Mars Squaring Saturn — The Most Frustrating Transit in All of Astrology

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

Happy Monday everyone. Today, we are going to take a look at Mars in the sign of Sagittarius making a square with Saturn in Pisces. This transit is coming through today and tomorrow to start our week.

Today, we're going to look at it from an archetypal perspective. We're going to have a conversation about why, maybe up until the advent of the outer planets being discovered for several 1000 years, this may have the title of the most frustrating or difficult aspect in Astrology, but why? Why exactly, from the standpoint of the philosophical first principles of astrology and the meanings of the planets when these two planets meet, is it just so frustrating?

We're going to talk about that today, and I hope that it'll be enlightening. You can learn something more about the planets and also why seasons or stages like this in our journey are necessary and can be very meaningful. So we'll try to find some silver linings in what is often a very challenging transit, which I'm sure many of us will experience this week in one form or another.

I'll give you a list of things to watch for after we have a bit of a philosophical conversation as well. Tomorrow, we're going to do horoscopes on the Mars Saturn meeting, and then Wednesday of this week, we'll be getting together to take a look at horoscopes for Mercury opposite Uranus, which is another major story of the week.

So that's kind of the sequence for the early part of this week, a live stream Wednesday. I'll be showing you what's on my altar today, because it's Monday. And I'll also be very briefly hitting the mutable signs, where, if you're a mutable sign rising, your horoscope will have these two planets meeting in Angular houses. So I'll cover those horoscopes briefly today. So that's our agenda for the day.

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So here we have it. I need my my epic pen. Mars and Saturn is, I think again, arguably one of the most powerful and frustrating transits in all of astrology. I mean, it's only a couple 100 years that we've had the outer planets. Up until then, I think most astrologers would agree that when the malefics get together, it can be a real pain in the butt and so.

But why? What is it? I mean, we know that Mars and Saturn can be sore spots in terms of their symbolism. I think most of us who know a little bit of astrology already intuitively understand that, but exactly why, when they get together, they provide such difficulties. We're going to unpack that today.

Let's take a look at the timeline. First, you can see here that Mars has a square to Saturn. Now that square is here we are Monday, about nine in the morning. We're going to take this forward one day, and you'll see that by tomorrow morning, the square has just passed through. We're going to give it three degrees of separation, which doesn't take place until about Saturday. That would be December 13.

So if you wind this back just a little bit, we've had this square applying since Friday December 5, and we're going to take it a full week to Friday, December 12 into Saturday the 13th. That's the broad sort of umbrella under which you may notice this, which means we have some days where you may have already started noticing this combination, but certainly today and tomorrow being the peak moments of intensity within the transit when the degree based aspect perfects.

So that being the case, I also want to point out that this square to Saturn will be followed by a Mars square to Neptune. We'll look at that later. The sun will then go through the square. Venus will go through the square. Eventually, by the end of December, Mercury will be going through the square.

So that line up of planets as they move together is all they're all going through that square to Saturn. Maybe the most difficult of that would be Mars and Saturn. The Sun and Saturn certainly can be, you know, right up there in terms of a difficult transit, but especially Mars and Saturn. So why we're going to talk about that?

And I hope always, the hope in having these talks is not just to give you a sense of what's going to happen, but to give you deeper understanding, because that's what we want in astrology. We don't just want to know what's going to happen. That would be no better than a weather station. What we want is the weather plus some deeper insight into the meaning behind it, because the meaning behind it is where this language points us toward the soul.

It points us toward a transcendental reality. It helps us to participate in the creation of meaning, which is how most of us go from living a life to living a life of meaning. And that's the real goal of astrology is to facilitate a larger, expanded awareness of reality, of ourselves and of the seasons and experiences of life.

So we talk about these transits in addition to forecasting, so that that philosophical understanding of what astrology is and what it's doing deepens within us as we consume it every day. That is the goal of this channel, like straight up. And if you watch this channel, you know that's it. That's everything that we do here.

