that there's nothing's really working, or nothing really means anything. Uncomfortable inner heat. There's one thing that's really interesting about Mars Neptune is anything that is sort of irritating, like a rash that's almost psychosomatic or being influenced and irritated or agitated Mars qualities by very subtle things in the environment. Very Mars Neptune. The potential for secret harmful actions so Mars Neptune becomes the action that is harmful Mars, but also deceptive or secretive, which is Neptune.

Camouflaged desires. Yeah, being able to sort of cloak some kind of desire or something like that. Character and themes; gentle insensitive strength and open and flexible resilience, a capacity to go with the flow, very Mars-like like martial arts. Softened ego energies, relaxed confidence. I like that one that feels very Mars Neptune like. If you see someone who's really really, I heard someone once say this. When I was into Brazilian jujitsu for a little bit last summer, someone said, you know, what, well, why do they look? Why do people, you know, do these extraordinarily competitive, sort of violent sports, but they seem so laid back, almost like surfers, which, by the way, surfing is a competitive sport associated with Mars Neptune. And the answer is like, Yeah, well, if you get close to being tapped out often or you're tapping other people out, or you're, you know, you're in combat zones, it's like there's not a lot to be afraid of or to be stressed out about; if you're taking it to that level of intensity, like oddly, it makes you kind of relaxed. That's a very, that's very like the warrior code of Mars. Neptune is like relaxed confidence, but it's not one that is necessarily a stranger to like violence or trauma either.

The ability to have an effect without arousing opposition. That's a good one. The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things; quote from Lao Tzu, a feeling of synergy with others gifts of compassionate action, right action, and enlightened nonaction, the idea of being in the world but not of it, acting without attachment to the results service to those less fortunate blends of passion and faith, quiet crusades. My experience has been that Mars Neptune can also be quite loud with its crusades, almost like like driven by a zeal for some kind of transcendent vision or mission.

An ability to gently flow, follow and stay with one's breathing. You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive and in repose. That's a quote from Indira Gandhi. The futility of war, the transmuting of aggression, dissolution of force, active pacifism, passive resistance, the soft martial arts, like Chi Gong, I guess.

Sensitive passion, sacred sexuality. I think that part's really interesting. Mars, sometimes we think of only as like violence or aggression. But Mars is also desire and passion. And so with Neptune, there can be a sanctifying or a making sacred of one's desires and passions. Oceanic sex, tantra, the sacredness of energy and movement, a talent for swimming, sacred for the more I've been Mars, Neptune opposition, and I was a competitive swimmer from the time I was a little kid. A love of soaking in hot water. Oh, I think that's interesting. That's funny because I've always been a sucker for hot tubs too. I wonder if that's why.

But so you can see, you can feel some of the Mars-Neptune combinations. And I think it's just about one of the things that helps about doing this is just doing one yourself, making a list yourself. One of the benefits of doing content creation every day is that you make lists or you read lists, or you familiarize yourself with the archetypal combinations, and you're speaking them all the time. And so they just become part of your vocabulary that it's easier to spot them and notice them because they never pop up in quite the way you're expecting them to. You know, like, I wouldn't be surprised, actually, you know, it's funny, Mars squaring net as Mars has grown closer to a square with Neptune. There's been a problem with the gentle depression lever on the cover of our little hot tub that we have. And so we need to get it replaced. That's funny. I wasn't even thinking about that. See? That's what I mean. All right.

Shadow qualities. A demoralizing sense of futility and pointlessness, weakness and lack of confidence, inability to take decisive action, not being up to life's challenges, unfocused or stalled willpower procrastination. That's certainly there, the ineptitude, the weakness, the failure that we talked about in last week's video on Mars Neptune. Vague and diffuse irritation; see, that's the weird thing is that there's almost like this hyper-allergic response like Mars Neptune I've seen in people who like strangely get shingles, and they can't figure out why. Threats. This is funny threats from tiny organisms, says, like ants or something like fire ants, would be very Mars Neptune rashes and itching.

Spiritual or religious ambition. This is the shadow quality, so like striving to achieve enlightenment with maybe some kind of hubris involved. Misguided spiritual aspiration ego trips based on questionable, subtle, energetic healing. Mars Neptune, for example. I've had that transit come up in the past when I was working at a residence home for adults who were dealing with schizophrenia. The Mars Neptune combination when I worked there as a social worker, I noticed on several occasions when one of my residents who I worked with had some really, really intense like religious delusions that were, you know, really scary because, you know, sometimes the decompensation that comes with those can result in someone harming themselves. That was I noticed because I was starting to study astrology that there was one of those times, at least I remember, that Mars Neptune was perfecting and seems to be careful about that.

