Mars: Retrograde/June 26^th, Opposition/July 26–27^th, Direct/August 27^th

Where­as Mer­cury moves ret­ro­grade 3 times a year for about 23 days each time, and Venus ret­ro­grades about every 1.5 years for about 40 days, Mars will move ret­ro­grade about every 2 years and 2 months, and this time it will do so for 62 days. It is the plan­et that goes ret­ro­grade the least, so you should always take advan­tage of this opportunity.

When­ev­er a plan­et is mov­ing ret­ro­grade it is actu­al­ly mov­ing clos­er to the Earth; Mars and Earth will be clos­er to one anoth­er than at any time when we reach the mid­point of the ret­ro­grade, when Mars is Oppo­site the Sun, with the Earth between the Sun and Mars. This time that will occur on July 26–27^th.

Though some might con­sid­er a plan­et to be some­how “weak­ened” by mov­ing back­wards, you must remem­ber that this is only an appear­ance for us here on Earth. In the mat­ter of Mars, it is we on Earth who are “catch­ing up” to Mars and pass­ing by, as if we were on an inside lane of a race track. More­over, as we do catch up we make our clos­est approach to Mars as it “grows” big­ger and brighter. Mars, the Avatar of Desires and Actions will shine red­der than ever, and much will be stirred with­in and around you too. You will see Mars most lumi­nous, a glow­ing crim­son orb, when it forms the oppo­si­tion to the Sun at the end of July.

Mars rules your actions and desires, it serves your “self” (the Sun) by pro­vid­ing the dri­ve to secure your needs and wants. But when it turns ret­ro­grade it sig­nals a time for you to turn inward. Mars ret­ro­grade offers you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to re-exam­ine what exact­ly it is that you do desire, and, just as impor­tant­ly, it calls upon you to re-con­sid­er how you should secure it.

This time Mars is ret­ro­grad­ing through Aquar­ius until August 12^th, and then con­tin­ues to ret­ro­grade in Capri­corn until it turns direct on August 27^th, so the review of your desires and aims will be upon your dreams of a bet­ter world to be made true, and then shift to con­sid­er­a­tions about your path of self-ful­fill­ment and your respon­si­bil­i­ties. It will prin­ci­pal­ly bring a re-exam­i­na­tion of your friend­ships and com­mu­ni­ties, and it will remind you that your dreams are made of one anoth­er, and you can only be ful­filled if their dreams come true too.

Many observers have not­ed that when­ev­er Mars turns ret­ro­grade the forces of Self-Asser­tion seem to slip beyond the nor­ma­tive bounds of cau­tion or self-restraint, and we find increas­ing man­i­fes­ta­tions of aggres­sion and even violence…yes, there is real “dan­ger” here.

The mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­use of Spir­i­tu­al Ener­gies is always a prob­lem no mat­ter what is hap­pen­ing “up there”. But the time of Mars Ret­ro­grade stirs more strong­ly the shad­owed depths of the human psy­che where hurts and resent­ments have fes­tered, and the result of this stir­ring of painful ener­gies inflames pas­sion, stokes fear and anger, and this col­li­sion of pas­sion, pain and anger erupts in actions that can lead to the harm­ing of one­self or of others.

Always remem­ber, the Ener­gies evoked or stoked by Mars are nei­ther “good” or “bad”…rather it is your degree of spir­i­tu­al aware­ness and evo­lu­tion that will indi­cate how the ener­gy will be received. And, then how you will pass it on equal­ly depends upon your own spir­i­tu­al devel­op­ment and self-con­trol. How you receive the Ener­gies around you, how you work with them, and in what form will you pass them on is deter­mined by your Spir­i­tu­al Inte­gra­tion and Awareness.

To the extent that you have become more Self-Mas­ter­ful, guid­ed by your High­er Self and not your Ego, then to that same extent will you be able to wield your Phys­i­cal, Emo­tion­al, Men­tal and Intu­ition­al Pow­ers in a Lov­ing and Con­struc­tive Man­ner. And, to the extent that you remain unin­te­grat­ed, with con­flicts with­in and between your Hier­ar­chi­cal Nature of Body, Feel­ings, Mind and Spir­it, then to that same extent will you act Destruc­tive­ly towards your­self and/or towards oth­ers. This is true always.