So I want to talk first about Mars and Saturn as what are called archai, or first principles. Now, shameless self promotion. If this resonates with you, you will really like the monthly webinar series I've been doing, which you can find on the Events tab on my website. Throughout the next year, you'll see that I've already started this series.

You can pick up the first recordings you missed in the shop page. But I will be continuing this series on the archai of the planets. What are they? The archai of the planets are philosophical first principles that were associated with the planets by ancient mystics or philosophers. What that means is that every planet was seen as a god or goddess, but more specifically, as a built in principle of reality, the reality as we experience and observe it, at the very least from our human perspective.

And so understanding the archai of the planets means understanding how they represent the intelligent design of creation. Understanding a planet on that level is very important, because any specific worldly delineation that we have of the planet is sort of stemming from that core philosophical first principle.

So in order to explain why this transit may get the title of most frustrating transit in the history of astrology, at least again up until the advent of the outer planets, we need to dig into their first principles. So the long standing Association in traditional Astrology of Mars and Saturn as malefics is the first place to start.

They were both considered planets associated with destructive elements in the cycle of life. Life includes darkness, life includes suffering, life includes difficulty and pain, and life includes violence and conflict, hostility and destruction. It just does. You can look around and you can see it in nature, without any malice, without any morality, in the way that the volcanoes just explode violently, you know, or we would, one way of describing their eruption would just be very, very forcefully.

They rip, they tear, they burst, they explode. Things like that happen in nature, or things die and decay and reach old age and meditation. They're Saturn. These principles are just part of the fabric of life's dualities and life cycling and circling through opposites in the seasons and in everything else.

So the first, first level at which most people would understand the difficulty between these two planets would be in terms of the way that they are categorized as malefics and malefics with these general principles within the cycles and circles of life. Now, the ancient idea is that frustration, when we talk about planetary frustrations, meaning frustrations we experience in relation to certain planetary aspects or combinations, comes from incompatibility of first principles.

Incompatibility doesn't mean that they that there's something wrong with their meeting. It means that they have a kind of friction that's inherent in their natures getting together, just like a simple example would be, there's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with there's there's nothing wrong with messy Molly. You remember messy Molly.

There's nothing wrong with either you or messy Molly. But when you put the two of you in a room because you're, because you're, what is your, your, your clean crystal, green, clean crystal and messy Molly are incompatible on first principles, because clean crystal is a Marie Kondo expert and messy Molly likes to smoke pot and eat Cheetos and doesn't really care.

Or is there something wrong with either of you? No, but you're just sort of incompatible. So this is similar on the level of philosophical first principles of the planets, friction or frustration typically comes from something happening in the nature of the planets that is sort of incompatible. It's not a mistake.

There's nothing wrong, there's nothing missing. There's nothing flawed about creation. But there is such a thing as friction and incompatibilities create very unique experiences for us between archai, first principles of the planets. Now, the square between these two planets right now doesn't help but trine or sextile, you might not notice the friction as much because the square is of the nature of Mars.

Their meeting is doubling down on one of the themes of the two malefics, the principle of conflict and contestation. So that adds to this scenario. They're square to one another right now. But let's talk about the archai of Mars. This is not meant to be a huge, long lecture like my upcoming talk on the first principle of Mars will be.

Those talks, by the way, are called pairing the planets for the many faces of Mars. For example, you'll see the faces of Venus, the faces of mercury. Those talks on my webinars are the first principle talks. Now as an archai, Mars represents something about reality itself, that cuts, that severs, that separates and also that initiates.

So I want you to think about the most beautiful version of this first. When a child comes out of the womb, it separates from its mother, and immediately the cord that connects them as a unity. In order for the child to become an independent being outside of the womb has to be cut. So separating, cutting, initiating.

Do you see how all of that can be described as an essential quality of birth? Birth is rather explosive. Obviously, there are many scenarios in which birth is very peaceful and even ecstatic. I'm not saying that it can't be that way. Both of the births of my children were pretty marsy. You know, there's pushing, there's effort.

