Now Uranus is coming along, and is merging the glamour aspect of Aries with the disruption element of Uranus and the identity chaos element of Eris. The result could be a hot mess—or it could represent a time of genuine breakthrough on the theme of self-discovery and self-actualization. We have had a lot of hot mess lately, as you might discover if you initiate a conversation with people about anything potentially controversial, such as how they feel about life and love. The personal breakthrough, however, is not a prefabricated thing, and there is no telling where it will lead. That would seem to be the whole point.
Here is the problem as I see it: the need for an organizing or perhaps orienting principle. Aries represents the energy of pure potential. It is motive looking for a purpose. Purpose needs some guiding force. If one purpose of the current astrology is self-actualization, what is the core instinct that will drive that process?
Here is another: Self-discovery takes courage, and is wrought with perils. The most prominent of them is how it has a way of dissolving your previous self-concept with something more tangible. If someone is attached to their self-concept, they are unlikely to seek anything that would change it in any way.
Many have, I observe, a real courage issue here in the digital age. There are those days when everything besides what is wholly unreal seems too real. Anything more than launching an app is too great of a risk to take. The world is blown up in one action movie after the next; people routinely fight zombies and survive alien attacks; and the world watches from the comfort of their entertainment station or tablet.
I think that a lot of this comes back to image: of needing to be seen a certain way (often, how one is not), or being afraid to be seen a certain way (often, how one really is).
Mars in Sagittarius possesses some glamour of its own. It's a fire sign thing, though the glam of Sagg will seem to have more substance to back up its image. That doesn't necessarily make it so. I would say an example of celebrity in the style of Mars in Sagittarius might be the rock-star pastor of a megachurch.
Mars retrograde turns that to a question about what is really true. The crusading quality of Mars in Sagittarius is reversed, and becomes a personal inquiry. This is potentially uncomfortable; it involves questioning assumptions and also getting beneath the level of image, and in particular, the image of piety.
True, most people don't associate themselves with cardinals carrying crosses parading around in red robes outside the Vatican, but there seems to be a strong impulse in contemporary culture to seem pious and pure.
This can lead to a real crisis, and not just one of belief; once you get past the layer of belief, the next layer is existential. Think of what religion really is: It's a contract with existence. Is your contract something that you wrote yourself? Do you have your own lease on life, or do you use the standard Bloomberg version? The standard version is typically what was impressed on people through their early religious and moralistic training. It tends to leave no room to make up your own mind, and when you try to, that can be beset by conflict.
On May 27, Mars retrograded into Scorpio, entering the realm of what is beneath the realm of belief. Scorpio is the level you can't do anything about. One can try to gloss over the core of biological necessity (what Scorpio represents, on one level) with ideas about reality (what Sagittarius represents, on one level).
It's also possible to get them into alignment—to create a belief system for yourself that reflects the deeper truth of what a person is, and what you are, rather than contradicts or attempts to conceal it. And this is what Mars, weaving back and forth between Scorpio and Sagittarius all year, seems to be doing.
What I'm calling the core layer, Mars retrograde in Scorpio, can serve as a point of orientation. Start with the biological level of your existence: your body, your feelings, your instincts. What are they telling you?