This is why Mars mov­ing ret­ro­grade is such an oppor­tu­ni­ty for spir­i­tu­al quick­en­ing. What Mars ret­ro­grade can and should be used for is to take this time and use it to pierce through those self-made shad­ows of old fears and hurts. You can trans­form your­self and your world by over-turn­ing lim­it­ed fear-formed desires, trans­form­ing those mis­di­rect­ed ener­gies into aspi­ra­tions. Mars ret­ro­grade is tru­ly a time to stir your awak­en­ing, as you con­tin­ue on the one true path of greater mind­ful­ness, uncon­di­tion­al love and a cen­tered will.

In the end, as always, it comes quite sim­ply down to one thing, do you Love Your­self? Do you have and know the Love of your High­er Self as real and ever present and before you at all times? Do you stand in its pres­ence, so that this eter­nal foun­tain-source of love per­vades your entire being and all of your actions too? And, from this expe­ri­ence of your true self you will equal­ly know that you are to treat the oth­er before you as you treat your­self, with uncon­di­tion­al love too.

Mars is the part of your jour­ney informed by your Desire. You are always on the path of awak­en­ing, of learn­ing to become a bet­ter or more com­plete human. Yes, as long as you strive to become out­ward­ly what you are in your High­er Self, to be ful­ly awak­ened, to become a Deva or shin­ing one, you will con­tin­ue on this jour­ney to dis­cov­er, accept and embrace your true nature which is Spir­it, which is Love.

As Mars grows brighter, night after night, as you move towards that moment of greater rev­e­la­tion, take time to re-con­sid­er where you are going and how you are get­ting there. Look more deeply with­in your­self and ask:

“Is this what I should aim for, is this the way to move my dreams and the dreams of oth­ers clos­er to the One Uni­ver­sal dream? Is this the noble path forged and formed by uncon­di­tion­al Love and Truth? Is this the way we will enter with song and laugh­ter, to become that shin­ing city on the hill?”

In the end, as it was at the beginning,

We are here to be the Light,

We are here because of Love.

Just Love one another.

We all want to know where we are going; we all want to know what is around the next bend in the riv­er of our life. We all want to under­stand “the what, where and why” of this jour­ney in spirit.

But if you would under­stand your path and your won­der­ful des­tiny, you need to turn around. You need to more clear­ly under­stand and hold to the essen­tial truth found­ed upon where you have come from; you need to under­stand what makes you what you are. You need to re-con­nect to your “self” at the cen­ter of you if wish to build a life that is right and lumi­nous for you.

Yes, it is always the right time, and it is cer­tain­ly time­ly now in the month that is Can­cer, to come back to your cen­ter, and to align with your sacred sense of home once more. Your home is not mere­ly a space, it is your deep and lov­ing con­nec­tion to the roots of your being. Yes, here in Can­cer it is time to swim once again in the waters of your begin­nings, to feel your­self as you are in your inner­most and high­er self, for you are a divine being made of light and love.

But this must equal­ly remind, reaf­firm and bring you to a place of peace as you intu­itive­ly come to feel that “you are you” pre­cise­ly because your jour­ney is not sep­a­rate from all that is around you. You are part of a very ancient line of spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion. You are part of the fam­i­ly of human. But most fun­da­men­tal­ly and lov­ing­ly, you are equal­ly and most mar­velous­ly a sparkling dew­drop of the One Spir­it, you are a one of the One.

Yes, you will start in any life to feel your imme­di­ate con­nec­tions to your moth­er and father, to your broth­er and sis­ter, with grand­moth­er and grand­fa­ther, to aunt and uncle too. But then as you lift your aware­ness you will see the more encom­pass­ing, affirm­ing inti­ma­cies and shared affec­tions among your friends and col­leagues. You will extend your­self beyond the bor­ders of time itself and feel your ances­tors stretch­ing back into the mists of his­to­ry. And then in the present day, you will equal­ly dis­solve the bor­ders that sep­a­rate you from your greater fam­i­ly, as you forge fel­low­ships with oth­er peo­ples, cul­tures and lands as part of your fam­i­ly too.

Yes, you are sin­gu­lar, you are one of a kind…and you are so very spe­cial. But, you also belong to this greater fam­i­ly of human. And, you will most cer­tain­ly feel, if not now then some­day, that you are relat­ed to all of the count­less life-forms that fill the entire cos­mos too. Why? Because All of this is the One; and you and I and all the stars above are part of this fam­i­ly too.

That is why we look to the exam­ple of the great souls, the wise ones we look to as Mas­ters, because we feel their deep car­ing, uncon­di­tion­al love and com­pas­sion. We feel this because they live in the one abid­ing truth:

We are all relat­ed.

And that is why,

What­ev­er you do to the least of these, you also do to the One.

So, there is but one injunc­tion for your entire jour­ney, and it will bring you home,

Love one another!