Some of the birth scenario is actually very Mars Saturn. But more on that in a second. The separating and the initiation of life into its own unique thing means it is being cut apart from something else. So in life, in creation, one of the ways in which individual life forms appear out of something rather unified is to be separated, initiated, out from, or cut away from something singular into something divided.

That division of life is like the multiplication of cells. Inherently, it's very beautiful, but the experience of it, archetypally, can be very intense in terms of the kind of heat and cutting and the almost like the propulsion necessary for life to separate from something singular or unified into something more singular.

So that's a way, I think, that can help us get into the first principle of Mars in creation, that's actually very beautiful and natural. So it doesn't have to be so scary. However, if you've ever been present at birth, it's a little scary. So Mars is also the ignition of will, assertion and the pursuit of kind conquest or desire?

One of the things that most ancient traditions, especially Eastern philosophical traditions, tell us is that the motor behind life, individual life forms, living in this mysterious ecological soup that we're all in is desire, or you could call it conquest. I want more. I want to be the best or even just something as mundane as this is what I want.

Doesn't have to be in conflict or competition with others, though it often is. To set oneself apart, often means that there will be competing or conflicting desires and being individual to be maintained is something that has to conflict or contrast sharply with other beings. There's a way in which, you know, I see my younger daughter trying to be exactly like her sister.

Her sister says, No, you know, I don't want you to be the same as me, and then her feelings are a little bit hurt, but then she has to figure out, how do I be me? And there's conflict involved in individuating. So for things to become themselves requires a degree of friction and tension and conflict.

This is baked into reality, the reality of living beings, many living beings, not just one thing, but many things. There's a paradox, because those many things are a part of a one thing, but that one thing, in order to experience itself, has to differentiate. That differentiation can be very painful, and that's where the potential for conflict or discord or war or violence even occurs.

But that principle of war, it's often we moralize it right? War is bad, peace is good, but we forget that our life in the world here is a cauldron of desire and heat and conflict and predatory instincts. How do I live? I whether you think of, you know, killing other animals to eat or even killing plant life to eat, it's all life, and life eats life to survive and thrive.

That's all Mars. That's all Mars, the principle that life is consuming itself, that life separates itself from itself, and then conflicts and consumes. We conflict and consume one another. This is Mars principle at work in creation, heat, dryness, speed, bravery, incision, purification through conflict. All of these things are very martial.

Mars moves toward action, penetration, decisiveness, immediate effect. Its desire is the impregnating force of creation. This is why desire is a first principle in, again, most Eastern traditions. What propels life forward? Desire. This is why many of the same traditions say that if you want to teleport out of this world, it can't happen until all desires are extinguished, are released, or are satisfied.

Somehow you get to a point where you say, I've been through so many lifetimes. I've explored so many desires, I have never found myself satiated, and so this world just keeps churning through the cauldron of desire. That's its nature. If I don't want to be in this world, or if I want to explore other worlds, or if I want to be released from the bondage of the cycles of desire, which are never fully satiated, then I have to extinguish desire.

Then the question becomes, how do you do so, naturally, progressively, incrementally, without repression? That's something else that most traditions, spiritual traditions, are very well aware of. Because pre, you know, like asceticism that comes too early or too quickly is usually problematic. It's like those of us that try to stop eating to lose weight, and then we're going to rebound and eat way too much, and the problem gets looped in all over again.

So desire is a beautiful part of the fabric of how we're here, why we're here, what we do when we're here, and also one of the core problems we deal with while we're here, desire. It somehow is necessary for and propels our very existence. And yet, at the same time, in order for us to become beings who are luminous, multi dimensional, enlightened, aware of many, many, many more dimensions of reality than just this one, we also have to work to overcome something of the desired nature.

We can't be completely ruled or governed by it. You can understand why this principle in reality is both necessary and divine and also feature. It is one of the featured issues that we deal with, which is part of why it gets categorized as a malefic. We think that because there are issues we deal with in this plane, that those issues are bad and other issues are good.

