Mars Retrograde and The Knight of Pentacles: Tilling Your Fields Helping Your Current Confusion?

Feeling a sense of rethinking everything you do, lately? Pouring extra focus into the grindstone, thinking that the extra work will alleviate the feeling of lostness? Feeling pressures about tedious issues, peripheral details, and checking over your shoulder.. wondering if there's something you're not doing right? All of these sensations causing you to recalibrate moving forward.. and as a bi-product, causing tension in your relationships?

 You may just be going through a hard time.. or, you could be experiencing a biennial occurrence known as the Mars Retrograde. Since Venus and Mercury have a closer orbit to the sun, we experience retrograde motion with them far more frequently. Mars is a little slower around the track, and thus we don't feel its retrograde as often.

What makes a planet go "retrograde" in motion, you ask? Ever watch two trains going down a train track at almost the same speed.. but one train speeds up just a few MPH faster than the other one.. passing it slowly, and making the other one look like it's "moving backward"? It's a bit like that. Earth, orbiting the same direction as the other planet (Mars, in this case), will pass up the planet, making it look like the other planet is "moving backwards" for a short period of time. How we tend to feel this backward motion experientially depends on the energy of the planet that's retrograding.. but it tends to give an internalized focus, throwing things from your past into your consciousness, and (especially in Mercury's case), causing specific challenges in regard to the theme of the planet.

With Mercury it's often no more than a month. With Mars.. we get the funk until mid-May this year. 

To make matters a bit more complex, Mars, warrior, thrusting, javelin-throwing Mars, who wants to simply GO, is currently in the diplomatic, Venus-rule signed of Libra. Libra, who goes, "Woah woah woah.. let's everybody get along. Let's not step on any toes here. CAREFUL WITH THAT SWORD! I'm sorry.. didn't mean to be impolite sir!" Libra. Polite, diplomatic Libra. Libra, who's certainly not going to ever move forward in a way one would label "attack". No. Libra has to keep the scale in balance, to consider all possible paths forward, first.

Mars is not very comfortable here. Mars just wants to power forward: teeth bared, shirt ripped off his muscular body, beating his chest like a gorilla. But instead he is forced to sit like Tarzan at a tea party when he's in Libra. Tamed, and not loving it. Instead of doing what he does best, which is simply giving us the drive to propel forward, the gasoline to go up the mountain without any doubts.. he is in a sign that focuses his awareness around himself; on relationships with others, on diplomacy with others, and on the prolonged consideration of forward movement. We get insecure. Wondering why we're not making progress, and on top of it.. we're extra insecure about our relationships or significant other (if we have one). Or insecure about not having one. Should we be moving forward if this isn't the fair thing to do for everybody? Are we balanced enough in EVERY area of our life, we ask? Surely there's a way to create a forward motion that makes everything harmonious, balanced, and checks every item on the list.

Add the retrograde motion to the already turned-inward Mars in Libra.. and you have a perfect confusion-fest. A feeling of suspended animation, self-inflicted loneliness, and losing yourself to working on all sorts of details that you seemed blissfully ignorant of just months ago.. not to mention a feeling of getting NOWHERE in the midst of it all.

So how are we responding to all of this? 

I drew a tarot card tonight. At first, it confused me.. and then in a beam of insight, it offered enormous clarity on what my response has been to the retrograde.

The Knight of Pentacles:

He sits on his horse; a thick, black steed that appears easily to be used for plowing as well as a recreational gallop through the countryside. But this knight isn't out for a pleasure ride. No, he holds responsibly within his right hand a singular pentacle. The representation of the empire he's building. His ambitions. His plans coming to fruition. His painstaking attention to detail.. sacrificing whatever material comforts he needs to in order to create the future he's working so hard at. He's the poster child for consciousness, reliability, tediousness, pessimism, realism, stubbornness, focus, and pragmatism. He's obviously just come from the freshly sown field behind him, where he's planned for all the little seeds' futures. He's not focused on what he's accomplished, though. No. This Knight is going to expect the worst and hope for the best. He's already focused on the next things he needs to do. He's already feeling the pressures of forward motion bearing down on him.. and all the dreams, pleasures, parties, and happy-go-lucky days are behind him. He can't even remember the last time he was able to do those things. No. Pleasure is to be revisited somewhere in the future.. after everything important is taken care of.

