Mars in Pisces - Time for Change

by Guru Rattana, Ph.D. - Issue #71, August 5, 2003

When we astrologers look at the night sky, or less romantically, stare at an ephemeris or astrological chart for a particular date, one of the things that we are trying to discern is the importance and impact of the movement of the planets, on our personal and collective lives. Do the planetary encounters simply create a ripple on the cosmic pond, or are their interactions going to create a tsunami? Are we going to experience a sprinkle or a full-blown storm? Are we simply going to be temporarily impacted, disturbed or caressed, or is the context for our existence going to permanently transformed?

The possibilities and our interpretations reflect the infinite nature of the Universe. Each lens offers a special view of reality. Our life experiences, intuition and instinctual messages also compute in our own unique ways. Personally, I am subtly aware of shifting energies before the specific changes percolate through my conscious reality. I experience expanded realities in my morning Kundalini Yoga and meditation practice before I write about them or teach them. Once I have clarity in my own psyche, I am ready to share.

I tuned into the importance of Mars in Pisces just before Mars entered Pisces waters, June 17th. I thought it would be a mellow time. Two weeks ago, when I got rear-ended and suffered a whiplash,(1) I became aware of other implications of this floating energy. Drive carefully and keep an extra long distance between yourself and the car in front! The day Mars went retrograde, July 29th, I was compelled to share my insights with you.

The End of a Cycle through the Zodiac

Here are the basic facts about the current movement of Mars around the Sun. Mars takes two years to travel through the Zodiac. It moves through one sign in about 6 weeks. Mars goes into retrograde, or apparent backward motion, once every twentysix months. Mars remains retrograde for about two months. Mars entered Pisces, the last sign of the Zodiac, June 17th. Mars just went retrograde July 29th, and will remain retrograde through September 26th. It will remain in Pisces through December 16th. December 17th Mars will begin a new cycle in Aries.

This means that Mars is in Pisces waters for 6 months. Yes Mars, the testosterone-driven god of action, initiative, and aggression, is floating around in the Pisces sky of surrender, with the bumper sticker on his solar powered magic carpet Let go and let God for six months!

This has been going on for over a month now. You must have noticed something is different. What happened to all those plans to get major things accomplished? Can't find your car keys on a regular basis? Can't remember exactly what you said when? Don't feel quite so motivated and actually feel that it is possible to relax? The significance of this six-month time period is profound. Mars in Pisces is sending us some very important information far beyond the mundane effects on our daily lives.

In addition, Uranus in Pisces is eager to wake us up with accidents or knock us on the head in other ways if we are too sleepy to get Mars direct message. Uranus is in Pisces for six years. Uranus is conjunct Mars at the same time and degree in the sky on August 27th (more about that line up in Issue 72). Accidents have already started to happen, so be prudent. I know two people who have broken an ankle and a foot. Pretty obvious slow down messages. The context for the astrological line up August 27th is Mars in Pisces. How we relate to and handle this energy will determine our personal and collective futures.

Re-Examination of Male Energy

Mars in Pisces is giving us a window of opportunity to re-examine how we define and use male energy. What is functional and what is not? How do we create the results we desire, and avoid creating realities that do not serve the highest good of humankind and ourselves? What have we created and how can we extricate ourselves from the mess?

Basically Mars in Pisces is telling us, "Hey guys, what you are doing is not working. Wake up and try something else". We are supposed to ask ourselves, what are we going to do about our political and economic systems, that create wars and inequality. What can we do to alter our course? What options are open to us? How can we use the powerful energies available to our advantage, and not destroy ourselves and each other.

While Mars is in Pisces, the fight is off. The game as usual is suspended. We have a chance to change modes. We can choose to break the old mold. With the help of Uranus we can even jump out of the box.

Basic Survival Strategies - Surrendering to Divine Will

The energy of Planet Earth has gradually increased, so that now it vibrates at the speed of the heart chakra. This means that we are dealing with high frequency energy, which is very different from what we have been used to. We may feel like we can't handle the intensity and don't know what to do with the power, but that is exactly what we have to learn: how to thrive in high frequency energies, and how to productively use the power available to us at this time. Denial is not an acceptable means to deal with overwhelmingness. The price is pain and suffering, and a closed heart. We might buy time, but we also miss out on the gifts that are available to us.

It is essential to have guidelines for dealing with the Mars in Pisces energy. The most basic thing we need to realize, is that brute force, manipulation, schemes and ego-based actions do not work. Lay off of ego-driven action and authority trips. Me-me I see only me consciousness does not compute, and will certainly get us into some kind of trouble.