But from the standpoint of these ancient mystics, those kinds of distinctions are not so meaningful. It would be like saying that there's a problem with the fact that in order to build muscle, you have to work and exhaust those muscles. It's not fun that you have to do that, but it's just sort of a part of the fact of the process.

Desire and Mars work in a similar way within the evolutionary journey of the soul. So that's the first principle of Mars. Let's talk about Saturn. The archai of Saturn is the principle of boundary, contraction, limit and negation within the architecture of reality. We have time, we have space, we have causality, we have a kind of material world within whether you're talking about gross or subtle energies, you're still talking about a paradigm that is limited by a time, space, material, duality, container.

That container is demarcated by Saturn as a boundary keeper. Interestingly, Saturn as a boundary keeper also keeps us in relationship with that which is transcendent of time and space. So Saturn is a planet associated with mystics and contemplatives in ancient astrology, specifically because the more you work within and start to understand the limits of time space, the more that the opposite quality of timelessness, eternality, mystical awareness of other dimensions, starts to grow paradoxically, the more you come to accept the boundaries and limitations of Saturn.

It's typically because you're living in this world, and it's the boundary between this world and this transcendental plane is becoming more porous, and your awareness is starting to become permeated with something non linear and beyond the sort of rational or empirical paradigm that this world seems to necessitate. There's another Saturnian word.

So even though Saturn is associated with things like time and space and limits and contraction and boundaries and the sort of limits of the dual world that we're living in as material beings, in addition, it also because this world is Saturn is constantly making us aware of the impermanence and limitations of this world.

It sort of ironically or paradoxically points us to something beyond this. Is why, for example, many, many mystics have to have forms of austerity, practice, devotion, discipline, sort of separate from the world, closer to the boundaries of this world. You know, there's no one who's more aware, in a sense, of the ultimate limitations of the world than a person who sits silently all day long in a monastery.

They get a chance to contemplate with some distance and some broader, objective perspective, just how limited and cyclical and circular everything is. While the people in the world are trying to solve all of its problems, the mystic is the one who sits at the edge of the village, sort of saying, this world's problems are natural to the they are.

They are a part of the nature of this world. The problems we keep trying to solve are not going anywhere because they're fundamental to the way this world works. You think we're going to get away, we're going to get away from death or immortality or violence or hatred or suffering or impermanence or darkness, but it is just as regular and rhythmic and cyclical in this world as night is today.

So someone who starts to see beyond the limits of duality is ironically, often a very Saturnian person. Now, on the other hand, Saturn can represent not being able to move beyond this world, and can represent people who are completely identified with or invested in things like popularity, the status quo, power, tradition, authority, suppression of others.

So it's a very it's a very interesting planet, because everything that a person might try to do to be as powerful as they can within the limits of this world, not recognizing its limits as such, can be defined as Saturnian people. On the other hand, again, many mystics, contemplatives, artists and people who start to identify themselves as other could also be considered Saturnian, which is why, in ancient astrology, Saturn rules things like outcasts and unpopular black sheep, mystics, contemplatives, heretics, but also can represent the ruling interests of the powers that be and status quo, and, you know, concern with as much money and greed and power hoarding as you can in this world, upkeeping traditions, even though they suppress other people.

All of that can also be Saturnian, because Saturn demarcates this boundary between the limits of this world and that which lies beyond it. A lot of the time, Saturn will draw these very hard dualities between people who are really identified with the world and trying to, you know, struggling to do the best they can within the illusion that they can achieve eternality in a time bound and permanent experience.

Or those that see through it, what a magical planet, really. And you know, you'll always find me advocating for Saturn, because in modern astrology, the tendency to make Saturn the bad guy is just as narrow minded as anything else that Saturnian. And that's but that's only like one part of what Saturn represented.

Saturn sat at the threshold. So the fact that we identify Saturn with everything within the bounds of Saturn is our fault, not Saturn's, because Saturn itself is not time, space, limitations, karma. Saturn is the principle that demarcates the boundary between those things and something transcendental. And so because Saturn draws our awareness to those things in modern astrology, we then conflate those things with Saturn.

