Mars In Cancer

Mars In Cancer - Setting Boundaries

"Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries of your environment."

— Marshall McLuhan

The powerful, initiatory effects of last week's Spring Equinox Aries New Moon is complicated by Pluto's entrance into Aquarius just after the New Moon. The growing power is strong but, intellectually at least, we are likely to struggle to understand exactly what it is that's been planted. For the most part, we are trying to 'straddle' the past and the future this week. Much of our ability to effectively communicate has been reworked over the last 6 months under the long retrograde of Mars in Gemini. That ability to communicate is tested this week. Now, with Mars in Cancer, we are likely to find ourselves more focused on setting up boundaries and establishing some kind of protection against the entirely new landscape in which we find ourselves. The potent growing force of the current lunar cycle and the significant pileup — Sun, Mercury, Chiron, & Jupiter — in Aries encourages individual action which may be either protective and self-serving or expansive and forward-leaning. One of the problems is that we don't have a whole lot of good data — facts — to use in order to make an intellectual assessment of the transformed landscape fostered by Pluto in Aquarius. We need to use a healthy dose of self-discipline in order to blend 'working principles' into our intellectual understanding and then employ our intuition with enough faith to keep us moving ahead despite the uncertainty and lack of familiarity. Many of us would like to establish a workable foundation for future progress. However, without understanding the 'lay of the land', uncertainty produces a feeling that, instead of a basic foundation, we actually need to erect protective boundaries. Gaining any sort of clear-eyed, intellectual assessment of our options — before taking any action — is an especially 'high bar'. By the end of the week, we do seem to finally recognize that we need to open up and share where we're coming from and also listen to where others are coming from. When we begin to open the lines of communication, we can begin to acknowledge that we'll do better by working together for common security instead of focusing solely on our individual, personal security.

We would like some kind of 'guidebook' to follow on Sunday but we are breaking new ground and there aren't many clear lines to stay within. We don't have the right equations to fit the facts on the ground. Self-discipline is needed on Monday in order to avoid over-optimism and still find the narrow path towards creativity ingenuity and innovation. We need the willingness to think 'outside of the box'. It is important to use basic 'operating principles' — integrity and honorable intentions — on Tuesday and try to set aside the instinctual urge to throw up arbitrary, protective boundaries. Progress is haphazard. Activity goes behind the scenes on Wednesday. Intellect does not offer many clear options and intuition may be clouded by fear and insecurity. We may find ourselves embroiled in 'boundary conflicts' on Thursday. However, there is also some hope that we can develop a bit more insight into how to form a lasting foundation for future progress. Optimism is boosted on Friday but there enough challenges to keep us from taking too much for granted. It is easier to align our interests with those of others. Communication begins to open doors to expanded cooperation on Saturday. Perspectives are shared openly.