Mars Rx for Radical Deconditioning

As Mars retrogrades (Mars Rx) through Aries, we are asked to turn inward and sit with our wanting, examine our motives for action, and slow down long enough for us to assess if our ways of moving & shaking through the world are in alignment with our integrity.

Mars, guardian of the 6th House, calls us into duty. But before we blindly gear up for battle, expending our precious energy, we’re given the remainder of the year to get clear on…. Who do we work for?

In astrology, the 6th house rules work, routine, the day-to-day, health, and service. But feeling inbetween the lines, the 6th house is how we voluntarily participate in the system of capitalism. It is the work we do to keep the lights on and pay our rent. It’s how we show up to the insidious shoulds and supposed tos that guide our society. It’s the toxic patterns of productivity and hustle that keep us too tired at the end of the day to actually fulfill our purpose. The 6th house is what keeps the machine running.

As Mars slows and begins motion backwards, frustration builds. Our society is so grossly conditioned into constant forward motion that we’ve been led to believe that stillness is stagnation and that rest and reflection is lazy (A word that I, a Taurus Mars, deeply resent!) 

Integration is required for inspired action. Integration looks like relaxation, mediation, breath, sleep, joy, daydreaming, nothingness. But we’ve been so scared out of rest that we move through the world on autopilot, with all of this unintegrated wisdom and potential calcifying within us. Mars Rx is a cosmic intervention to stop us in our tracks.

During Mars Retrograde, our energy wanes, our willpower depletes, our drive fades into the background in order for us to turn into ourselves and ask… “why do we do the things we do?” and “who does our action serve?” - Chances are the places you devote most of your energy serve something or someone outside of yourself. That’s Capitalism, baby!

Given our current circumstances, and the in-your-face reality of the crumbling systems and structures around us, we are gifted with perspective. This perspective allows us to view the work of Mars Rx from a lens less clouded by the conditioning of Capitalism. Less beholden to the concept of “but that’s what we do because that’s how it’s always been done.” In the face of upheaval and uncertainty, the only clarity we find is that of impending change. 

Mars’ home for the next four months, Aries is the sign of the individual. 

The sovereign. 

The autonomous.

This cosmic call to inaction, is a call to get right with the self before moving forward. To burrow into ourselves and pull back the layers to discover what is at the core of our desires in this life. To reexamine their value to us and the world around us.

As we inch closer to the long awaited Saturn-Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius on December 21st, ushering a new age of being [Age of Aquarius, heard of her?], our sights are set on the collective. But in order to understand your role, you must understand yourself. And if we are so locked into the role we’ve been conditioned into - see: producer, product, laborer, servant, a cog in the machine - then we are forced to look away from the “less profitable” ways that we are meant to contribute.

Let’s get really real about a few things:

Profitable ≠ valuable

Busy ≠ productive

Accumulation of wealth ≠ success

This is the voice of Capitalism whispering sweet nothings into your ear so that you wake up every single morning and abandon yourself. We were born into a world that insists we industrialize our human experience. Which is gross. And leaves us sick, tired, and feeling valueless without work.

All of this is to say, the rest of 2020 is asking us to challenge these invisible driving forces. The universe is begging us to untether ourselves from the grips of the need to always be doing. To stop, sit, and question. 

And why is this deconditioning so radical? For something to be radical it is getting down to what is beneath the surface; to the roots. This year has exposed what has been lurking in shadow. This work is an untangling of our roots. Where we are given the space to separate ourselves from the expectations of the system at large.

This Mars Rx is a platform to learn our individual role and how we can offer it to the collective, outside of the machine of capitalism. When you’re not just another cog, who are you? What are you good at? What lights you up? What are you dying to learn, share, teach?

Whatever your answers are, we need them.

We need you, as we..

Decondition

Dismantle

And eventually…

Rebuild.

For right now, the seeds of the future are inward, my friends.

Go explore!