That's ignorance. It's so ironic, but that that is, unfortunately, something that Saturn takes on, which, not surprisingly, is part of why Saturn is also frequently a planet associated with scapegoats. Isn't it irony that modern astrology has scapegoated Saturn itself as an archetypal principle anyway. This is why we have to study ancient astrology and philosophy, by the way, guys, it's so important because then we we start to really understand what's going on with these planets.

They're all divine, right? Anyway, Saturnian qualities are cold, dry, slow. There there's a weight or a gravitas. The shape given to the world is also beautiful. The fact that we have limits and physical forms and time space and duality itself. It's a it's like a beautiful, designed realm in which certain categories of beings are here experiencing themselves and divinity and evolving and unfolding.

In the Vedas, this world is described as a world that is built for entities, as is all of reality for divine purposes anyway. So now that we have a sense of these first principles, I'm going to give you five things to watch for that now explain why. When you pair these two first principles, they can be so frustrating.

And believe me, I'm not above just because I know something of the philosophical reason behind their pairing doesn't mean I don't get frustrated by them. I do. I have frequently done the fist shake. The fist shake at the universe. Why? So the first one is speed versus delay. Mars's immediacy, Mars's impulse, and Mars tends to be associated with the gas pedal or with speed.

Saturn is like the brake pedal or postponement. Humans tend to suffer when our desire of Mars principle and the urgency or impulse to act on our desire to satiate it meets the immovable conditions of time. Or in this world, you might deal with bureaucratic complications, or just broadly speaking, with limitations, or with something that comes in and says, No, not right now, not as fast as you want, only with work, only with some delay, only with great labor, only with difficulty.

So this is the traffic jam when you really need to be on time. This is in your urgent and you're rushing. This is the red tape when you're trying to open a business under an auspicious transit. This is the obstacle that has to be solved for in the equation that is very frustrating to deal with.

This is the slow healing process of our bodies that restricts free movement or mobility when you have a hip surgery or a knee replaced. This is slow progress. You wish it were faster. You feel like you're putting in all of the effort, but the results are just inching along. This is the slow burn of karma, where you can see what needs to change.

You feel that. You feel the weight and burden of responsibility. Shit just ain't going to change fast. It's going to take time, and you have to sit in that stew for longer than you feel is fair or you'd like to. How frustrating. This frustration arises, because especially with the principle of Mars, Mars is so creative.

Of the birth, of the baby coming out of the womb, just exploding so cathartically out of the womb, the umbilical cord being cut, the red blood rushing through the body, the scream coming out of the baby. In many ways, these images are emblematic of Mars in our lives. It is very creative. It comes out of nowhere and it just boom, it explodes.

Saturn says, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to take that and contain it, or go a little slower, or work within limits, or just be met with a no. Is there anything more frustrating than that? So these are why when the two planets get together, we often feel frustrated. For 1000s of years this combination very frustrating?

Something about frustration refines us. Something about frustration purifies us. Something about frustration is necessary for the soul to evolve, for desire to be something that doesn't just crash our car. It has to be refined. It has to be slowed. It has to give we have to have reflective space, or contractive space within which to work with it, which makes us wiser, deeper, more mature and solid over time.

Number two, desire versus prohibition. I was just mentioning this. But look, when you have Mars come up, the desire can come up as a temptation, whereas Saturn is the discipline that says no to the temptation. You can have impulse, but you may not be able to act on that impulse because of conflicting duties.

For example, I have 10 ideas for books right now. I'm not I could if I didn't have any other obligations or constraints, I could just write all of them, right? Probably knock out a couple of them per year. That's not my reality. So that impulse is tempered by the duty I have to create daily content, to be a dad, to be a dog owner, to run a school and teach programs, right?

There's so many other things that the desire might be flaming inside of me, but I have to almost like temper its release and direct it through the time, space, medium and its necessities, its requirements, the duties that I already have to other things. This is why passion and consequence are also part of this too.

I might have a passion, but I have to think very carefully of the consequences if I act on it and don't act within some boundaries or limits. So the square in particular says we run into constraints or boundaries or moral obligations or structural impositions. Number three is effort and resistance. Why is this so hard?