The backwards motion of Mars, especially in the results-oriented, intellectual sign of Libra.. has caused me to shift my energy completely from riding a wave of carefree Universal trust to "getting my shit together". The feeling of questioning my forward movement that came at the beginning of the retrograde has led to a response of action that I can only equate with the energy of The Knight of Pentacles. An overwhelming sensitivity to all of the aspects of "my field", an awakening to needs, details, and meticulous actions that are required to keep my life in the balance that Libra demands.

As a result, I've spread myself thin energetically, trying to sternly and realistically apply 150% to every little nuance of my life, all the while still feeling the pressures of Mars moving backward.. stealing any feeling of moving forward, and yet ever holding that pentacle in front of my nose. Just out of reach. 

Unnecessary and misdirected anger is also a result of this.. since Mars isn't allowing itself to feel freely while it's so focused on trying to till its fields to make its caged self feel better. And where have these been coming out, but in relationships! (Mars in Libra, remember? Keywords: relationship issues).

Mr. Knight is up on that horse alone.. nobody to be seen around him. but I'm sure as he gazes into that pentacle, he's told himself that one day, when he's accomplished everything he needs to accomplish, his relationships will be fixed as well. His love will be close to him. He'll have time for fun with his family. He'll play with his son. But all the while, the tension of misplaced relational need within him fuels his frustration to keep tilling his field relentlessly. Confused Mars, which answers the confusion with more force, is likely going to throw that force into an imbalance. Even though Mars has forged his plan to move forward and fix the confusion.. In Libra, his running gait will have to slow to a walk to not ruffle the relationships of those around him. Because he's moving backwards in the sign of relationships!

So, what do we do during this uncomfortable time?

I think the answer to the question is also housed within the Knight Of Pentacles Card. 

A beautiful key to the positivity of the Knight of Pentacles Card is the color of sun-yellow, drenching the entire background of the card. It's the color of being under the warm, rich sunlight. It's the color associated with the Solar Plexus Chakra, at the base of your sternum. This Chakra is your strongest sense of self, your self esteem, your calmness and initiation, clear direction, mental strength, friendliness, joy, and confidence. It's the Chakra that I believe is the answer to dealing with the misdirected Mars energies. This Chakra is linked strongly to the Sun, and drinking in long draughts of sun energy will strengthen the confidence within your Solar Plexus. When this Chakra is in balance.. we spend less time questioning.. and more time moving forward with simple, sunny confidence. Even if the planets are out of whack, we can do our best to respond to these energies by taking care of our personal energy fields. The Solar Plexus specifically answers the Mars Retrograde in a great way. Plus, it puts out a kind of positive vibe that will draw the positivity out of others.. and thus heal some of the relational disharmonies that are going on during this time. 

The Knight is also, obviously, doing what he loves. He's connected to nature. The outdoors. He's in the sun all the time. He's planting his fields because he loves the feel of seed in his gnarled hands, the feel of the soil under his fingers, the feel of a cool breeze over his skin. For as hard as he's working, he's still able to look out from his fields and enjoy the world around him. He prefers this to the life of a CEO, cooped up in an office. He simply wants to be in an environment that makes him feel alive. I believe this is also a positive answer to the Mars Retrograde. Let's find the love, joy, and play in what we are doing.. no matter how hard we're working. No matter how consumed we are in the "why" we are doing it. No matter how sensitive we currently are to others' expectations and reactions. When we shift the perspective of powerlessly struggling against our fate to gratefulness, love, and joy for our surroundings, we actually find the balance we are looking for. No need to try and artificially create it through more force. 

I'm lookin' at you, Mars.