Mars in Taurus Conjoins Algol — Eye of Medusa Star

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/].

Today we're going to take a look at Mars and Taurus on the fixed star Algol, the eye of Medusa star. We've talked about this fixed star a couple times over the past few months as planets in Taurus have moved across the last degrees and across the fixed star Algol.

What I want to do today is give you a list of things to watch for, and talk about why Mars, in particular, can be a little bit more intense when it conjoins Algol, not to mention the fact that Mars in Taurus is in a Venus-ruled sign, and therefore in a place of tension in the essential dignity language. This is the exile of Mars.

What does that mean? What might that have to do with this conjunction to Algol? We'll talk about those things today, hopefully give you a sense of what to watch for, and also some advice for how to constructively work with this placement if you start noticing that it's coming up for you. So, I've got some of that here too.

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Also, this Thursday night, if you go to monthly webinars, you will see that my talk on pairing the planets, Mars's many faces, is coming up this Thursday night. This is basically looking at the ancient philosophical roots of Mars and its meaning as an archetype or a philosophical first principle in the language of astrology.

Given a very deep philosophical exploration of Mars, what does Mars end up doing when it's paired with other planets through aspect or conjunction or being in the same house? This is a really deep dive into Mars, so check that out. Hope to see you there. If you can't attend live, you get the recording afterward, as always.

But that's Thursday night, 6:30 Eastern to 8:30 Eastern, thereabouts. All right. Well, and as always, the Chapsa is our affiliate program that we're using, trying to support the conscious development and stewardship of new technology and astrology software. This software is absolutely amazing. The affiliate link gets you 20% off perpetually, monthly, yearly, whatever you choose.

That 20% discount never goes away. It's in the comment section at the top, or in the description of this video. All right, so let's go ahead and talk about this. You can see Mars at the 26th degree of Taurus. If we move this chart forward, it's already off by tomorrow. You might have been feeling this yesterday, as Mars was around 25 Taurus.

Let's give it a couple days, let's say Sunday, June 21 through about Wednesday, June 24 or Thursday, June 25, that keeps Mars within about a degree of Algol, which is around the 26th degree of Taurus. So, what makes this, I think, particularly potent this week is tomorrow, Wednesday, June 24 and Thursday, June 25, as Mars is still within just a degree of Algol, the moon also enters Scorpio and will oppose Mars by early Friday morning.

So there is a kind of ramp-up or escalation of astrological Marsiness, let's call it, along with some Algol influence coming off from it that is taking place as the remainder of this week goes on. That is also happening at the same time this week that we have Mars, or excuse me, the Sun and Neptune moving through a square, so it's a week where you could lose some grounding, you could lose the plot, and there's some specific ways in which you could lose the plot that are specific to Algol.

Remember, the Eye of Medusa star has a long history behind it. So, let's review a little bit of the mythology of Algol, the Eye of Medusa star. Algol is one of the most famous fixed stars in ancient astrology, and it's located in the constellation of Perseus. It marks the severed head of Medusa mythologically in the sort of Roman-Greek view of the heavens, and specifically that star is referenced to her eye.

The name comes from Arabic, if I remember correctly, which is Al Ghul, or the demon, or the ghoul, and it has a long reputation of being sort of unsettling, demonic, dark, difficult, disturbing. But we've talked at length in a number of episodes over the past few months about, yes, first of all, as someone born with it on my ascendant, and activations of that transit, I can tell you personally from experience have often been unsettling, dark, and difficult.

But we've done, I think, a good job over several episodes of talking about why that's not always fair. Let's review a few of those before we get into today's episode. Before Medusa became Medusa, she was this beautiful mortal woman in some versions of the myth, and she served as a priestess of Athena, and she was thought to be very beautiful, especially her hair. She was just a kind of a vulnerable human being.

So, the most influential version of the story, as far as I know, and the research I did was told by Ovid, the historian-slash-poet-playwright, I believe that those are the main titles. So, anyway, Medusa is assaulted by Poseidon in Athena's temple, and I believe the assault is rape, if I'm, excuse me, for I know that even that word can be really intense, but I believe she was violated by Poseidon.

Athena responded almost like it was her fault rather than Poseidon's, and transformed Medusa, and her beautiful hair becomes venomous serpents, and then her gaze becomes so powerful that if you look directly at her with her snake, venomous snake hair, she'll turn you to stone. But that part of the story is often not unpacked – that Medusa was made a symbol of trauma, victimization, rage, and this terrifying power that can emerge from suffering.

Also, this is very clearly a story, if you look at it from a certain point of view, Athena doing this to Medusa is sort of like blaming the victim. Anyway, then Perseus is sent on a quest by King Polydectes, I think that's his name. He has to go retrieve the head of Medusa. He receives divine aid from Athena and Hermes.

He uses this shield that looks like a mirror, so that way he doesn't have to look directly at Medusa, and I think he ends up using the shield to turn her gaze back at her. Does that sound familiar? I'm mostly remembering this. Anyway, I wrote down some notes, but anyhow, he decapitates her while she sleeps, and when Medusa dies, there's two beings that come from her body, Pegasus and Chrysaor, or something like that.