Be prepared. Our neuroses are going to be disrupted and our old habits disturbed. Humbling ourselves can be very satisfying. Letting go is quite a relief. Surrendering our will to Divine Will feels even better. Go in stages but remember, between now and December 16th is an opportune time to cultivate and consolidate our new mode of being and doing. At least plant the seeds inside yourself during these months. You have the rest of your life to build on the foundation that you create between now and the end of the year.

How to Deal with Warrior Monk Energy

Private personal time is a must from now through the end of the year. Use your time by yourself to take stock of your inner warrior monk archetypes. Allow yourself to be nurtured by the love energy that is being infused onto the planet, and into each one of us. Spiritual practice is required. Show up for meditation each day. Be present. Go inside. Be internal. Consolidate. Contain.

In your private time investigate how your energy is being used. Start with your own stress. What are you doing to yourself? Why? Where are the leaks and misappropriate uses of energy?

Stay present to your observations and feelings. Allow your new insights to initiate you into a new mode of being. Use your connection to your own feelings as guides for participating in a new mode of doing.

Here are some affirmations for your bathroom mirror and refrigerator door:

• Do nothing
• Say nothing
• Slow down
• Go with the flow
• Feel, befriend and enjoy the floating energy
• Embrace what IS.

Don't just think about the above. Take a deep breath and feel the impact of these attitudes in your body.

Inner Goals

Here are a few touchstones for aligning with the Mars in Pisces energy:

• Make being relaxed and rhythmic two of your internal goals.
• Find out what's going on behind the scenes. Explore secret negotiations of and with your soul
• Don't resist. You can't. There is no juice for it. We can't fight a cloud with a sword.
• Go for grace, surrender and bliss.

Consider this time a gift, a blessing and a reward. Enjoy your inner exploration, with the intention of serving your soul. Certainly do not consider this time off from normal reality (what is normal anyway?), nor as a curse, an inconvenience to be ridden out, a punishment to be endured, an obstacle to be overcome, or an impediment to be dealt with. It is a pause before your next rebirth.

If you need to rationalize nurturing yourself, do so. Use this time as an excuse to do what you know you really should be doing anyway, to take care of yourself. Blame it on the planets, if you need that to give yourself permission to do your inner work, but after you have employed the necessary justifications to satisfy your ego, work toward total acceptance, enjoyment, and alignment with the universal flow.

Alignment Strategies

Here are a few touchstone strategies:

• Follow your heart. Find out what that is. Trust. Surrender.
• Make alignment your guiding strategy. Use fair as your operating criteria.
• Try neutral, unconditional, nonjudgmental. Feel the power and safety in neutral.
• Suspend judgment, analysis and the search for explanations. Witness how a non-judgmental stance transforms your emotions and the circumstances in your life.

The Divine Dimension of Reality

We should not be surprised if we can't figure out where to grab or how to hold on. If we can't seem to get a handle on things it is because, in the three-dimensional world, Pisces waters cloak our view and cloud our perceptions.

It might seem that the Mars in Pisces dream world has lost his potency and connection to physical reality. Tune into the Divine dimension of reality, and you will realize that the potency definitely still there (always was and always will be). It is just computing on a different channel, and that channel is in direct contact with the Divine. In the Divine dimension of reality, our ego does not always get what it thinks it wants. Disconnected from the Divine, the ego miscalculates what is in our highest good. Mars and Uranus in Pisces is a good time to tune into the authentic desires of our soul.

The current energy favors inner focus, discipline and alignment. Our sensitivity is heightened. Keep in mind, the battle is called off and the struggle is suspended. If we try to resist this energy, we create inner battles, and access inner conflicts at a deeper level. Make letting go of resistance one of your touchstones. What is enough to get your attention? The energy is creating an opening to the portal of your soul. Everyone has a whisper, a mission, listen now.

Another Way to Get Things Done

While Mars is in Pisces, we should all be exploring other ways, rather than fighting, to go after and get what we want. The basic guideline is that aggressive energy is not available and does not work. Our task is to align ourselves with Pisces energy so we can be supported by it. Our best strategies are internal ones. Our inner connections will guide our external actions, and do a great deal of the work for us. The key is to relax and allow ourselves to be supported by universal energies.

It is the opportune time to discover new ways of getting things done. You are going to find out that it is easier than you think. You can accomplish a lot in a whole different way. Use the internal mastermind technique between you and the universal forces. Work out internally what you want to happen, hold a clear space for it to happen, detach from the outcome, and allow it come to pass.

