Mars Entering Taurus

 The Planet of War passed from the Sign of War into the Sign of Peace 

while Subordinate Officials of State Authority Cleared Smashed Glass and Enraged Protesters from the Halls of Congress

"They asked Judge Linda V. Parker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan to refer Powell and her team of lawyers to the court’s chief judge for disbarment, and to refer them for further professional discipline to authorities in their home states — Texas, in Powell’s case.

Detroit also asked the judge to levy a financial penalty “sufficient to deter future misconduct,” at least equal to the amount of money that Powell and her team have raised to fund their post-election lawsuits."

The above quote is from this article in Washington Post - Dominion Sues Powell for Election Fraud Lawsuits  <---(click to follow link)

Jupiter and Saturn are working their way through Pluto's 1st house of New Beginnings.  We'll still have the intense trio rising within an hour of each other every day, for the whole planet, through this month.  But the deal is now done; both Jupiter and Saturn have completely finished their passage through Pluto's 12th house of  Dreams and Fate. Earth is now swinging around the far side of the Sun from the historic conjunction, and so we see them all moving forward again, and at their greatest speed.

Solar system view with straight arrow going from Earth through Sun, passing near Jupiter then Saturn, and finally pointing at Pluto.  Click to enlarge.

 During spring and fall, while Earth was passing between Sun and the slow outer planets, we saw them either slowing down to change direction, or literally regressing along the ecliptic.

 

And then there's Mars which just left Aries after 6 grueling months, and passed into Taurus the evening of Jan 6 while the subordinate officials of authority began clearing the US Congress of smashed glass and the enraged Trump supporters who had stormed the building.  It's hard for me to write this.  I grew up in a home with sporadic periods of domestic violence.  The chaos is not fun.  I am not attracted to large rallies of people amassing and fighting for a cause.  But then again I'm white, fairly literate, with a couple of years in an engineering program at a large university and fond of manual labor.  I have all the privilege and personality traits that guarantee a secure future.

 

But the greatest privilege that was handed to me was going to high school in Brunswick County North Carolina in 1974-76 just a few years after the school was racially integrated.  The ratio of blacks to whites was nearly 50/50.  A drive down coastal highway 17 was mostly tobacco fields dotted with sagging tobacco drying sheds.  The county was then one of the poorest in NC.  My father had been laid off after more than 20 years of service as an analyst with CIA, and my parents reunited, after a very dramatic and chaotic period of legal separation, and moved the family from the suburbs of Washington DC to this very poor county in NC.  Dad started a new career as an instructor of metallurgy and meteorology at Cape Fear Tech and the family worked at pulling itself back together.

 

My mother had a really terrible temper.  My father was not perfect by any means, he was a very quiet, affable alcoholic who never, and I mean, never, missed a day of work.  My mother was ambitious.  They both came from working Irish families who had struggled through the depression.  Even as a child I could see the quiet happiness my dad felt as he moved down the aisle of the grocery store picking up produce, meat and canned goods.  My mother told plenty of stories about life during the Great Depression and WWII so it was easy to make a connection between Dad's happiness with a full grocery cart, and the pair of shoes he had shared with his cousin in the snowy north of the 1930's.

 

We had so much in Vienna, Virginia; a horse, goat, chickens and a duck on 3 acres of land.  Yes, the house built before the Civil War was falling apart, just as the family was by the time the oldest of 4 children became a teenager.  The 70's tore my mother apart.  In our house the generation gap was a gully full of land mines.  The drugs, the boys that wanted to wear their hair long like girls, the parents that let their daughters sleep with boys; she felt compelled to fight the decay of morals that she had grown up with.  By the time she died in 2008 she had begun to make peace with the changes, but it was a long road with many years either fighting with children or not hearing from them or even knowing where they were.  The violence was so disturbing, even when things were peaceful we all felt we had to walk carefully and keep alert to manage her gathering tirades.  Until my Sagittarian older brother would just let her have it.  He was going to go his own way in the world and had no fear of her rage.  It was like a barely civilized cock fight, but between the brother I looked up to and the mother I adored.

 

I don't like chaos.  My mother's  anger was not just hidden in the home, though her family did suffer the worst of it; she also had a reputation for calling down local elected officials she had worked tirelessly to elect, publicly accusing them of transgressions they had committed against the electorate they served.  On one of my rare visits home as a young adult I was reminded of her remarkable courage when she stepped into the middle of the road at a town parade and harangued a local official. Her face was red, she was pointing at him and hollering at the top of her lungs, just like the people in the riots this year.  But she was all alone.  The combination of shame, pride and wonder at her conviction; this stew of emotions was familiar, and now that I had a life of my own, and she could not corner me and get my bare legs with the belt for my transgressions, I was beginning to sort out the many qualities that made her the amazing mom that I sometimes hated and wanted nothing to do with, and others loved and watched with wonder and curiosity.  How could she be so certain of herself?

