A HEATED Square Between Mercury Retrograde and Mars

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

Happy Friday, everybody! Today we're going to take a look at Mercury retrograde in the sign of Scorpio, squaring Mars in Leo. Now Mars is the host of Mercury.

Mercury is in Scorpio. That means Mercury is in Mars's sign, and so the square between these two planets is really fascinating because there's on the surface a square between Mercury and Mars might look a little bit difficult, but this square has reception, so it might be a little bit more useful than it first appears.

We're going to talk about all of that today. I'm going to give you some things to watch for. We'll talk about the timeline. Hopefully, this will help you, especially if you find yourself grabbed today by this planetary transit, which especially around words, communication, speech can be a little intense. So we'll get into it today. But before we do, remember to like and subscribe. Helps us grow so much when you give us the little thumbs up every day. Turn on notifications. Subscribe. It's free to do so if you haven't yet. You can find transcripts every day of my talks on the website. That's nightlightastrology.com.

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So if you want to check this out, 20% off code perpetually that never ends is in the description. Well, we are looking at a Mercury Mars square today on Friday, October 30th. Now, the you can see it on the screen. Mercury in Scorpio is in Mars' sign. Mercury is now under the beams of the Sun, invisible, retrograde, traveling through its transformative phase, and connecting with Mars in the sign of Leo. This is quite potent astrological exchange that's taking place between these two planets, but made better by the fact that Mercury is in Mars's sign. There's some tension between Mercury and Mars, which we'll talk about today. But when you have that form of reception, I'm in your sign and I'm connecting with you. It's basically like I think a good analogy would be like saying, like if you're if you're staying at an Airbnb and your host at the Airbnb, there's maybe a little bit of misunderstanding, right? You you you're like there's no towels. Where are the towels? And the host is like, well, I explicitly said in the email to bring your own, and you didn't read it. And you go, oh, I'm so sorry. And the host says, that's okay. I'll get some and bring them over for you. Okay. So was there a conflict? Yes.

Was there a bit of a. Misunderstanding, yes, but was the host still favorably disposed toward you? Yes. See how that works. So often, what happens when reception is present is it mitigates or just sort of mutes the I don't know the the loudness or it it softens the edges, whatever the right metaphor is. So we do have a Mercury Mars square that can be intense for a variety of reasons we will discuss today. But remember that this is a Mercury and Mars that are just a little bit more willing to work together, and that typically means that a constructive result or kind of silver lining can be found due to that reception. One other thing to think about is that Mars in Leo is in the superior position. What that means is that Mars and Leo's agenda, or issues, or complaints, or problems, or needs, or desires, sort of is setting the stage, and Mercury is responding. That's one of the inferior, superior dynamics that we can look at with any square, and we can figure out okay what's whose needs are sort of prominent here, and part of the way that you can always tell that is that if I were to back this clock up just a little bit, we would see that it's Mars that rises first in order of the signs in a 24 hour day.

See here, Mars in the left, Mars will rise and cross the place of praxis, the 10th house, or the place of action, and any planet that's going to cross that sphere at the top of the sky prior to the planet that it's in the square with. In this case, Mercury. What that means is that Mercury is responding to a situation that was established prior in order in the day, that's a symbolic way of saying that it is the needs or agenda of Mars and Leo that establishes the context in which Mercury in Scorpio will reply or respond or have to deal. What that means is that a lot of Mars and Leo-like things will come up: pride, ego, arrogance, performance, sunshine, your unique sense of being a special person, the need to individuate creatively, performance, the need to find your heart and live from that solar place, and to do so with a bravery, courage. Those kinds of concerns sort of establish the parameters in which Mercury and Scorpio is going to show up in response.

So keep that in mind. Those are just a few technical tips. Now let's get into what to watch for. And again, like just in terms of the timing, you could you could stretch this out given the three degree rule between the two planets. You could stretch this out to Sunday, which is november 1. So if it's today, the 30th, the 31st, the first over the weekend. The only like practical advice I have is if you're out trick or treating, don't get any arguments. Don't don't get in any arguments with people and look both ways before you cross the road.