The potential to confuse people and the delusion of hurting others in order to wake them up. Wow, that's a good one. You know. I remember that I had a coach, and I'll just leave it at that. I won't say which sport, but I had a coach that really had this sense that I'm hurting you to help you. And it always left a bad taste in my mouth. You know, it's just like, that; this isn't right. And yeah, that's very that's a really good one for Mars Neptune.

Backstabbing and treachery, stealth and cunning. See that sense of like secretly harming someone, secretly stealing something; like that? That strikes me as potentially problematic. Suicide is mentioned; let's see poisoning or problems with liquids that harm. Yeah. Nature in the arts. The mournful consciousness of predators. Wow, stealthy hunters.

In cinema, actors who portray subtle, sensitive, unassuming exotic, mysterious magnetic, and charismatic characters, also strange, bizarre, uncanny, sly, wily, oily, shifty, or sneaky characters. Yeah, that would definitely some Mars Neptune would because remember the Lord of the Rings? There was Wormwood, who had influenced and poisoned the mind of the king. What was his name? Theoden. The very Mars Neptune-like character, you know, in fact, Gollum. Smeagol. He's a very Mars Neptune-like character, the way he's always sneaking around and trying to almost he almost leads them into a trap with a spider. It's very Mars Neptune, in that sense.

I don't want to make it sound like it's all just treachery, villainy, and evil because there's certainly more to it than that. But any of the kind of like the glamorization or romanticization of horror, like the appeal of watching a docuseries on a serial killer or something very Mars. Neptune is a very interesting one to have it popping around Halloween, by the way.

The Taoist virtue of Wu Wei or creative quietude, the watercourse way. True strength comes from being open to the flow of divine energy and consciousness; the Tao the idea of turning the other cheek. That's a really interesting one. Mars Neptune as passive, a passive resistance. Be strong by, in a sense, nonaction or detachment. And there's a kind of strength in that. A lot of martial arts work not so much by asserting something as using an opponent's anger, rage, or aggression against them as a leverage point. Stalking the absolute, entering into the mystery, sacrificing one's ego into the great dissolver, all of that has a kind of extreme sport feeling behind it. With spirituality, like I'm driving toward oblivion, like a skydiver or something.

So, anyway, I'll leave it there. But well, the last thing he says it's interesting themes and deep self-exploration. These archetypes help people to take a break from their usual martial or forceful approach to life and go with the flow of their emerging inner material. Mars Neptune transits are also an asset for clearing out leftover toxic womb memories or disturbances of intra-uterine life. That's fascinating.

Now, that comes a little bit from the work that Butler and his lineage of teachers did, like Stanislav Grof, with the sort of birthing matrix, the archetypes associated with the birthing process, which is a big part of that holotropic breathwork, and things like that. But at any rate, a wonderful passage from Renn, and one that I think gives us a lot to think about with Mars Neptune. Just feeling it, trying to bring the God into our awareness a little bit; I recommend putting something on a home altar if you have one, something that could be a tribute to Mars Neptune. I mean, it can get creative too. Like, I love doing this kind of thing. Like, you know, take. Okay, I'm just gonna really literally gonna make something up right now; let's see, take a sharp knife. I know this sounds probably like a bad idea. But even if you just do it for a couple of days, take a sharp knife and put it into a jar full of water, right? Something that's kind of, you know, signifies the symbol.

And a lot of the times when you come up with something creative like that, it's not like you're asking for something from it. It's just a simple recognition of the gods that are sort of in the air. If you put it on the altar, it just has a funny way of starting to alert you to the presence of the God. The God starts speaking in your dreams, starts giving you the messages that you might need, they start opening you in the ways that are just right for the moment. So I highly recommend just sort of working with even just starting with an awareness of these archetypes in a creative manner; I think it can just do wonders for you know what the process brings to you and how you grow because of it. And we're having this; I wouldn't do this for something that's just super, super quick. This one's lasting a long time, and we've got this all the way through the end of November, then again a reprise later on in March. So I would say it's well worth taking a minute to really tune into the Mars Neptune energies that are in the air right now.

Well, and by the way, on that note, if you have a story to share, use the hashtag grabbed and put Mars Neptune. Tell us your story. I would love to hear. I mean, we really need to gather some good stories from Mars Neptune, so please share them. If you don't feel like sharing it in the comment section with the hashtag grabbed, just email us at grabbed@nightlightastrology.com. We aggregate those. We'll probably do a storytelling episode at some point. This fall, don't forget the last thing the Ancient Astrology program for the Mystic begins on November 12. Check out the need-based tuition option if you want to take one of the courses but can't afford it; if you have any questions, email us at info@nightlightastrology.com. That's what I've got for today. Hope you guys are doing well. And we'll see you again next time. Bye