Looking Back on Mars Retrograde

The recent Mars retrograde in Virgo involved a square to minor planet Quaoar, one of the landmark discoveries in the Kuiper Belt. Quaoar addresses family patterns — and we witnessed a political uproar over reproductive rights.

By Alex Miller

When Mars turned retrograde in Virgo on January 23, it was a no-brainer that this planet of confrontation and conflict might cause a few brawls in the arena of health care. What was less obvious was Mars’ exact square to Quaoar at 23 Sagittarius (a trans-Neptunian object, which is a denizen of the Kuiper Belt, like Pluto), and the implications that had for making reproductive issues specifically the main objective in Mars’ health care onslaught.

Mars stationed direct on April 13, and is now re-tracing the territory where it was retrograde. As a result, Mars will be repeating many of the same aspects it’s made two previous times since November, when it first entered Virgo.

Shortly after the Mars retrograde process began early in the year, Firestorms erupted over both the new Dept. of Health and Human Services regulations that would require Catholic institutions to act like everybody else and cover contraception for their employees, and the Susan G. Komen foundation’s decision to pull its funding from Planned Parenthood (which it later reversed).

Virginia GOP legislators sought to probe the bodies of women seeking abortions with state-mandated transvaginal sonograms, and in fact a state law was passed allowing them to inflict sonograms on women even if they are not medically necessary. Arizona GOP legislators mulled a bill requiring women seeking contraceptive coverage under employer-based health insurance to prove that they have a medical need for contraception beyond preventing pregnancy. South Carolina GOP leaders decided to require potential candidates to sign a purity pledge promising abstinence before marriage, fidelity after, and not to view pornography ever.

Rush Limbaugh slandered a 30-year-old law student as a “slut” and “prostitute” for daring to testify before Congress about the additional medical applications of oral contraceptives, and a leading GOP presidential candidate decried the evils of… birth control?

We have just been through the strange world of Mars retrograde. This has gone on since January, when Mars made contact with several deep space anomalies and ‘minor’ solar system bodies, all focused in three major patterns keying off the station degree.

On of them was Quaoar, which was discovered in 2000. It was significant discovery at the time, and was given a place of honor in the Minor Planet Catalog: planet 20,000. It’s named for a Native American creator deity who dances the universe into existence. It resonates strongly with issues involving creation and reproduction, such as conception and contraception, abortion, cloning and in vitro fertilization.

My research shows strong Quaoar chart placements for such reproduction-related watershed events as the births of Louise Brown, the world’s first ‘test tube’ baby (conjunct Uranus, a planet of invention); Dolly, the first cloned sheep (conjunct Pluto, a planet involving evolution); and CC, the first cloned cat (opposed Saturn, squared Mars); as well as the first pro-abortion state legislation (conjunct Mars, squared Jupiter); the Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationally (squared Sun, sextile Neptune and Pluto); and President Clinton’s executive order permitting use of RU486, the controversial ‘abortion pill’ (conjunct Pluto).

So now all those reproduction-related controversies and conflicts begin to make sense, with Quaoar being the closest planet in hard aspect to Mars at its station retrograde, focusing the red planet’s natural combativeness on these issues. But the celestial saga of the Mars station goes far beyond that.

Mars also activated several deep space anomalies, which abound in the late mutable signs. It made a conjunction with the black hole at 25 Virgo; opposing another at 24 Pisces; and forming a grand cross with squares to a pulsar at 24 Sagittarius, the Galactic Center at 27 Sagittarius, and a Quasar at 26 Gemini. With all that, you have the makings of a truly bizarre collective reality. Black holes instigate a sudden, unexpected turnabout, a complete reversal of the existing status quo and its substitution by a radically different alternate reality, one previously thought inconceivable.

The pulsar indicates media involvement and newsworthy events, while the Galactic Center denotes universality, an issue of global import or impact, and the quasar promotes a high level of visibility or public attention. Put it all together with the fact that Mars just happened to station closely conjoined the USA’s natal Neptune at 22 Virgo, adding confusion, obfuscation, lack of clarity, religious zealotry and fundamentalism, and it’s pretty obvious we’re down the rabbit hole into a topsy-turvy, black-is-white, up-is-down dystopian America.