Mars in Pisces - Re-Examination of Power

Mars is the god of willful desire and intentional assertion of force. He is the testosterone-driven and adrenaline-charged god of war, primal desire and personified anger. Mars in Pisces is asking us to examine how far can we be successful in imposing our will on each other, and on other nations. How effective is brute force and aggressive energy? Maybe we will reach the same conclusion that Napoleon did. At the end of his years he was quoted as saying that what surprised him most in his life was how little was accomplished by force.

Mars in Pisces is giving us a chance to transcend our aggressive nature, long enough to touch the power of love and the beauty of our sensitivity. We have six months to explore other options, besides brute force and savagery, to channel our Martian drives. Mars and Uranus together are going to make sure, that each of us wakes up long enough to realize that the Universe is sending a message to ME! Yes, not just those who blatantly abuse power, but to each one of us. We must each examine how emotionally primitive we still are, how impatience rules our lives, and how reckless and out of control we can become, following the slightest trigger that disturbs our status quo.

To come up with new ways of both being and doing we have to investigate our desires, examine our intentions, be in touch with our drives, revisit our passions and re-evaluate our conflicts. We have to set new goals, and modify our way of interacting with each other and being in the world.

Connecting with Our Spiritual Warrior

These six months offer us an opportunity to examine our inner cauldron, and be present to what is bubbling up inside. It is easy now to reach our emotional core. Maybe we find a smoldering fire ready to ignite, or maybe we find a sensitive child ready to cry. We get to examine our inner fears, and how our search for stability and external power is ephemeral. We are being asked (forced) to radically redirect the expression of our primal energies, and find what we have been looking for outside ourselves inside.

Mars in Pisces is offering us a window to redefine and re-experience the power of our inner spiritual warrior. We are being given a chance to revisit the difference between power and force, and to witness for ourselves that the God-force is still the most powerful force in the Universe, and that there are cosmic rules that operate whether we believe in them or not, and that we are obliged to play by. It seems strange that we should have ever doubted or been disconnected from that truth. The reason is that we have been consciously disconnected from this universal force, so our actions have reflected erroneous beliefs about the nature of Spirit. Something was definitely missing. Maybe we will use Mars in Pisces to open ourselves up to the missing piece. Maybe we will have a direct experience of the universal love that flows through us all.

How to Use the Energy from Mars Retrograde in Pisces

Each one of us will feel the impact of Mars in Pisces energy, in the house of our natal chart where Pisces resides, especially the first 10° of Pisces. Sometimes this spans two houses. If you know your chart you can look it up. If you don't, I bet you can easily recognize the arena(s) of life that is (are) calling for your attention, simply by reading the following summaries of how to deal with the energy. The numbers below refer to the houses of the natal chart. Whatever fits, wear it for two months. It is time to change our inner emotional wardrobe.

1st - Aries

Stop over-exerting yourself and beating yourself up physically and emotionally. Relax, rest, and recover from your self-inflicted battle. Be present to yourself and the sensations in your body. Get in touch with a sense of your identity from deep within yourself. Take time by and for yourself. Enjoy being you with you. Go for soul identity.

2nd - Taurus

Place a temporary moratorium on acquisition of extra possessions, and cut back on spending. Examine self-worth issues and neediness programs. Hone your ability to satisfy your own emotional needs. Feel what it is like, to get satisfaction from taking care of yourself without relying on others. Take time to be in nature. Smell the roses. Go for inner satisfaction.

3rd - Gemini

Stop your endless external and internal chatter. Stop filling your life with activities that just fill up your time. Do only what has a deeper significance and meaning. Go inside and LISTEN to your own heart and the cosmic sound. Slow down. Simplify. Don't take reckless chances. Drive carefully! Communicate to souls, not personalities. Go for silence, simplicity and meaning.

4th - Cancer

Stop looking outside yourself for security. Go inside, meditate, and find security in your own internal home. Let feelings, resentments, hurts from the past surface, bless the situations and people involved (including yourself), and let the whole thing go. Quit fighting with yourself, and liberate yourself from internal bondage and conflict. Release yourself from self-indulgent wars. Move into a neutral place where the conflict does not exist. Clean, repair and feng shui your physical house. Eat slowly and consciously. Go for inner security.

5th - Leo

Quit trying to get attention from others, and instead give it to yourself. Tune into your own heart and get your juice from your own inner sun. Learn to discriminate between real, lasting love and quick fixes. Find what really makes you happy, and make sure it bubbles from inside yourself. Wear a cloak of humility for a while. Go for the inner smile.

6th - Virgo

Stop being a martyr and a slave in the name of duty. Identify how you are serving your neuroses and stop it. Define your true service, and be ready when the time comes (not during Mars in retrograde), by taking care of your physical, mental and emotional health. Revisit and redefine discipline. Instead of beating yourself up, gently and lovingly take care of yourself. Go for inner peace.

