Dear Friend and Reader:

Mercury retrograde is mostly behind us — everything except for the part where we repeat the aspects of the past few weeks, our friend the trickster moving in direct motion. It will be making aspects to many slow-moving planets, as I described in Thursday night’s issue.

At 5:08 am EDT on Tuesday, Mars forms a conjunction to Chiron in Aries. This happens on an approximately two-year cycle; the prior event was in very late Pisces in December 2018, as Chiron was in the process of changing signs into Aries.

There is something initiatory about this aspect: something I have seen can work to get us to the next phase of our lives, and place of awareness. Particularly with Aries and Mars involved, we have the potential to be at the beginning of something. First, let’s consider the factors involved as elements of consciousness and how it manifests in our conduct.

Remember that with Chiron, the essence of its purpose is to build awareness, strength, and ability to engage the healing process effectively. As is said in A Course in Miracles, “I will be healed as I let Him teach me to heal.”

The God of War and the Mentor of Warriors

In mythology, Chiron trained warriors, and Mars is the god of war. Though these are from two different orders of mythology, the two find a common home in the contemporary astrology chart, and they are now making a conjunction. This represents the full activation of both planets, in ways that seem to directly reflect the times in which we are living — particularly as the conjunction is the first in the sign Aries since 1975.

American society has Mars issues. All empires conquer and make war. The United States has a tendency to make war on itself. Whether we are talking about wars on drugs, poverty, cancer, crime, culture wars or war waged on the “novel” coronavirus (the “invisible enemy”), the concept of military action seems applicable to everything. Agent Orange, a chemical weapon abandoned as too horrendous for the Vietnam War, was dumped on the people of Oregon and Washington soon after.

The decades of mass shootings we have endured are a kind of guerrilla war on the population. This is supported by federal law, case law and policy that allows civilians to have weapons of war, who have fantasies of war against the government and people of color, and who make war against one another. Then there is the way that the police treat people — cops who are indistinguishable from a standing army lodged in every town, ready to wage war with conventional and chemical weapons at any moment.

Let’s remember what a “litigious” society the United States is — which is a ritualized form of war.

Mars issues. That’s what they look like in a country. In individuals, they look like tense, angry, aggressive people who are looking to strike out at anything in reach — or else taking the issues out on themselves in the form of resentment and guilt. They do not discriminate on the basis of sex, gender or sexual orientation.

(Note: the United States was founded with Chiron in Aries.)

Bringing Anything Unresolved Up for Healing

Chiron transits have a knack for bringing up everything that is unresolved at that point. It’s possible to suppress things for a while, however, then the next transit arrives and the issues will come up either a little more intensely, or be compounded. Chiron transits are like checkpoints and opportunities to catch up with yourself.

Chiron serves to raise awareness of what we need to work through, first by focusing attention, which makes the issues evident, or precipitates a crisis. In its most literal form, Chiron represents medical issues, as Chiron taught the medical arts to Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine. Chiron had the unusual role of being both a physician, surgeon and teacher, as well as mentor to the greatest heroes of Greek lore.

So where we are today is interesting in light of this. Our society is faced with what seems to be a medical crisis. Yet this crisis is a distraction from every other issue, which include the consequences of being the most medicated population in the world, as well as one contaminated by wave after wave of toxins dumped on our food, our land and put into our bodies. Our medical system knows next to nothing about healing, and as I am discovering, even less about medicine.

In these very days, I am studying the troubled history of the polio vaccine, which is considered a medical miracle and is in truth one long train wreck. At the same time, I am working with researchers on developing the issue of cell line contamination — that is, viruses that make it into the research, development and manufacturing process, many of which are based on cancer cells or are known to be carcinogenic. Even with all I’ve covered, researched, and written about, what I am learning is so shocking I barely have words to describe how I feel.

Part of why somewhere around half of all Americans have one or more chronic diseases is, so far as I can tell, because they are as children repeatedly injected with a brew of viruses, formaldehyde, and heavy metals (among other things). Many children are persistently sick. Many American children now know of other kids who have died of cancer. This is new.

Our research on Covid-19 is revealing study after study that attributes nearly any symptom or outcome to the virus. It’s like the opposite of a miracle cure. If you believe all these super-rushed, un-vetted scientific studies, it could cause anything at all. Yet to believe that is to miss the larger point.

This situation can show us all that we’ve been missing about environmental pollution (Roundup, radiation, dioxin, plasticizers). It can show us all we’ve been missing about the toxic medications prescribed to so many people. It is most surely revealing the incompetence of the medical system. It can reveal our ignorance at taking care of ourselves. Most of all, we get a sense of how Americans address the concept of illness and wellness, and in particular, how we identify with these things.

Aries, the Sign of Identity

Aries is the sign of “I am,” which is always a concept or an idea. To assert identity is not the same as being, or existing.

Via the sign Aries, electrical communication technology and in particular, digital technology, have demolished people’s inner sense of self, leading to people living in a disembodied society. This is partly why so many are horrified by the idea of infection by a virus. From the standpoint of the cool, sleek, efficient and most of all disembodied digital world, the body and all of its processes are alien and disgusting.

We have replaced physicality with virtual existence, and have replaced self-knowledge with a massive public relations effort. As is said of certain famous people, they have a problem when they believe their own press releases.