Yes, in Can­cer we cel­e­brate where we have come from…the stars. And from this we also under­stand what our des­tiny is too. We are part of a fam­i­ly that stretch­es back to the begin­ning of time and extends to the far­thest reach­es of this Creation.

We came from the stars,

And we were made to shine.

We are all related,

And we will find,

That our truest home is in our heart.

For we are here for one another,

From the begin­ning and for all time,

We are here because of love,

We are here to love and be Loved.

I thought it might be help­ful, espe­cial­ly for those who pre­fer to read rather than lis­ten, to have a Tran­script of my com­ments on this top­ic on my lat­est Radio Show:

One of the more con­se­quen­tial themes of human social devel­op­ment through the ages has been the ongo­ing inter­de­pen­dent, ever-chang­ing bal­ance between the con­di­tions of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty. At var­i­ous points in his­to­ry, with­in any cul­ture as well as between dif­fer­ent cul­tures, there has been this rec­i­p­ro­cal bal­ance between the degree to which peo­ple are freer to express them­selves as more indi­vid­ual, to dif­fer­en­ti­ate them­selves from their var­i­ous groups, and times when the larg­er social order, (of fam­i­ly, com­mu­ni­ty, eth­nic­i­ty, and state) are able to more close­ly or nar­row­ly define and often cir­cum­scribe that indi­vid­ual freedom.

In exam­in­ing the cycle of Uranus and Nep­tune, we can dis­cern a rhythm or heart­beat of this cen­tral theme of human devel­op­ment. Their cycle of rela­tion­ship is about 170 years long, begin­ning at their con­junc­tion. The last con­junc­tions were 1993, 1821 and 1650. At each of these moments an old order of the rela­tion­ship between the indi­vid­ual and their “com­mu­ni­ties” end­ed, and a new one began. In 2017 and 2018 and into 2019 we have arrived at the first stage of their new cycle, the semi-square or 45-degree angle, or what we would call a cres­cent moon phase. The pre­vi­ous times we were at such a moment were 1845–47, and 1673–75.

It is at such a time, at the cres­cent phase of any plan­e­tary pair, when the emerg­ing new theme released at the con­junc­tion (or New Moon) is encoun­ter­ing the counter-vail­ing forces of the past. It is very much a strug­gle between a new way of being that is brought face to face with the fear­ful pulls and push­es of the old order try­ing to restore itself. This strug­gle between more indi­vid­ual free­dom and more com­mu­ni­ty or com­mu­nal con­for­mi­ty will play out dur­ing the entire 170-year cycle again and again. But at these par­tic­u­lar peri­ods or moments it will cer­tain­ly become more acute. We are at such a time right now.

When either of these ener­gy-forms becomes imbal­anced with the oth­er, we either move towards extreme forms of inde­pen­dence, (and break our bonds of fel­low­ship), or we bind our­selves into indi­vid­u­al­i­ty-deny­ing forms of com­mu­nal­ism, (which can or will lead to the break­down in the integri­ty of each mem­ber of the group). There is a need for Life, for Spir­it to find itself by being One and True, but it also can only do this by being part of some­thing greater, of belong­ing and being formed by some­thing larg­er too. As I like to say, “We all want to be One of a Kind; but we also can only find our Mean­ings and Val­ues by being part of some Kind”.

The cycle that began in 1993 has now reached a crit­i­cal moment. It should be appar­ent and clear to many if not most peo­ple, that we are wit­ness­ing through­out the world this high­er ten­sion between Free­dom and Com­mu­nal life-ways, and it is rip­ping cul­tures, eth­nic­i­ties, com­mu­ni­ties and even fam­i­lies into ever more frag­ment­ed rela­tion­ships and group­ings. You could say that the Cen­tripetal force of Free­dom has become severe­ly unbal­anced in its inte­gral rela­tion­ship with the Cen­trifu­gal force of Love. The ego­is­tic, nar­cis­sis­tic and divi­sive ener­gies appear ascen­dant; Love, sac­ri­fice and com­mu­nal­ism are in retreat. As they become unhinged or out of bal­ance with one anoth­er, each seem­ing­ly devolves into a twist­ed or warped ver­sion of its high­er nature.

