Previewing Mars’ Long Stay in Cancer

Hey everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, we are going to take a look at Mars's long upcoming stay in the sign of Cancer. Mars will be entering Cancer shortly here, coming up at the end of August and beginning of September, and transitioning into that sign. It will stay there for quite a while, and then it will briefly go into the sign of Leo. And then begins a retrograde, which will the majority of which will be spent in the sign of Cancer.

So, I'm going to lay out that entire timeline for all of you today so you can take a look at it. And then, we are going to start preparing for this big, long Mars Retrograde with a little reflection on the Mars and Cancer archetype. So that is our agenda for today.

Before we get into it, don't forget to like and subscribe. We're seeing if we can get to 70,000 subscribers. We're making a nice push here. We're trying to get there by the Fall Equinox. If you listen regularly and haven't yet subscribed, we really appreciate it. When you do, you can find transcripts of any of my daily talks on my website, nightlight astrology.com; now, I want to take you over to the website and just illustrate here a couple of things going on this week.

Tomorrow night, we have the next monthly webinar on the eighth house. So it's not too late to join. You can register and receive the link for the live webinar. If you can't make it live, we will send you the recording afterward. This is a talk on the eighth house, which I'm calling the place of karmic debts. And we're going to talk about why this house is related to karmic debts and how we can understand that, especially how we can look at it in our own birth chart. And then I also want to illustrate that. If you look at the Courses tab and scroll down to astrology essentials, our new class, this is Astrology for Total Beginners, is on sale.

We have a pre-sale that's happening right now on this audio course; it's on sale for $50 off the normal price. It will be up around the middle of September, and then you'll see the normal sale price, and the audio recordings will be available at that time. So this is a pre-sale.

If you're interested in taking this absolute beginner's course and receiving a little bit of a discount, you can take advantage of this sale. It'll last till August 27. In this beginner's course, we go through eight modules that are meant to introduce you to all of the basic concepts and areas of astrological theory that comprise the language of astrology. This is something that will get you started. This would be a great prep for our year one course, which then leads into year two, year three, horary.

So, all of our immersive, year-long training programs for people who are absolutely brand new to astrology and just getting into it, this is the course we recommend. So again, take advantage of this before August 27, the pre-sale, and then it will be on sale normally and available in the middle of September.

So, on that note, let's turn our attention to the real-time clock, where I want us all to take a look at what Mars is going to be doing here, which is coming up soon. So here it is at the very end of August. We get Mars coming into those last final anaretic degrees, making some important squares. See making one important square for Neptune in the sign of Pisces. And then it's early September, right here. This is September 4 into the fifth.

So if we go forward just a little bit, we'll see that it's late afternoon on September 4 that Mars goes into Cancer. You might be feeling it on the fifth. And then let's just track this out. Mars is going to stay in Cancer from early September all the way until November. So we can see here that it changes signs into Leo about November 4. So that's September to October to November. It's like two full months that we have Mars in Cancer.

Now, that might seem like, you know, not such a big deal. It's about the average amount of time that Mars spends in a sign. But if we take this forward just a little bit, we're going to see that in December, Mars turns retrograde in Leo, and then it enters Cancer again through its retrograde. And it does so right here, Monday morning, January 6, and then from January 6, it is retrograding in Cancer all the way until about February 24, so it spends two more months, and then it turns direct and has to pick up some speed, and doesn't finally leave Cancer until about April 18. So. Um, you know, that's like a solid six months that we're going to have Mars in Cancer. Solid six months with, you know, about four of them retrograde, from what I can tell. So if I've got my math right there, but anyway, it's a lot of time.

So, um, look at, start looking at the whole sign house of Cancer. I mean, we will certainly be doing horoscopes for all of you that cover this down the road. So you'll get our take for you in our monthly overview with Alex and Dana, and we'll be talking about Mars Retrograde and Cancer at length on the overview with Alexandra, Whitney, and myself.

So, you know, you'll get a further breakdown, but we should start considering this now and just get a feel for some of the major Mars in Cancer themes that are likely to be active for good stretches of the next seven to eight months. So we have a two-month stretch starting in September, you know, and then we will go from January to April again. So it's like September, October, November.

We've got Mars in Cancer for most of that time and then January through April. So, what are the kinds of things that you can watch for with Mars in Cancer? These are very basic and just meant to give you some ideas. Pair that with the topical significations of the whole sign and house of Cancer in your birth chart, and now you're cooking with fire; you have some really good things to think about. Number one is that whatever topics the whole sign of house, house of Cancer, may occupy in your chart, you will see family karma being activated.

The reason for this is that Mars is the god of strife and conflict, and Cancer, the sign of the Moon, is often associated with home and family, so the heat is turned on the burner around family. Karma with Mars and Cancer: You will often see that there is a little bit more drama, conflict, or challenging events. Mars was generally associated with misfortune.

Now, misfortune in the ancient world was very basic. It could be disastrous. It could be crushing, soul crush, you know, soul-crushing defeats. But it could also be, and most of the time is very basic. It's the setbacks and challenges and hurdles and obstacles and conflicts and tensions of life. Mars always brings those things up and teaches us how to persevere and how to be strong. Those are Mars qualities as well.