7th - Libra

Don't go after new relationships. Give up superficial friendships. Establish a committed relationship with yourself, that will serve as the mirror to attract future relationships, or to redefine and embellish current ones. Create internal boundaries that make healthy relationships possible, and allow you to protect yourself from relationships that do not serve your higher good. Learn to identify when to say NO, and practice in front of your own internal mirror. Forgive yourself for engaging in relationships in the past that were hurtful to yourself and others. Forgive others for the same. Make amends within yourself and with others when appropriate. Listen to your heart to be able to tell the difference. Go for inner beauty.

8th - Scorpio

Stop using sex as a means to try to release obsessive-compulsive urges that you don't know how to handle. Don't have sex unless you can maintain a sense of your own identity, and not get lost in the merger. Learn the basics of Tantra, connect with the Divine within, and be able to hold that experience in every life experience, including intimacy. You have two months. Better take a crash course; and while you are inside yourself, identify and align with your own personal values. Commit to maintain this connection and operate from your higher value system after the course is officially over. Go for scrupulous self-honesty.

9th - Sagittarius

Stop being fanatical, dogmatic, judgmental, and having an opinion about everything and everybody, i.e. give up mental indulgences that prevent you from being spiritual and living by natural laws. This is a time to connect with the neutral space inside your head. Get to know neutrality and you will morph into the spiritual being that you really are. Notice how comfortable the neutral space is, and expand it to include your heart and your whole body. Become the centaur and ride away, to follow your soul-defined dreams. Go for neutrality.

10th - Capricorn

Quit looking for recognition outside yourself. Quit feeling so responsible for others and let them take care of themselves. Recognize yourself. Use a mirror at first if necessary, and graduate to the internal mirror of your soul. Take responsibility for listening to your heart, feeling your feelings and taking care of your own emotions. Take a vacation from self-criticism. Take some time off to be totally alone. Take a walk by yourself in the mountains with a pack lunch. Go for inner recognition.

11th - Aquarius

Take a break from social life, alliances, groups and networking. Establish your inner connection with the universal web of life. Let your inner connection reveal which organizations and friendships serve you. Choose the most appropriate channels for your personal contribution and creativity. Release the others and don't look back. Life moves on. Give up circumstances that simply are no longer working for you, or never did. Be honest. If you are not, others and the Universe will, and you will wake-up without that job you hated, or released by the alliances where mutual interests do not exist. Network with the universal wide web. Go for internal revolution.

12th - Pisces

Give up fantasies, bad habits, addictive behaviors and substances, victimhood and sainthood. Connect inside with what is real for you this lifetime. Feel the sensations in your body, listen to your heart and be present to your dreams to find out. Learn to tell yourself the truth and then act on it in the world. Give up religious dogma and spiritual belief systems, and go for the real thing: an actual experience in your body of your soul and God consciousness. There is nothing like the real McCoy to make you feel happy and whole. Spirit-based happiness and soul-based wholeness are available to you now. Go for IT - McGod.

Kundalini Yoga Practice

Mars in our birth chart indicates where and how we use our energy. Mars in Pisces is telling us to devote time and energy to our spiritual practice. This is a good time to follow your instincts and listen to your intuition. Pick a set, meditation or practice that you are drawn to. There are literally hundreds of Kundalini Yoga sets and meditations to choose from in my books Transitions to a Heart-Centered World, 2nd Edition, Relax and Renew, 2nd Edition and Sexuality and Spirituality, 2nd Edition.

For those who feel they do not have the time, I suggest picking one exercise from the section Stress Release in 2-11 Minutes in Relax and Renew. One of the great things about Kundalini Yoga, is that it is possible to create a shift and have an experience in a very short period of time. After the exercise, sit quietly, listen, feel, and simply be present to your sensations. Enjoy your magic carpet ride!

References and Footnotes

"The Cauldron of Heaven: Sun-Mars-Uranus and the Mars Perihelion", Bill Herbst, The Mountain Astrologer, Issue #110, Aug/Sept 2003, pp. 9-16.

1. One thing I have found out about whiplashes is that one needs to get immediate and continual treatment so that the body can heal in the proper alignment. I have been told that 8-10 weeks is the minimum time. It is very common to brush off an injury like this and expect it to heal over time. The muscles and bones will not heal in an aligned fashion if not treated right after the damage. They have been thrown off and will heal out of alignment without consistent attention to nurturing them back into place. Misaligned muscles and bones create chronic problems that take years to fix. Take any trauma to your physical and emotional body seriously.

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