Focus USA: The Long Stay of Mars in Aries

(first posted on Liz Hathway Astrologer Facebook Page on May 30th 2020)

Mars is particularly highlighted this year because he will make a so called ‘long-stay’ in his home sign Aries. I first read about the ‘long stay ‘of Mars in an article written by Dane Rudhyar, published in An Astrological Anthology. It concerns a specific pattern whereby Mars completes his retrograde period within the same zodiac sign. Normally Mars will spend around six weeks in a sign, however during a long stay, he will be in the same sign for approximately six months. When retrograde, a planet outside of the earth’s orbit Rudhyar wrote, will be closer to earth and therefore able to impress itself more forcibly on our consciousness. Mars in Rudhyar’s view, represented the element of action, and of exteriorisation, ‘it brings things out’. Rudhyar advised astrologers to look at Mars in relation to the prevailing planetary picture, but I think it is also useful to consider the history of past cycles. The United States seems to resonate strongly with the long stay of Mars in Aries and so I will take the US as an example.  Continue reading

In terms of faith and religion, the solstitial sign Capricorn is associated with ancient traditions, pagan faiths, and earth worship. With Jupiter approaching its first conjunction with Pluto since the conjunction on the galactic center in 2007 and its first conjunction in Capricorn since 1771, the  spectacle yesterday of Pope Francis delivering a special Urbi et Orbi blessing from Rome, one of the centers of classical antiquity, seemed to me most timely. Unlike Saturn and Jupiter, there were no temples to worship the god Pluto in Ancient Rome. If a person wanted to invoke Pluto, they would go to some wild place and find an opening into the earth, and there beat the ground with the palms of their hands, and quite literally invoke him, call him up from his realm deep within the earth. Pluto really is an ancient chthonic force which entices us to exit the temple and to venerate nature instead. Continue reading

Equinox News…

I was interested to compare the 2008 Aries ingress, with Jupiter and Pluto in Capricorn, with the 2020 Aries ingress. The 2008 chart has Sun square Mars in fall in Cancer and square Pluto in early Capricorn (in fact it is on the axis of the world). In the current ingress chart, the Moon’s Nodes are close to the position of the 2008 Mars/Pluto opposition. I am sure we all remember that 2008 signaled the beginning of an economic melt down, followed by austerity (massive cutbacks of course in social care, hospital beds, frontline services, etc. ). There is of course nothing buoyant about Jupiter in Capricorn, though Jupiter being Jupiter, it will bring great benefits to some (debt collectors, pawn shops, undertakers, to name just a few). Continue reading