Those are the kinds of things that I would watch for with trick or treating. Every year, people ask me, "What's your forecast for trick or treating?" I'm like, "Bring a pillowcase and have some fun." I think we had a Venus retrograde one year. I'm trying to remember when that Venus retrograde was. God, or what was it? Was Venus Uranus? There was a Venus Uranus dynamic one year, and I do remember that I saw the craziest costumes that Halloween. It was like noticeable, and I was like, okay. But anyway, all right. Five things to watch for. Let me get my notes up here and let's go. Okay, so the first one I have is to be grabbed. I I talk a lot about the that word from the word for planets in Indian astrology, graha, which means to grab or seize. And we can be grabbed by the planets when we're not developing a more conscious relationship with them. They tend to act like puppeteers. They they grab us. We practice astrology. We grasp what they're doing. Well, be careful that you don't get grabbed or seized by a particularly intense form of criticism toward yourself, toward someone, toward toward something.

The thing to remember for this transit is that criticism creates a A relationship, the person or idea that we repeatedly dissect or criticize or gossip about will begin to occupy our attention, and they're you know that that saying they're living rent free in your head. You may oppose something, in other words, very actively during a transit like this, Mercury Mars, like mental conflict or mental agitation or or mental verbal attack. But you don't want what happens is it slowly becomes like an organizational psychic organizational center around which things start to. So be very careful of that. People are not nearly as careful as we should be about gossip and criticism. They are poison for us. That doesn't mean that you ignore what people do. It means you stop from the judging, the criticizing, almost like an act of revenge. Like they did something that I don't like or that's clearly not so great, so I'm going to start saying or thinking bad things about them. Don't do it. Now, Scorpio, Mercury in Scorpio wants to uncover what is underneath. This can be very valuable when it comes to our discernment around things right now, but but also suspicion, and so you got to be careful that you're like not digging around for a hidden motive, which is maybe coming from an unconscious dislike of someone or something that you haven't examined. Mars in Leo can make it very personal.

Your pride, your identity, or someone else's pride or identity deserves attacking or criticism or suspicion, or you can easily feel like yours is being insulted when maybe it isn't. Gossip can create a kind of intimacy, also through shared opponents. So sometimes we try to establish connection with other people by sharing things that we dislike or actively are attacking or assaulting. So just be really careful of that. And then, just a good question for this Mercury retrograde square Mars is like: Is there something negative that's just like occupying my mind on a loop? Be very careful that you're not captured by negative thinking or or judgments and things like that. Now, number two is, to my mind, a much better version of this combination: a sharp mind but a soft heart. We can pair analytical intelligence and emotional intelligence together with this pairing, and the question might be so. The analytical part of us might be like, "Does this make sense? Is it rational? Is my is the argument consistent? Does it make sense to do something?" The emotional intelligence in us says, "What am I feeling? What might this other person be feeling, or different people in the situation be feeling? How are they perceiving or feeling about the situation, how can I shape my response to be sensitive as well as rational and clear? So both can happen. Mercury is tends to be very rational, but in a water sign like this, can be can marry the the heart and mind together.

Just because we're right about something doesn't mean there isn't a most effective way to communicate, we can identify flaws while speaking in kindness, and be careful that people might experience embarrassment or shame or grief, or they might need reassurance or criticism can easily tear people down. So, how do we be constructive if we have something to offer? I would say that emotional intelligence is also, which is a part of this transit, is also about recognizing where we are emotionally invested in a particular outcome, and being sensitive or aware of the fact that we have an investment in the situation that might not make us totally objective, and just being thoughtful about that. It's not wrong to have maybe an emotional investment in a situation, but when we're not being honest about that, sometimes we will then be manipulative or coercive, and we'll we'll bend or twist logic and reasoning because we don't want to share that there's a really subjective center to our or like our desire is is enmeshed in the situation and how we're thinking about it. To me, Mars and Leo in the midst of this square brings a a really important emphasis. Let's call it on dignity. So, what is this? What what is this person's pride going to like? How will this person feel in terms of their pride and their sense of self worth? Or how do I feel about those things? That can become a really important part of how we handle mental, verbal, intellectual conflict.

