life on mars
No, I am not throwing down the gauntlet to Heather Couper, John Gribbin, Patrick Moore, or any other of our astronomical friends!.. but I would like to show you some effects of living with a 4th House Mars.This is personal material, for which I apologise. On the other hand, it is the most immediate and reliable with which any of us may work, presented to us relentlessly, day after day, moment by moment. Therefore it might as well be put to good use. It is necessary to add at the outset that the Mars in question widely conjoins the IC near the end of Sagittarius, and is also in a loose square to 1st House Neptune and the Virgo Ascendant. These of course are the Tropical positions. Also pertinent is the difficulty of this Mars in the Heliocentric chart. As any of you will see from my book, should you obtain a copy, there is much to suggest that patterns at the Helio level describe conditions that are very deeply rooted in our spiritual being for some reason - either the picture of our individual moral state, or perhaps, like the fairies' gifts at the christening, those blessings and curses which we are given as tests of our courage and integrity. These patterns certainly appear to have a great deal to say about one's more intractable physical problems. This particular Mars is found in a T-square with Venus and Uranus (and wide opp. Saturn) from the beginning of Sagittarius.
pain, pleasure, shock or dietary stimulant; and it has manifested in a number of ways. For many years it meant a 'short fuse' and an associated tendency to over-react, also periodic panic attacks (the worst of these brought on after sitting up all night talking and chain-drinking instant coffee!) The two effects I want to look at here are the attacks of Migraine that have been both a plague and an education since I turned 40, and the interesting phenomenon of Telaesthesia.
Telaesthesia The migraine is the more important issue; so let me tell you about the telaesthesia first. For those of you who haven't come across this, it is the distant experiencing of another's sensations. Until Monday February 1st 1971 I had no idea it existed. That day I was waiting my turn in a dentist's crowded surgery, and picked up an aging magazine. In it was the story of twin sisters, one of whom underwent all the pain of the other's illness and hospital treatment, while living hundreds of miles away. I consigned it to the mental files, had my own treatment, and went home. During the evening a fit of quite uncharacteristic depression came on, and by bedtime I was crying. For some unaccountable reason I felt bereft of someone or something. It was four o'clock the next morning before the weird feeling of sickness passed in a bout of retching, a sense of something alien and heavy in my stomach eventually left me, and sleep came. Halfway through breakfast, our closest friend was on the doorstep with the news that her husband, also our dear friend, was recovering in hospital from an attempted suicide the previous afternoon. By a fluke, he was found in time, stomach-pumped for most of the night, and out of danger at four o'clock in the morning. Not only had part of me gone through the experience with him, but Someone Up There had made sure that I understood what was going on, albeit in retrospect! One finds these patterns: The author's Mars, and all its afflicting planets, are involved in the action.
Atropos, for those as yet unacquainted with the host of smaller asteroids, is that named for the third Fate, she who finally snips the thread of life spun by her sister Clotho and woven by Lachesis. Our friend so nearly died; perhaps the involuntary astral (?) presence of someone who cared for him acted as an extra life-support system during the emergency. The presence of Amor in the patterns, signifying unconditional love, is one of the keys to the suicide attempt; he was trying to escape an impossible love affair with a young Piscean woman blackmailing him with her own threats of suicide. Twenty years later, in early 1991, I had trouble sleeping again - this time over a period of many weeks. Waking repeatedly in the night, it would feel as if I had come straight out of a nightmare that was impossible to recall; every nerve was on fire and taut with an unexplained terror. When the immediate business of the Gulf War was over, undisturbed nights gradually returned. After the earlier experience, it did seem possible that for some reason this war involved me. That was that - until, some months later, there was another short run of awful nights. Recently the problem recurred. On each of these later occasions, the following morning brought news of further trouble in - quite specifically - Kurdestan. Now, I have no conscious relationship with this part of the world, and still found these coincidences puzzling. Maybe the chart of Iraq had something to say?
Look at the close alignment of Iraq's dwad Mars with my progressed Aquarius IC, its radix Mars, Sedna and South Node on my draconic Aries Asc, and its sidereal (historic) Mars on my Ruling Ceres/Neptune. On my Mars is Iraq’s draconic Sun. The Mars, Saturn and Neptune contacts to Angles are so powerful, one must infer some past connection of a violent nature, which has added its imprint to the tension in the author’s skies, and required her to share the present misery in this particular way. There is a little poem about the experience elsewhere on this site.
Migraine |