Mars in Virgo's Antiseptic Sting Opposite Chiron in Pisces

Mars in Virgo is opposite ouchy, ouchy Chiron in Pisces, and I'm re-posting excerpts of an article from February's Pisces New Moon, as the energetic themes apply.

Mars in Virgo is currently in the final Grand Earth Trine formation of its transit, along with Mercury in Taurus and Pluto in Capricorn. This formation has been with us off and on since November 2011, and, though ultimately beneficial for accuracy, direction, positioning, and concrete progress, it has been quite heavy and arduous at times.

This formation completes and starts to loosen as of the final aspect - Mars trine Pluto - around mid-day on May 16.

If we use non-planet Chiron, its position in Pisces makes this Grand Earth Trine a kite, which means the wounded healer plays a pivotal role, and its often painful themes are stirred at this time.

We're at the end of the astrological Piscean era. The last puffs of old school Neptunian ether are tapering off, and we're being left with heavy doses of gravity and reality courtesy of Mercury, Mars, and Pluto in the earth signs. In many cases, this has meant a sharp, no-nonsense re-direction by Mars in Virgo coming out of its retrograde. The paring down to only the most necessary, effective, accurate, and concrete.

Old dreams are dissipating, though we may not notice until they're already gone.

Things longed for, hoped for, and secretly held dear have disappeared into the vapours.

We're left now with the solid, earth-based building materials on this planet. We're left with what's really going to happen. We're having to remake our dreams for an astrological Aquarian overlay without really knowing what that's going to mean.

Many of the things people had put their faith in have not come to pass. Many of the things people were led to believe have proven manipulative, diversionary, abusive, even criminal. Often, this has meant rapidly and painfully reformulating in whom and in what people have placed their faith.

The pain, the dangling carrots, and the wounding illusions of the entire astrological Piscean era are tied up in this Chiron placement, and Mars in Virgo is doing its utmost here to lead us out.

It's not comfortable, but it is effective, as long as we take our full dose of clarifying Mars in Virgo medicine.

We really are carving out a new expression for Pisces here, an expression of Pisces for the astrologicial Aquarian era. No one said it would be easy.

From February 18, 2012: New Moon in Pisces Conjunct Neptune, Pallas Athene, and Chiron: Carving Out Pisces for the Aquarian Era

"At the points where the burden of awareness has been too great, where we could not take another step under its paralyzing weight, we're released.

But we have to want it, and we have to be willing to go for it.

To survive emotionally and psychically now, knowing all we know, feeling all we feel, seeing all we see, we have to get out from under the most suffocating weight of it. The outpouring flow of the compassionate heart must be gently stemmed, moving into a place where to love and feel does not mean the sacrifice of personal health and safety.

Here, we step into a smart, new expression of Pisces, fully aware of the context of the times and of our context within them...

The transit and retrograde of Mars through Virgo...assist us in the process. We're picking through, analyzing, removing from the expression of the sign anything redundant, bloated, draining, past its prime. We apply the stinging Virgoan antiseptic, starting to create function in the sign of Pisces in areas where there has for too long been only dysfunction. We also apply the healing Piscean understanding of the way it all works together, of the ways it's shared, bringing new life to areas that have remained sorely isolated, neglected, outside the fold.

Wounded healer Chiron is here, and so is pain. A more in-depth treatment of this placement can be found here: Chiron, May We Pass? from February 18, 2011.

The intense levels of psychic pain held at this point in human history, collectively left denied and unvoiced, truly have the potential to do us in. The psychic backwash drops over us in waves, often without warning, threatening to drag us under. The homeless, the alcoholics, the addicts, the mentally ill, the depressed, the prostituted, the murdered, the missing are symbols of this unaddressed psychic pain and the resulting dysfunction, symptomatic of deeper roots. They've done all they can, said all they can, and still most don't see the connections.

It seeps into suburbia, into condo buildings, into schools and offices, and still people won't put their fingers on it.

Chiron transits Pisces until 2019. The first half of the Neptune transit through Pisces is coloured strongly by this body out in front in the sign.

"There is no easy answer, just as there was no easy answer for Chiron's wound. No magic pill makes it all better. We're past the point where concessions and tokenism soothe in any form. We don't want to be thrown another bone.

Until the underlying wounding dynamics are truly addressed, rectified, discontinued, no long-term healing is possible. We're just treating symptoms.

And the army of people bleating about victim consciousness and creating your own reality works very effectively, moving us further from the depth of understanding of power dynamics and structures on this planet that would get us to the true healing points. Every flippant use of those concepts is another pound of pressure pinning Sedna down, suffering in betrayal on the ocean floor."

Before forgiveness, we need to understand the underlying dynamics, give them name, give them voice, change them, ensure they don't continue.

Before healing, we need to get to the roots, working for complete systemic change rather than just anesthetizing, masking symptoms and calling it healing.

Before the victimization cycles can end, we need to understand why these damaging cycles have been held in place for so long and why they continue to be reinforced. Who benefits from them and who would prefer things go on just as they have? We don't get rid of "victims" until we alter the systems and dynamics that benefit from victimization, and that requires a shift from blaming people for their circumstances to a focus and analysis of the power dynamics on a socio-political level...

For the past eight years, the focus has been intensely on the transition. What to leave behind with a soft, sweet kiss, what to battle our way out of tooth and nail, and what to carry ahead with us...

We've moved through the grief, the confusion, the catatonia, and we're coming out the other side - because we have to. We're needed. We go on from here...

We don't forget. We don't deny. We don't sever from us all that has come before and all that is happening now. This would only increase the psychic struggle. We take the wonder and the pain and the difficulty and the beauty with us. But we don't carry it anymore as a hopeless burden, as endless, roiling suffering.

What has gone on, what has been done, is known. We know and feel what humanity, what all living things on this planet have suffered, have endured. We know what we suffer and endure now. We move forward with it shared among us, no one isolated in its pain and difficulty. It's part of us.

But again now, we move this story forward."

Yes, now. We've had enough time with the Piscean dreams. We've held out for them right until the end, but now it's time to carve out a new path.

Mars in Virgo doesn't have any more time to wait.

This sometimes arduous earthy energy starts to shift rapidly by Sunday, May 20 when the Sun enters Gemini, and we experience a zero degree Gemini New Moon - the first of two New Moons in the sign - that is also an annular solar eclipse. This means, the eclipse would be total, but the Moon is too far away from the Earth for its body to entirely cover the Sun.