In such a time, Free­dom becomes ripped from shared affec­tions, becom­ing self­ish and nihilis­tic; then equal­ly in response, the prin­ci­ple of Love becomes bound­ed by the fear of the unfa­mil­iar, affec­tions are nar­rowed and retreat inward­ly to often anachro­nis­tic anchors like trib­al group­ings based on “blood and soil”. The true com­mu­nal foun­da­tions of our com­mon ances­try, that we all can trace our phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al roots to the same cause, this essen­tial root of us all seems to devolve, and the Cen­ter that is the force that binds the entire uni­verse, true spir­i­tu­al Love, that love can­not hold for a time and soci­eties devolve into dis­as­so­ci­at­ed groups, made of fear-filled group­ings, tribes formed upon fear, who look upon the “the oth­er” as the car­ri­er of dark­ness, blame and fear.

Yes, it would appear, if we were only to go by the head­lines and news sto­ries, that the cata­bol­ic forces of fear and hatred are out-pac­ing the one abid­ing, true and supreme force of in this uni­verse, Love. But we need not, nor should we retreat or suc­cumb to fear. Because we can also find com­fort and reas­sur­ance in our his­to­ry. We can find inspi­ra­tion and con­fir­ma­tion of our own respons­es to this chal­lenge by look­ing at what came before in a time such as this. Dur­ing the same moment in the pre­vi­ous cycle, dur­ing the 1840’s, we saw the emer­gence of new forms of con­scious­ness and social organizations.

In the USA, the ris­ing tide against slav­ery, the cease­less efforts of peo­ple and groups, find­ing com­mon pur­pose and sen­si­bil­i­ties guid­ed by love, flowed into the abo­li­tion­ist and oth­er social jus­tice move­ments that were coun­ter­points to the ris­ing tide of anti-immi­grant fears and oth­er ret­ro­gres­sive reac­tions. These fear-filled and love-coun­tered actions were fueled and fos­tered by the changes in the econ­o­my and cul­ture, as the USA steadi­ly moved from a rur­al and agrar­i­an cul­ture into a more indus­tri­al and city-based one.

You could argue that it is not unlike our attempt to deal with the new­ly inter­con­nect­ed and fast chang­ing world of tech­nol­o­gy that we are attempt­ing to deal with in our own time. But as Life equals Spir­it, and Spir­it equals Life, the one con­stant truth in our jour­ney is this expe­ri­ence of change. What is not con­stant or con­sis­tent is how we respond or react to this change. We all have a choice, to respond with fear or hope, with love or hate.

Where can we find such stir­rings that will to the right bal­ance of Indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty in our time? I would argue that it peren­ni­al­ly emerges and/or remains ever-present “local­ly”. That there are in fact innu­mer­able instances, sto­ries, and strug­gles of love-formed efforts being made in local towns and larg­er com­mu­ni­ties to solve their prob­lems in this fast-chang­ing world. Though we may look to lead­er­ship from “on high”, it is in these small­er, more inti­mate set­tings that our new world is being formed.

Spir­it fills the spaces that are in need of greater under­stand­ing and kind­li­ness. Each of us can do our part to right some wrong, to be more con­sid­er­ate of oth­ers and to help those in need. All these so-called “lit­tle acts” of love are the build­ing blocks for the bet­ter world that is coming…for that world is com­ing through each and every one of us help­ing to make it so.

Astro­log­i­cal Mus­ings –Uranus and Nep­tune, Mars Ret­ro­grade (Sat­ur­day June 16, 2018)

In my sev­enth show of 2018 I will con­sid­er cur­rent Astro­log­i­cal con­di­tions as we approach the mid­dle of the cal­en­dar year. I will re-vis­it the main aspect for 2018, Uranus Semi­Square Nep­tune (exact again today), and exam­ine the impli­ca­tions of Mars turn­ing ret­ro­grade from June 26^th until August 27^th.

As before, I will answer your ques­tions dur­ing the show, whether on these top­ics or some oth­er mat­ter, includ­ing per­son­al ques­tions about your astro­log­i­cal chart. If you do wish to ask a per­son­al ques­tion, please be ready to pro­vide at least your birth date and birth place, and time of your birth if you have that too.

If you wish to sug­gest a sub­ject or top­ic for a future show, please email me as I would be hap­py to hear from you. My email is: billattride@gmail.com.

Here is the main link to Astrologer Bill Attride Radio:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride

Here is the link to the show on Sat­ur­day June 16^th @ 2 pm EDT:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/astrologerbillattride/2018/06/16/astrologer-bill-attride-radio-show-uranus-and-neptune-mars-retrograde

The phone num­ber to call if you wish to ask a ques­tion dur­ing the live show is: (516) 531‑9638.

Please join me on Sat­ur­day June 16^th at 2 pm EDT as we look at the cur­rent astro­log­i­cal indi­ca­tions and what they mean for you.