So we're always learning wherever Mars goes. You know, we're learning that we face various conflicts and challenges, and we learn and grow in response to them. When we see that family karma is active for this long a period of time, it is likely that there are deeper, more substantive issues that are going to come up that are challenging or that bring up tension or conflict, as well as the need to individuate a very Mars-like word relative to the grip that regressive family karma has on us. Those are all Mars and Cancer-like themes. So watch for those.

Number two would be issues with mothers. Mars in Cancer can quite literally mean misfortune for the mother, challenges or conflicts with the mother, or issues around, you know, children, women, parenting, pregnancy, etc. Now, again, I would say that most of the time we're talking about difficulties, not disasters, right where, like, depends on every birth chart, but most of the time we're talking about, you know, it could even be that during a Mars and Cancer period, you're just going through, if you're a mom, or you're a parent in general, that you're going through issues with respect to your parenting.

You're being challenged to grow. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. You will also find that the rights of mothers, the rights of women and their bodies, these kinds of things will come up in a very pronounced way. So issues include family karma, active issues with mothers, issues around women's health, women's bodies, and women's rights.

This is a Mars, and Cancer can be an advocate for anything pertaining to women, children, and those who are vulnerable and in need of care, tending, or nurturance. So Mars is like an advocate, like a mother bear, for these particular kinds of people or issues. So, any kinds of issues around women's health, women's rights, the rights of parents, and advocating for anyone who is in need of help or nurturance.

Emotional advocacy, one great theme of Mars and Cancer, just broadly speaking, is that you will find yourself advocating for things that you feel very strongly about, that you have strong emotional identification with, or strong emotional attachments or bonds to, things that you end up fighting for or fighting on behalf of, so emotional advocacy. I'm going to stand up; I'm going to fight for something. I'm going to struggle with something with a lot of emotional care and conviction wrapped up in it.

It is so emotional, the archetype of the fighter who is fighting for something involving home, family, and the more vulnerable places in life. And then, finally, the last thing on my list is Mars, things rising up from difficult circumstances. So when Mars is in Cancer, it's considered to be in its fall. One interesting thing that I've noticed is that there are actually signatures of many very renowned athletes who have Mars in Cancer and a couple of bodybuilders that I follow who have been champions have Mars in Cancer.

One thing they have in common is that when they were younger, they were considered scrawny and picked on. One of the things that I've noticed, just in general, following off this little example, is that Mars things may struggle or suffer or face setbacks or hurdles or obstacles that somehow have to be confronted or overcome.

So Mars in Cancer doesn't mean it's not; we have to be a little nuanced in the way we think about a debility. Any planet in its fall will often be dealt kind of like a difficult hand, but playing that hand well, or rising up or overcoming it, is often part of the significations of a planet in its fall. The Moon in Scorpio often learns how to, you know, cultivate emotional resilience and learns to overcome various traumas in, you know, their life.

So Mars and Cancer can overcome difficult Mars things, feeling weak, feeling helpless, feeling incompetent or inferior somehow, or feeling emotionally, you know, too vulnerable, and you know, Mars may struggle to express or assert itself with strength, you know, but then that is, That is precisely what Mars may learn and hence overcome.

So if you think about any kind of Mars, Mars struggles, and Mars being in a weaker or more compromised or vulnerable position, and this is why fighting on behalf of those who are in a vulnerable position is also a Mars and cancer thing, but you may find that you have some circumstance in life where you feel weak and then you have to overcome and sort of rise up. That would be a very Mars and Cancer-like thing.

In addition to just the very basic thing of Mars stuff, whether that's strength, confidence, assertiveness, struggling, and having to be cultivated or developed, and that can happen in life, even if we're strong, confident people, there can be things that come up in life that I mean, we all have our all our soft spots, our vulnerable spots, and when those things come up, how do we access our feeling of strength and confidence within to face or deal with something when it's a very vulnerable area of life for us, those are the kinds of things that tend to come up when Mars is in Cancer.

In addition to all of these other dynamics, I find that Mars and cancer natives are often quite passionate and will, will very much, will strongly defend and, protect and preserve things that they care about. And so that's great energy to have around, and great energy to call upon when we do see things coming up with mothers, families, women's body and health, parenting, family matters.

Also, the interesting about Cancer in the Moon is that it can point to culture and roots and things like racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds that live in our root system somehow. And so what we call who we consider our family to be in things that extend outside of our family of origin, like, who is our who are our people, and how do we feel bonded to those people through various things, those ties or bonds may also be tested so Mars in Cancer, for example.

One of the significations of Mars and Cancer can be civil war or, civil strife or conflict within a family. So how do we individuate relative to the groups that we belong to, the groups that make us feel at home in life? How do we face and deal with conflicts in those kinds of circles? These are also things that can come up.

So anyway, I wanted to drop a few of these, a few of these symbols and the exploration of Mars in Cancer today, so that we could start thinking about it in advance of these big movements that are coming up in September and then in the new year again, with the retrograde. So we'll be revisiting this again for sure, but that is it for today before I leave.

Don't forget the eighth house talk is tomorrow night, so I hope to see you there. You can register on the website under the Live Events tab, and don't forget the absolute beginner's course. The Astrology Essentials course is also on the website in the courses menu; on the drop-down menu, you'll see astrology essentials. You can sign up for that in the pre-sale lasts until August 27, and then it will be made available mid-September. All right, that's it for today. Take it easy. Bye.