Why does this have to be so difficult? Why doesn't anything move the way I want it to, or go in the direction that I want it to? Why does everything have to be earned the long, hard way? What, you know, what is this my grandfather's reality? You know, that's the feeling labor meets the drag and the resistance.

It's like pulling a boat with the anchor out moving through the water. You know it's hard on the engine. I guess it's the Sisyphean motif of pushing the boulder up the hill and it keeps rolling backward. You keep pushing it up. Mars is supplying energy. Saturn is supplying the weight and the resistance.

Well, let me just tell you, so many good things are built. Like I would say that one of the things that bodybuilding as my kind of personal care routine and a huge like contemplative space in my life over the past three or four years now has been the gym four years. Yeah. Anyway, every day in the gym is a repetition of the exact same thing, effort, meeting resistance.

This is why they call it resistance training, and the shaping and molding of the body into strong, muscular, healthy form. In this paradigm, there are many paradigms, so I'm not suggesting everyone needs to body build, but in this paradigm, the shaping or building of the body, its musculature, the muscular health and tone and everything like that is found in daily application of effort running up against resistance and actually failure.

Now, I know it's kind of old school. I'm not trying to make it seem like reality is a crusty old gym coach who's telling to you to you know, get down and get me 20. But it is sort of like that. Reality is sort of like, Look, if you want to grow, if you want to evolve, stretch your lip, get down and give me 20.

You want to refine your character, if you want to become a better parent, better parent, if you want to become healthier, if you want to become happier, if you want to get better at anything you do, you gotta at times, you gotta shut up, put your head down, and work, you know. And that's Mars Saturn.

There's effort, there's resistance, and meeting that with courage, determinacy, perseverance, you know, willpower and a discipline when they meet together, and it says, My effort will meet resistance, and that's okay. It's part of how I grow. It's part of how I progress. That is a natural Mars Saturn connection that can really be healthy and good for us.

This is why I was I was watching, Oh, shoot. It was a Huberman lab. I think it was a Huberman lab, and they were talking about, and I think everyone has probably seen this at this point, this clip's been circulating, that there's a part of the brain that builds in proportion to our ability to do hard things that we don't necessarily want to do.

But if we do those things, going to the gym being one of them, definitely for me, I don't want to go to the gym, you know. I would prefer pizza, you know. But I can go to the gym, do the work, put in the time, put in the effort, meet the resistance, find the failure, find the edge, and then my capacity to do other difficult things increases.

Do you know why I've always had a spiritual practice daily that has been several hours in length since I started doing daily content. I can't do this shit every day unless I do something for myself to keep myself going. If I do something difficult, that is that generates well being, health that's self care oriented, sitting in meditation even though I don't want to, or taking time out to, you know, read, even though I feel like I don't have time go to the gym, take a walk, creating the time for the things that I don't necessarily want to do but are good for me to do over a long period of time, facilitates my ability to show up in committed ways to these creative acts that you know, turn into the content of the channel seven days a week.

So the point is, that's how I found the value in my life. I'm but I'm a very I have a Moon in Capricorn. What is Capricorn? It's a domicile of Saturn and the exaltation of Mars. That's why, if this combination sounds very Capricornian, it is, because the two planets find their exaltation and domicile in Capricorn.

So effort and resistance over long periods of time, it's like climbing a mountain there. Now listen, I am the last person that thinks that there's only one paradigm of spiritual growth, or so many ways to grow there, because there's, in a sense, life is not so much about growth as it is intimacy. One of the ways that intimacy grows is through effort and labor, and effort and resistance are part of how we cultivate intimacy.

Let me just give you an example. How many of you have ever had a relationship that has required effort and working through the gritty, grind, grimy stuff together over a long period of time, and that work has yielded depth and intimacy that couldn't have been there without the labor and work. So even in intimacy, even if we're talking about ultimately, a reality that's about Divine Love, which I believe it is, still there's a work in love.

