Fearless—Sun enters Aries—Spring Equinox—March 20 th
What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Spencer Johnson.
March. Martius. Named after the war-deity, Mars. March was the first month in the Roman calendar. In March, as nature blossomed and food supplies became plentiful, Romans went to war.
Mars was venerated as the founding god of the Roman Empire, father of Romulus and Remus. The might and ruthlessness, the pragmatism of the Roman military machine attests to the importance of Mars.
We may notice Mars energy all around us this month. Survival and procreation are embodied in the natural world as the urgent thrust of spring spills over the land in a cascade of colour and sweet song.
In the language of astrology, Mars represents our instinctual nature, our personal potency, our innate need to fight for our territory.
On March 20th, the Sun slips into Mars-ruled Aries, marking the spring Equinox, the start of the new astrological year. The quality of light is different now. The sun rises earlier, lingers later now, as the year balances between seasons.
On Thursday, March 19th a compassionate Pisces new moon symbolises gentle new beginnings wrapped in the darkness of endings. Capricious Mercury turns direct (8º Pisces) the next day, emerging now as the Magician, not the Trickster. At this turning time of the year, we may still be struggling with an internal war as we face an important choice. This new moon, and Mercury now moving direct, symbolises some kind of resolution. Mars wades through the opaque waters of Pisces now, his ardour swamped by disturbing cross-currents of emotion, his vitality beleaguered by clammy fears. Mars in Pisces is subtle, more Tai Chi than karate, the kneeling warrior who transmutes brute aggression into service for the greater good.
Jupiter also moves direct (from March 11th), exulted in Cancer, ameliorating perhaps painful or challenging circumstances. Although like all the planetary archetypes, Jupiter is multifaceted, not simplistically a “Greater Benefic”.
In May and June, as Jupiter transits Trump’s painfully vulnerable Saturn/Venus conjunction and makes a Jupiter Return in the (1971) birth chart of Iran, Jupiter’s complexity and mythic erratic bouts of rage and spite will become evident in the euphemistically called theatre of war. If we are waiting for “good luck” with an approaching Jupiter transit, we might be disappointed when lives are not enhanced in any way. Yet as we engage hindsight and insight to unlock meaning of illness, separation and loss, Jupiter’s passage through Cancer may soothe.
Saturn (fear, restriction, contraction) and Neptune (oil, gas, confusion) are still travelling in tandem through fiery Aries. Lethal drones and missiles rupture the skies over the Middle East and Ukraine. Whether we are aware of it or not, we are all bathed in the collective trauma of war. Those caught in the crossfire are mostly women and children. The economic fallout of the US-Israeli assault and Tehran’s retaliation is already impacting the cost of petrol and food prices.
Aries exemplifies the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the bully-destroyer—depicted today by belligerent politicians turned commanders-in-chief. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, a new archetype emerges: activist digital warriors, who call for global change—Malala Yousafzai, Elizabeth Wathuti, Amanda Nguyen, Marielle Franco, are speaking out bravely against human ignorance and cruelty.
As the Victorian era ended, a 40 year old woman, armed only with a note book and pen, boarded a train heading for Bloemfontein. She was heading into a warzone. Emily Hobhouse was born in Cornwall on April 9th, 1860, as the sun and Mercury Rx moved through Aries making a trine to Saturn in Leo. 
The sun seared across a cloudless sky as she travelled through a devasted landscape of scorched veldt and grotesquely bloated corpses of hamstrung cattle and abandoned farmlands. She had yet to see the starved corpses of children held in the arms of their emaciated mothers. She had yet to be branded a traitor, publicly dismissed by Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, who stated that Britian’s empire was not “threatened by a hysterical spinster of mature age.” Yet still, she mustered the bravery contained in the fiery essence of Aries energy to expose war-crimes against women and children. Over 154,000 people, mainly women and children, were interned in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War (1899-1902.)
“I call this camp system a wholesale cruelty… It can never be wiped out of the memories of the people,” she wrote.
Although a commission corroborated her findings, she was deported from South Africa. No explanation was given. Her humanitarian work was never acknowledged by the British government.
In South Africa, she is the “Angel of Love”. A woman with a notebook who challenged the might of the British military and revealed the true cost of war. Emily’s exalted Mars in Capricorn is the master warrior, tenacious in the face of obstacles.
For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not a muscular or spectacularly brave response to the challenges of life. For some of us, an ordinary life, lived with as much consciousness and courage we can muster, is heroic even when things seem so bleak, so hopeless. For some of us, the taming of our fears, the tempering of our innate human aggression and competitive survival instincts is a work in progress. And even though there are times when it takes every last spark of courage to unearth something positive, anything hopeful, to hold onto, as we turn towards each other in the darkness of this moonless night, Cheryl Strayed offers these words of comfort, “you go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and by allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage”.
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In memory of Emily Hobhouse, unsung hero, traitor and humanitarian, a woman who waged battle with the British Empire Builders and revealed the true cost of war.
At the epicentre of this month’s sky story, two eclipses cast out their cosmic energy like fishing lines, electrifying the collective nervous system.
Mercury is now moving Rx (February 26th-March 20th) and a powerful Mars squares Uranus—an accelerant that ignites Trump’s Ascendant and his own tumescent Mars in Leo.
The present moment is all you have—Eckhart Tolle.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme―Mark Twain.
Learning compassion, understanding love, and experiencing joy. That’s our purpose, our reason for being here. That’s our true mission on this planet—Melody Beattie. 