I had to look some of this up, so I don't always know the pronunciations, but that's a complicated story, is the point. There's something beautiful that emerges from a terrible event in Pegasus, for example, there's a creative and spiritual power that comes through all of this as a long arc. However, there's something ultimately that can get lost in all of this, which is Medusa, the person who is violated and then punished after being violated, as though it was her fault.

I think that's why this star, in particular, often speaks to trauma and recovery from trauma and victimization, and the complicated relationship to trauma and suffering that will often exist perpetually for a long time. I can certainly speak to that in my own life, my own relationship with that star. So, but also another important point that I forgot to mention is that even after death, Medusa's head retained power.

Perseus uses it to defeat enemies, the gaze will still turn people to stone, and Athena eventually placed the head on her shield, the Aegis, so that this power was feared. Let's set aside for a moment how horrible it is that this woman was sort of cursed for being violated, and let's just think a little bit about trauma and dissociation and revenge and anger.

When you're looking at, I think about how trauma transforms us, how we become someone totally different, and there can be a troubling mirror that disturbs other people when they have to look into us, because people who have experienced relatively little trauma or suffering, when they look into the eyes of someone that has really seen some shit, so to speak, it can be very petrifying.

You can want to demonize, you can want to avoid that, right? To say no to it, to push it away. So, there's an interesting piece here about the mirroring and the idea that traumatized people are uncomfortable mirrors for us to look into. I have experienced relatively little trauma compared to some of you, but the trauma I have experienced in my life, I know, for example, there are people I meet all the time who I can see have had very little disturbance and are deeply disturbed to find out that I've done things like drink ayahuasca or written openly about my life as an astrologer or something like that, and it's like, oh, that's disturbing.

Well, what they really have to look into is someone who's gone through addiction, who's had spiritual transformation, who is decidedly more open and vulnerable in some ways. I experience that in the material world all the time when people find out I'm an astrologer, and they ask a bit about my life story, and I can just see them leaving their body and leaving presence with me.

I have very little again, compared to a lot of people, so you all know what I'm talking about, any of you who have gone through a lot in your life, you know how what you carry can become almost like a disturbing presence for other people, because they have to contemplate something that also exists in themselves that they're not comfortable seeing in themselves when they see you.

So, there's a big piece of this in Algol that has to do with trauma and suffering and acknowledgement and avoidance and demonization and blaming the victim and avoiding deeper, heavier realities in ourselves, wilder, more untamed parts, and so forth. Interestingly, on an astronomical note, Algol changes – it dims and it brightens alternately. It's an eclipsing binary star.

Every few days, its brightness will noticeably change, and the ancients saw this as a kind of blinking or winking eye. It's kind of cool, but the star represented some really gnarly things, like decapitation, loss of control, overwhelming emotion or passion, intense experiences or events, encounters with mortality, extreme destructive emotions, but also the encounter with wild, untamed forces.

Sometimes they're decidedly feminine, and the need to encounter those things so that they become included parts, not excluded or marginalized parts. It's easy to blame those parts of ourselves, you know. Anyhow, Medusa is often associated with the power of people who have been rejected, the exiled feminine, what we exclude or what we fear, the parts of ourselves we don't want to see, trauma and transformation, just basically the dangerous gaze.

Things that we look at obsessively or compulsively that might be damaging or dangerous, but also things we avoid that we should be looking at. So, it's a kind of sacred monstrosity, Algol. Now with that in mind, I have five things to watch for, given that Mars in Taurus is on Algol right now. Let me move my notes.

The first one on my list is the shadow of the bull. When Mars, god of war, conflict, aggression, assertiveness, but also courage, perseverance, determination, when this star comes over Algol, one of the things that can happen is the shadow of the peaceful, Venusian, fertile, abundant bull can come into focus. This can mean that we have to look at things like materialism, greed, vanity, possessiveness as real shadows.

You're so peaceful, but only if you have a lot of money, or you're so peaceful, but only if the circumstances are rich and ripe materially, you're so peaceful, but it has to do with having a lot of control or power relative to other people. These are shadows of the bull. So, sometimes, especially again when Medusa is involved, now we have to look at these things, and they can become a little monstrous because they're part of us that we don't want to look at.

Number two on my list would be trauma responses. Feelings can build up very slowly with Mars in Taurus, and then erupt very powerfully, but sort of suddenly. There's a kind of volcanic forcefulness to Mars in Taurus, generally, because of the slow build that it has. When it gets into these last degrees of Taurus, it tends to be particularly volatile.

Trauma responses can happen because the events that occur sometimes trigger responses or patterns that live in us that have to do with how we deal with stress in general. Trauma response is a little bit of a cliche – everyone's using that phrase. I get annoyed by anything that starts being used all the time, mostly because I'm creative and I like finding new ways of saying something.