 

And she wasn't just blunt, more often than not she was astonishingly quick in both her judgement of an unfolding situation and her delivery of the scathingly hilarious insult she felt it required.  Then she would riff on the phone with friends, considering other bombs she could have dropped that might have come even closer to the target she was always aiming at.  Then she would get sick, for days.  She smoked a lot, which couldn't have helped, but I can't help wondering how much that rage contributed to her long periods of illness.  She threw herself heart, soul and mind; fearlessly, into her battles.  

 

She was a passionate woman.  Not about love, or romance, but about family, the Catholic Church, her country.  Passion is Mars.

 

Every 2 years Mars spends about 3 months going 'backwards.'  Other planets spend a total of 3 to 5 months a year doing this backstepping routine; Mercury does it several times a year like a nimble tap dancer, Venus does it much less often and the change is more languid.  The planet of war can take as little as 6 weeks to plow through a sign or dig in for 6 months.  Of all the planets, Mar's retrograde period generates the biggest interruption in its cycle.  And every time it happens in a different sign.  For instance it has not done a retro period in Aries since 1988.  This last 6 months is the first time in over 30 years that Mars has been able to rocket daily over the horizon, as active ruler in the chart (Mars rules actively in Aries) for 6 months in a row.  That's a lot of passion without an interruption for other life considerations.

 

Meanwhile, every day, for those same 6 months, that triumverate of Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto have been rising like a super pac in the limit enforcing sign of Capricorn six hours before inflamed Mars.

 

When I was born Mars was in Pisces.  My passion is fighting for the right to love any and every one.  I see BLM/Queer/Trans folks throwing bottles of water at cops, smashing windows of local businesses and wonder how I can explain to my strident liberal friends that while I fully appreciate their anger and frustration, I reserve also the right to express compassion for the cops standing behind plexiglass shields.  I see Rednecks smashing windows and attacking photojournalists and want my Brunswick County Redneck friends to know I understand why they like Trump.  I love my friends and will not call them deplorable.  I fight the urge to cry and look for opinion pieces by diplomatic thinkers who can put all this rage about how we govern ourselves in a historic context.  I binge watch Steven Colbert and feel guilty when I laugh at the scathing wit he uses to attack the Redneck Racist Revolutionary mob.  I watch black cops talk about how it tears their hearts up to hold young black men in their arms, bleeding to death from shots fired by their peers, and know they will have to deliver the tragic news to some worried mother.

 

There are no easy explanations for all this.  There is no sinner, or contingent of various sinners that we can blame for all this rage, not even corporate capitalists.  Let she who is without sin cast the first stone is not a cliche, it is a well polished pearl of wisdom.

 

Soon, all these people will have their day in court.  I've been there, when I broke up with my husband.  It was a mess.  No fun for us or our son.  There were cops and banging on doors and yelling in the middle of the night.  I was so glad for someone who had the authority of the state to help bring things under control, including myself.  

 

Weeks after the drama in the streets I was amazed how the sober air of that courtroom made me feel almost as though I was floating.  Everything came to a dreadfully quiet halt.  Officials in uniforms made it clear that no one was to make a sound while court was in session.  No one was permitted to interrupt anyone with name calling, derisive laughter, witty comebacks, self righteous diatribes or even well meaning helpful insights on misguided behavior.  Each had their turn, plaintiff and defendant sitting in a chair, in an elevated box, given the sobering quiet space to collect their thoughts, guidance from the judge about the proceedings and what specifically was under question, and what, under the law was considered extraneous, what was admissible as evidence and what was hearsay.  I saw cokehead husbands flatly declare their wives were plotting against them, and was uplifted by the respect they were given, and the absolute dispassion of the judge who made it clear what would be considered evidence pointing toward the truth and what would not be considered evidence because it was an unsubstantiated accusation. 

 

I saw a few really slack lawyers, accepting money from clients though they clearly had no real defense.  But I also learned what it's like to think within the framework of the law, and clearly define weighty concepts that are often juggled frivolously in recreational conversation or fired indiscriminately in heated arguments.  I gained a lot of respect for lawyers.  

 

Libra is opposite Aries.  Around the 36th parallel Libra takes almost twice as long to rise as Aries. <--- (click to follow link)  A planet in Libra takes over 2 hours moving through the 1st house, while one in Aries springs up in an hour and 18 minutes.  Mars is now restrained in Taurus, but eventually it will also pass through Libra.  Venus will lead the way beginning Sept 17.  But even before that they will all, Sun and its court of Mercury and Venus, as well as militant Mars, pass through the Virgo gauntlet of rules and paperwork.  But I'm mostly looking ahead to Sept and Oct when we see Sun catching up to Mars while they are both in Libra.  I'm remembering those sobering but uplifting moments in court when the authority of the state felt like a boon to me, looking back on chaotic periods in my life and feeling relieved that they are behind me but grateful for the lessons they taught me.

 

I don't like the chaos, but my faith that things can and often do improve, is deeper having survived it.  My ex husband is now my dearest friend.

Circular chart for Sunday Jan 10, 2021 showing Mars and  Uranus in early Taurus both 90 degrees from Jupiter and Mercury in early Aquarius.  Venus, Sun, Pluto and Saturn are in Capricorn right next to the planets in Aquarius.  click to enlarge.