You also want to avoid like being so protective of your pride that you can't hear anything or that you can't speak the truth because you're too worried. I mean, I know you know people who are. It's it. You know, I remember reading about the narcissistic wound, and this was this is more of a like clinical narcissism, not like the way we throw that word around. You know, talk about people who are the garden variety selfish, like actual clinical narcissism. And one of the reasons that I read this, and anyway, I won't go into that. But I I read this from it was more of a medical perspective, and it said. There can be a narcissistic wound that a person's self-worth was beat up so bad that they become self-centered to a fault at times as a way of protecting that core wound of almost feeling worthless, and therefore, when it comes to like garden variety criticism, there'll be an unusually intense defensiveness and a way of trying to redirect or reshift the focus. No, you're the problem, not me, because there's been this huge overcompensation to try to protect themselves from ever feeling worthless. But that protection is not addressing maybe the core wound of really battered self-esteem, and this was something that I read because my my grandfather was never diagnosed, but I think probably that that happened for him. And so, just understanding the legacy.

So, my mom is a psychiatric nurse practitioner, and so that's her her theory has been that my grandfather may have dealt with that, so I wanted to learn more about that because it was it was interesting to me because he was also an alcoholic when he came back from the Korean War, and my dad grew up under the I don't know like under the under the upbringing of someone who was an alcoholic narcissist, and I and he was never diagnosed, so it's probably not fair of me to say that in a you know diagnostic way. But that, but my mom believes that he probably would have been now. My grandfather, so I I took a real interest in that. But one thing that I learned very early in my life was that couldn't tease, couldn't joke, couldn't prod, couldn't Mike. There was no, there was like it was. You had to walk on eggshells, and so if you are in that kind of situation now, very common for this kind of square, Mercury in Scorpio square, Mars and Leo. I'm around someone who is too wounded, too injured to hear something kind of truthful, and so then it can feel like you're hiding your actual truth to preserve sanity, because someone's too wounded to kind of deal with something, and that's that's really that's a that's a really tough situation, and I'm sure people listening to this have been in that situation before.

And anyway, the reason I bring it up is because one of the one of the benefits of this transit is the potential to find a very soft, careful way of saying something, especially when it feels like there's no possible way that you could say something that needs to be said or shine a light on something that needs to be seen. All right. Well, number three on my list is hidden motives. I kind of mentioned this earlier, but this square in particular puts questions about visibility and privacy under a lot of pressure. The reason for that is that we've got the sign of the sun in the middle of summer in Leo, and we have the middle of autumn in the northern hemisphere in Scorpio. These the seasonal metaphors that are associated with these places have to do with light and dark. Big contrasts of light and dark. Scorpio is one of the darkest signs of the year from the standpoint of the solar year and its story and how it influences the tropical zodiac, how its symbolism is baked in. I mean, and Leo, of course, one of the brightest signs of the year. So light and dark, big combination, and it often shows up, especially Mercury diving into the invisibility of the underworld and its retrograde phase.

The question is, for example, what needs to, what can I now see or understand that has been hidden? That's a big one, and that could be very personal and psychological. Could be external. It might be that there's, you know, I don't know, scandal or corruption in the company you work for, or something like that. But also questions about visibility and privacy, and allowing people to have a private life, and allowing people to have, you know, the need for privacy could really stand out here. We live in a world right now, and I don't feel like I'm I'm saying anything many of you will disagree With where there's a lot of public, public, public facing, like you know, so the social media is obviously what I'm thinking about. Everything is very public facing, and yet a lot of the times people complain about feeling isolated and cut off, and that's the that's the void, right? Of of being so forward facing that there is no actual private sphere of life, and then the vacuum is is filled with the shadow of that dynamic, and so you end up feeling alienated and lonely. This is a great square for saying there has to be a. Private side to me. I have to have a treasure trove of personal secrets and depths that nobody sees or knows, and that I just have to work on within myself. I mean, let me let me give you an example.