There's a great work that is the work and labor of existence itself that is about intimacy and love. It's not it doesn't have to stand in some kind of opposition to love. It can be a part of it, so long as when we're doing this effort and meeting with this resistance, where there is failure, we find grace, where there is frustration, we find mercy and compassion and where we find gentleness and surrender.

Where there is effort and resistance, we find courage and determination. You see? So all these archetypes, there's nothing wrong with them. It's how we meet them that matters. All right? Well, agency and fate is the next one. Mars, agency, I'm free. Saturn, you're kind of free. You know, you have limits. There's circumstances you didn't choose.

Remember, we were talking about the I Ching. We said that there's a line in the I Ching that says, No Fault, no blame. Yeah, this shit was bigger than you. It there's you didn't do anything wrong. This is an act of God that was just beyond you. Well, Mars does not like that, you know, because Mars likes to feel like there's enough agency to really feel like the outcome is rooted in me and in my choice and my consciousness.

We need that. We need a feeling like we can where there's some sense of outcomes being related to effort, being related to action, being related to culpability and virtue, and that's the knight's code. The chivalry of the knight resides in the fact that the knight says, If I do my best, if I act of valor and virtue, I will often be successful.

And if I don't, at least I can say that I did my best. It's a very Mars like quality, the kind of the knight's code, right? Well, how hard is it to take that path when things that feel like the hand of fate or God, like come in and don't even give us a chance.

There's not even a fighting chance. That's hard. That's a Mars Saturn dynamic. Responsibilities you can't avoid. Circumstances you didn't choose. Fated patterns we keep repeating, and no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to get out of it. I remember a couple of years when I was first going through and coming out of opiate addiction in my early 20s, with the help of ayahuasca, I managed to get out of it.

And I remember someone at one point telling me that getting out of addiction, for many of us who struggle with it at some point, is like having a tire fall off the edge of the road, where it's like, you're, you're suddenly get uneven, and it's, it's like such a precarious thing to get the car up over the little divot that it falls into when it comes off the side of the highway.

You know what I'm talking about. So that's a Mars Saturn thing where you're like, Look, I know what I have to do, but I'm like, in a rut. Mars Saturn can be very frustrating, because sometimes we're just grinding along a rut. We know how to get out, or we know what we need to do.

We want to do it, but we're limited in our capacity to do it just yet. But keep going. Don't give up. That's the point or surrender and see what happens. You know, sometimes there's moments where something bigger comes in and limits us in our ability to do it. And we say, Okay, well, it's not my will, but thine.

I want to get out of this. I feel like I can't. You know, there's the serenity prayer, the first prayer in most 12 step meetings. So what is that prayer? It's, you know, help me change the things I can and give me the courage to accept the things I can't and however that goes, You know what I'm talking about, you know, change what I can accept what I can't help me know the difference.

You know, that's the basic part of it, and sometimes it's just praying that prayer with the Mars Saturn dynamic. Frustration arises from the sense of, I'm trying, but life keeps saying, No, Mars wants freedom. Saturn gives constraint. And then finally, action and consequence. You want to act, but you're afraid.

I'm afraid that I won't succeed. I'm afraid of failure or I'm afraid of consequence. That can be a good thing. Saturn can be like, Are you sure you want to speed up because you're angry with the driver next to you right now, the roads aren't very good. You could slide off the road. And so you go, Okay, I'm going to hold back that patch and that anger so it can be very nice, very It's like your better angels are restraining your impulses.

But also, if you want to assert yourself, but you anticipate being punished for doing so. I know that one of the things that I have to be very careful of as a dad is like, you know, if I'm if I'm sort of Capricorn with with my girls, there's a good thing.

There's a good way in which that may present good boundaries and discipline and, you know, hard work and stuff like that. There's also a way in which you don't want them to be so stern that they feel scared to assert themselves at times when they really need to learn how to do that, too.

That's a really tricky balance to walk for me with a Capricorn archetype. You know, sucks. I want my girls to be empowered to speak and assert themselves and figure out what that looks like, also giving them like, you know, strong structures and boundaries parentally and so forth. Everyone knows, I think that dance as a parent, it's tricky.