But we’re not done there — let’s keep going. Two additional patterns emerge focused on the Mars station. First, there is a yod, a triangular aspect between three planets, with Mars at its apex and 150-degree aspects to centaur Nessus at 22 Aquarius and Eris at 21 Aries. Nessus indicates sexual impropriety, actual or perceived, and Eris, named for the Greek goddess of strife and discord, fosters division, stress and contentious or fractious discourse. Eris was a big mover in the feminist watershed of the earlt 1970s, mainly becuase it was conjunct Chiron (lots of self-awareness). When that self-awareness is lacking, the result can be identity chaos.

The second major pattern keys on Mars in a grand trine with Mercury at 23 Capricorn and TNO Sedna at 22 Taurus. Mercury rules communication and verbal/written interactions, as well as the press. Sedna, named for an Inuit goddess who dwells in the deepest, most inaccessible part of the Arctic Ocean, represents isolation, childishness, and an inability to grow up and accept responsibility. All these themes emerge in the various political/socio-cultural attempts to rewrite our reproductive legislative history and remake the world in the image of radical conservative values and precepts.

And, A Few Asteroids are Involved

The overriding energy of this apparent Republican desire to roll back the sexual clock to before the 1950s can be seen in the placement of asteroid Eurydike at 24 Gemini, conjunct the quasar arm of the grand cross formed at Mars’ station retrograde, the most volatile of the patterns involved. Eurydike represents that harkening back, in futile fashion, to what once was, but has been lost forever — an impotent nostalgia that seems to animate the GOP electorate. Its conjunction with the quasar makes this the most visible facet of the interwoven cosmic strands that form the backdrop and underpinning of the Mars station.

Also of note are asteroids Photographica and Narcissus, conjunct Quaoar at 22 and 26 Sagittarius respectively. Both these points have visual implications. Photographica represents images and imagery of all kinds, including the invasive transvaginal ultrasounds proposed in Virginia, or ultrasounds of any kind. While Narcissus primarily represents obsessive focus, it also indicates total immersion in a reality which is inherently insubstantial, being merely a reflection of oneself and one’s deepest desires, and the inability to break away from that and re-engage in the objective reality of the world around us.

Narcissus seems most directly involved in the cases of Rick Santorum, recent GOP presidential contender whose commentary about the “dangers” of contraception and pornography helped make him the leading anti-Romney candidate emerging just after the Mars station; and Rush Limbaugh, whose massive ego must have been taken down a few pegs by the mass exodus of almost 150 sponsors from his radio show in the wake of his three-day assault on law student Sandra Fluke.

Indeed, both men have strong personal contacts to the Mars station retrograde. It highlighted Santorum’s natal Mercury (rhetoric, opinions)/Jupiter (politics) opposition to Quaoar atop his 24 Sagittarius Saturn (career). Limbaugh’s natal Moon (women, conception) at 23 Pisces was exactly opposed by Mars, with Quaoar encroaching upon his 27 Sagittarius Chiron (wounding, maverick behaviors).

The Limbaugh excoriation of Fluke also showcases another important cosmic player in the drama, namely TNO Salacia, tightly opposed the Mars station from 22 Pisces. Salacia is the root of our word ‘salacious’, meaning “undue or indecent interest in sexual matters,” something obvious in the Limbaugh fracas and Santorum’s avowed principles, but to a lesser extent observable as an underlying component of the entire period. Sex sells, and sexual controversy is the American media’s bread and butter.

Eris’ fingerprints, too, are all over the drama, creating a basic tension and division which pervades these events, particularly those which are highly politically charged, and divided along partisan lines. Allied with Nessus’ influence in highlighting the theme of perceived sexual impropriety (it currently exactly conjoins both Limbaugh’s natal Mars and Santorum’s Chiron), this brings to the fore the power and impact of the yod pattern formed by the station retrograde.

The only cosmic player whose potential seems to have been lost is TNO Logos, representing reason, rational thought and the principle of order through knowledge. At 26 Virgo, this supremely logical energy conjoins Mars, but has apparently been sucked into and devoured by the black hole which intervenes between them, its stabilizing, calming influence lost on the discussion at hand. Leaving us with a plethora of astrological energies focused on dramatizing the conflict inherent in battle-prone Mars and reproduction-aligned Quaoar, whose square in January set the stage for the latest round in America’s culture wars.

Now that Mars is moving direct through this same territory once again, let’s watch the news and wee what manifests.

Alex Miller is a specialist in newly-discovered planets and deep space points. He writes for the Daykeeper Journal and helps out with Planet Waves.