Fired Up: Directing Mars' Energy

There’s a Cesar Millan video about an un-neutered family dog whose unsatisfied mating instinct leads to food aggression. An astrologer would note that aggression is a quality of Mars. In our own lives, when our passions and energy are not directed constructively, they can run amok as the dog's does in the video. 

Imagine Mars is transiting through your busy 9th house in Libra. You become aggressively dogmatic about the way your family makes sandwiches. You are suddenly passionate about two half-sandwiches being made as a single and cut in half rather than one piece of bread being cut in half to make a half sandwich, etc, etc. It’s so boring it hardly bears discussion, but for one evening, mis-made sandwiches put a fire in your belly, your eyes, your heart and your words. Aesthetics! Order! Harmony! have been upended by this sloppy approach to sandwich making!! (Imagine you have an abundance of Virgo in your chart, too.)

The staunch defense of territory already explored and of established systems is the 9th house gone wrong. Getting it right, on the other hand, requires channeling Mars’ fire into widening your territory, summoning the courage to explore beyond the known. 

Cesar Millan’s job, as the dog whisperer, is to temper the dog’s aggression so it doesn’t have to be put down. Your job with Mars is to channel it into behaviors that fire you up in a constructive way.

If you won’t let Mars rave and rampage, AND you don’t channel it into some vivifying adventure, there’s a third way, sadder but often considered “nice” by social standards. You can neutralize your inner fervor, tamp it down, bank the coals of your inner fire. 

Clarice Lispector quenches her inner fire to fit the polite life of a diplomat’s wife. She writes her sister, “From the moment I resigned myself, I lost all my vivacity and all my interest in things. Have you seen the way a castrated bull turns into an ox? That is what happened to me. … To adapt to something I can’t adapt to, to get over my dislikes and my dreams … I cut off inside me the way I could hurt others and myself. And at the same time I cut off my strength.” (Why This World, Benjamin Moser 175)