This exists, I just like finding new ways of saying things. So maybe another way of looking at it is that we are forced to look at new ways of dealing with stress. There's a way that we all have, very Taurian, right? We all try to control as much as we can to feel like we're existing smoothly, evenly, peacefully, with a sense of enjoyment, ease.

That's the goal of Taurus in so many ways, easy breezy, you know, feel good, feel safe, life is kind of enjoyable and somewhat predictable. But what happens when that's disturbed? How do we respond? That's what we're looking at here. Number three would be control and power. For as much as Taurus likes to experience ease, peace, and stability, there's also a lot of underlying control and a kind of stubbornness and fixation, power, possessiveness that can go into creating a sense of peace and ease.

I was just talking a bit about that a moment ago, but this one I would say confrontations or power struggles or standoffs that can erupt very suddenly and dynamically that have to do with issues of control or power can come up now. I'm going to give you some ideas for how to deal with these things after we finish our list of five things to watch for.

I've got some constructive advice. The next one on my list would be feminine or bodily anger or rage. Feminine might have something specifically to do with gender or gender equality or masculine-feminine dynamics, or anything that has to do with sexual identity, and some protectiveness or guardianship of what makes the feminine or the body or sexuality sacred.

So a kind of guardianship theme, defending or protecting people who've been wronged or harmed. This can also be about the repressed feminine, the repressed, wild, animate feminine energies expressing themselves more loudly or dynamically. Also, rage – we love, I think, especially we tell women that they're not allowed to be angry, they're not allowed to show feelings that are more complex.

I see my girls dealing with that all the time. Be a nice girl, you know. And Ashley and I have done our best to help our girls experience all of their emotions, knowing that it's okay, that it's safe, and that it's how we channel them. It's allowing them, acknowledging them, channeling them, but you can't get that far if it's not okay to be angry.

Sometimes a history of it's not okay to be angry bubbles up when a planet like Mars hits Algol, so allowing some pathway for these things to be expressed. And finally on my list is obsession and destruction. Mars in Taurus can already be like a bulldozer, just steady moving in a direction that it's sort of fixated or obsessed with, but this can be amplified when Mars hits Algol.

There can be more intense fixation, instinctual desire, possessiveness, control, obsessiveness, along with fixation, can have us losing our heads, and there can be not enough detachment or rational discernment. We keep going after something long after it's beneficial to do that. We can act really impulsively, specifically because emotions are boiling over.

We can act out of anger, control, power plays that can have long-lasting consequences. There can be an increased potential for accidents because our frustration is taking over. I know me, when I get frustrated, I'm usually about to stub a toe or something. In fact, that happened to me on the retreat. I stubbed my toe while carrying a suitcase.

I dropped it on my toe, and I actually laughed at myself. I sat down, held my foot, rocked back and forth, my toe bleeding everywhere, and then I start laughing, because I realize exactly what had happened. I had lost my head. But Mars and Algol can bring up jealousy, envy, revenge, possessiveness. We have to be very aware of the tendency to fly into these spaces, especially when we feel wronged.

All right. Well, I do have some constructive advice that I hope will help. First, you have to have some practices in your life, some routines, or some go-to activities that can help you slow down before acting on strong emotions. Take a walk, take some time to journal or reflect. For me, it's meditation, or go to the gym, or hit the treadmill, or something.

You can just move, get into a flow, let those feelings move through blood and oxygen, or through sitting and holding space. It's really good to channel intense energy into art or creative work or some kind of disciplined activity or effort, maybe it's biking. Be very careful of ultimatums, all or nothing, black or white. Don't let that kind of thinking guide a big decision right now.

Think of the shield of Perseus when there is an intensity that's growing and growing and growing. Think of it as a signal to bring up your shield of reflectiveness. I'm going to reflect on what's happening right now, why it's happened, maybe what's been unfair about what's happened, rather than just reacting. And finally, I'm going to focus on patience and being self-possessed, and knowing that I am wise enough to be strong and to not let wounds and hurts, or even victimization, tilt me into a response that will loop me into a vicious cycle.

That is what I've got for all of you today. Let me just say that it's really my prayer that this channel and what you find on this channel will connect you to the living spirit of the cosmos. I call it divinity, so that this is not just information, this is a place where you can be illuminated from within.

This can contribute to a positive shift in your consciousness every day. People tell me that sometimes I talk about something very personal, it ends up having the synchronicity connection they feel, or maybe they feel sort of called out by the topic of the day or something. I'm never aware of that. I just sit and create what I create, but I'll tell you, I create what I know I need to hear and what I never stop needing to hear.

So it's my prayer that this channel and any content we create here blesses your life, that it opens doors of wisdom, healing, compassion, connection to other people. All right, that's it. Stick around, I'm going to tell you about the year one program, it's coming up quickly. Thursday night, great webinar on Mars. Speaking of Mars, come check that out. Lots of good stuff here at Nightlight. We'll see you again tomorrow. Bye, everyone.