Chiron in Aries represents the potential for us to rediscover ourselves as incarnated beings. In fact this is happening with the Covid crisis: what many people are experiencing is the shock of being pulled back into their bodies, and having to pay attention to their bodies.

If this occurs without sufficient spiritual development to identify with prime source (Shekinah or the Holy Spirit, the indwelling feminine aspect of God), the results can be deeply disturbing or terrifying. Body consciousness focused in the context of disease prompts issues related to death.

So the question is very much: who and what do you identify with? Even deeper, where do you tap your core energy? How you feel will reveal this to you.

Anyone who has had a chronic disease or even a serious injury knows the challenge of not having the issue take over your life and hijack your whole identity. Part of the healing process is claiming yourself back from identifying with the illness. This holds for psychic injuries to an equal or far greater extent. When people feel damaged or abused, their whole identity can be bent around their sense of injury. This is often experienced as the helpless or hopeless situation where there seems to be no way out. There is a way out.

When someone starts to identify with the healing process, you know they are making progress. That begins with wanting to feel better above all else. It includes forming your relationships based on that one objective. Often the most deeply injured personal characteristic is trust. Rebuilding trust takes patience, persistence, devotion and a bit of luck. There will be setbacks, though the alternative is living as you had previously.

With Mars conjunct Chiron, we are being summoned to identify with the healing process, and with growth, rather than with being injured. The injury must be seen in context as the thing that provokes awareness, healing and growth.

Correcting Our Misunderstanding of Maleness

One last thought. Mars, Chiron and Aries all pertain to maleness, whether physical or the inner masculine principle of all people. In particular, this combination of factors pertains specifically to the male wound.

Every now and then, our culture goes to war against men, in effect accusing them all of being capitalists, rapists, predators and creeps. Many people look on bewildered, but we still take on the poison. You may say that “all” is an exaggeration, but the guilt by association is plain to see. You can trust that many, many men feel like they’ve been falsely portrayed as worthless creeps when they have neither thought, said nor done anything to deserve it.

My clients who have sons have pointed out to me what a serious problem this is, and how terrified their sons are of even seeming like they are doing something wrong if they’re attracted to a girl. I think nearly all girls and women underestimate how intimidated boys and men are by women and by female sexuality.

These wars on men are waged against the very people who we have encouraged to be warriors all their lives. By this I mean soldiers, sailors, airmen, police officers, firefighters, or the people who swarm across the countryside to courageously repair the electrical grid after a natural disaster — almost all of whom are male-bodied people. When there is a mass shooting, and the SWAT team arrives, we expect to see a bunch of men, and we are grateful when they arrive. I am not saying these jobs should be done by men. I am describing who we expect to show up, and who actually does, most of the time.

Then society, or certain elements of society (helped by television and newspapers), attacks men for being “too male.” We are in a time in history where all of society’s problems (pollution, corruption, wealth inequality, sexism) are blamed on men. I cannot think of one systemic problem where it is in vogue to blame women.

At the same time, society discards men when they are no longer able to perform their traditional roles. If you were to listen to certain discussions, you might get the notion that in those communities, men are not considered human.

Even Planet Waves was once the scene of a debate about whether male children should be protected from sexual predators (of any variety), or whether we should just protect the girls. To me, it seems obvious that if we are going to protect anyone, we must protect everyone.

What I find so incredible about these discussions, whenever they happen, is that there is never an offering or opportunity to come somewhere to heal, or to be this supposedly better person everyone seems to want men to be. I just do not understand that. We are talking about half of the human race. We cannot excommunicate men, or degrade their rank to subhuman. We all have legacies in our lives with men, and with the men in our lives, and these are calling for reconciliation. Nearly everyone has men in their life whom they love and depend on. And we are all responsible for the nurturing and support of young people — including boys and young men.

A Personal Calling to Heal All Things Male

This is a spiritual issue on the deepest level. This wounded notion of maleness is described elegantly by Mars conjunct Chiron in Aries. Aries has an unusual property of being the most personal sign and yet somehow simultaneously, the most public or transpersonal. Further, any perception that a female person has of men is a reflection of her inner masculine. So this affects everyone.

This aspect is urging us to correct our misunderstanding of maleness. Put simply, if women are equal to men, men are equal to women — equal and equivalent. We all bear responsibility for ourselves and for our society. Sexism in any form is not OK.

The human form is powered by an energetic polarity that exists between what we think of as maleness and what we think of as femaleness, in their most elemental expressions, in each and all of us. There is no way to disparage one side of the polarity without disparaging everyone.

Isn’t it time we stop doing that? Isn’t it time to make peace with one another and ourselves? Making peace with maleness also means making peace with male sexuality — which to some degree we all contain. I would propose that it includes listening to how the men in your life feel about how they are perceived.

Mars conjunct Chiron in Aries is an initiation. It is an invitation. It is the call to awakening. It is the call to healing. It is the timely calling to claim our birthright as those who help and heal, rather than those who wage war — on anything, or on anyone.

With love,

Note to readers: I will not be writing an article this coming Thursday. I will be back in your inbox next with Planet Waves FM on Friday. You may also follow the newly revamped, revived and reborn Daily Planets feature on our new website.