Maybe dads have to deal with that more at some point, I don't know. But anyway, wanting to fight, but fearing loss, intimidation, bullying, and the fear of standing up for yourself and then the courage to actually do so, all of these things make the combination, you know, potentially very intimidating. So on the one hand, Saturn can curb impatient and rebellious or dangerous impulses.

Saturn is the law. Mars is the criminal, something like that. But it's also Saturn is the fear that keeps you from confronting something, saying something, or facing a bully. Anyway, these combinations, in summary, are why we consider the first principles of these planets in combinations to be somewhat incompatible and therefore create these different kinds of tensions.

Mars teaches us courage through meaningful struggle with Saturn. Okay, let's now turn our attention back over to the chart in order to illustrate where these planets are landing for the mutable signs, who will have the Mars Saturn square Angular. I'm going to just roll through these really quickly as reminders.

So if you're a Gemini rising, you're one of the signs that has these two planets meeting in Angular houses your seventh and 10th, the area of relationships and intimacy, marriage, or any kind of interpersonal dynamics, and the public facing or career, vocational dimension of life in the 10th house, there's a conversation happening between relationships and work.

You could say that is manifesting around this Mars Saturn square. Let's go forward to Virgos. If you're a Virgo we're seeing this in the fourth and the seventh Mars in the fourth Saturn in the seventh. Home, family, roots, ancestry, parents, family, karma, your living environment, your home, and the place of marriage and relationships.

So the conversation between Mars and Saturn is happening across the fourth and the seventh for Virgos. Now, let's keep this rolling, and we're going to see that for Sagittarians. We've got Mars in the first Saturn in the fourth self identity, character, psychology, body, physical health and appearance, and that sense of being your own free agent in life.

I'm an individuating, evolving individual being. That's the first house, the fourth home, family, roots, parents, the living environment. So how are those two places in dialog right now, as Mars and Saturn perfect their square. And then lastly, we have Pisceans. So for you Pisces rising, we have Mars in your 10th, Saturn in your first the workhouse vocation, public facing, self, duties or obligations in the workplace, people in power or authority and the direction, or let's call it, the environment of the workplace, or its direction in life, and the place of self, identity, health, body, individuality, those two places are going to be receiving the square from Mars and Saturn.

So again, just briefly wanted to go over those. I'm going to be doing horoscopes for all 12 signs tomorrow. So if that felt brief, don't worry. We're going to be reiterating everything tomorrow. Just wanted to cover that, because anyone getting an angular transit to start the week, I always like to do just a little horoscopic coverage, because those are typically the signs that are going to get the transits, you know, speaking most loudly.

I also want to bring your attention to what is on my altar this week, in light of the in light in light of the first of all, I'm out of tea lights, so I have another candle up there right now. I need to reorder my tea lights, but on my altar, I have this little skull which is representative of Saturn and the limits that Saturn may be placing around Mars.

This week, I'm putting the light of the candle, the heat of the fire and the skull of Saturn next to one another to sort of evoke the Mars Saturn symbolism. So just creative on my part. I think that skull is made out of pyrite, if I remember correctly, it's one of the pieces on my altar to keep me in remembrance of mortality, death, impermanence, old age, which keeping in our awareness, I think is good, as long as you know, it doesn't become like a too much of a downer.

But yeah, I think that's a good thing to stay aware of anyway. So just a few reminders there, as always, I hope they're useful, and I hope that you'll consider bringing something of an altar practice into your work with astrology. I think it's very useful. Saturn teaches us wisdom through meaningful limits on Mars and their square often comes through as the qualities of fortitude, discipline, the shaping of the will through tension.

It's a beautiful combination. Anyway, I hope that this talk today was enlightening, and as always, I just hope it was useful. I want to tell you we need your help. If you like this content, if, as an astrologer, this is a valuable place of learning, if, as a consumer of astrology, this is a valuable place for forecasting, or if it's both, subscribe that helps us a lot.

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