I think it's a good thing if you're in a room full of people, and sometimes you feel like, and I know it's going to sound weird, but sometimes you just look inward and you go, "If everyone knew exactly what was going on inside of me, or exactly who I am, or what I'm dealing with, I just would not fit in here, or people would probably think I was crazy, or I might be really ashamed or criticized." It's actually not bad to carry those feelings with us, because it's not necessarily that you are good or bad, or that you should feel ashamed or anything like that of what's inside, or that you know. But it's it's more so that carrying interiority with us when we're a public being is a tension that we have to hold, and that's what makes us authentic, like mediating the external world, and and trying to bring out what's within while not showing all of our cards. That tension is is the source of joy as much as it is of suffering when we learn to hold it or not, right? So not learning to hold that tension, we often feel socially anxious. We deal with pretty intense low self-esteem. We feel fake, or we overcompensate, or all sorts of difficult things happen that produce difficult results over time. We just, you know. On the other hand, if you learn how to hold that tension, then you can you can feel I'm never quite at home. I'm never quite. This isn't 100% who I am. There are secrets I have.

There are hidden depths and shadows that I have, and the awareness of that creates within me compassion, humility, curiosity, and a natural desire to engage without putting myself out there in a way that's like overly egotistical, or or you know what I mean. So it's like it's it's good to have some tension between private interior depths and shadows and public facing just overt like sunshine and confidence. We need always to hold those two things. So, this is a transit that kind of brings that work up, though. It brings up the question of how are you holding that tension? How well are you doing with it? And for all of us, it's an ongoing, you know, it's it's it's as daily as any other daily routine that we that we hold this tension. Anyway, Leo's concern with honor can also clash with Scorpio's concern for motivation. It's like, why are you doing this? Leo's like, take me at my word. What? What do you think I am? Some kind of bad guy, you know? And Scorpio's like, I need to understand what's really happening. And Leo can sort of take offense to that. On the other hand, Scorpio can kind of be like, "You're too confident. What's hidden?" See how that same tension between visible and hidden is present. Anyway, all right. So, understanding motives and carrying the tension between public and private elements of our psyches; those are part of this.

Another one that's very simple is that Mercury square Mars is associated with things like math and science traditionally. So is Mercury Saturn Mars Saturn. Mercury is very analytical when it's paired with Mars. It's like a skills that a surgeon needs to wield a scalpel: analytical reasoning, dissection, analytical judging faculties of of the mind. These are all very Mercury Mars, and so when right now any kind of analysis or dissection or deconstruction is needed, it's gonna be a very good transit for that. If you need to find the fault in something, analyze the defect, and then plan for some kind of contingency or invent a solution. Really good at breaking things down, understanding problems, and coming up with solutions. But it might mean that you have to rework the plan. This is a tough one when it comes to negotiating something because there will often be a point of disagreement that has to be looked at and reworked somehow, and then finally on my list is just words as weapons. Mercury Mars can sharpen speech, and I I think the retrograde symbolism could bring some kind of conversation back to our attention.

The need for courage and communication and speech, honor and dignity, understanding depth or hidden motivations, all those things again. But just being careful that words can hurt or words can heal. And I think about nonviolent communication. I know that's like an actual technique or something, but I'm I'm just thinking about it more archetypally. Words that convey peace and care and sensitivity and tact much more constructive right now than you know accosting one another accusations threats coercion attack you know these are these are These are the kinds of things to avoid if we want to keep keep our psyches in a good, strong, healthy place. So, anyway, that's my take on the Mercury Mars dynamic. Very powerful dynamic coming through today. Might notice it over the weekend. With all of this in mind, I hope that you do have a beautiful weekend. Don't forget our new class, our first year program, Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic, the first year program in Hellenistic Astrology, one of three plus a full year of horary that we have.

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