What might it look like if the god of war reversed his stance even while the drums seem to be beating louder?
Here’s one illustration, mentioned today on Democracy Now!: Eight retired U.S. military and intelligence officials have signed an open letter to President Obama urging him to say no to war with Iran. The letter was published as a full-page ad in The Washington Post on Monday. Signatories included Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Paul Pillar, a former CIA national intelligence officer.
Planet Waves has covered the Mars retrograde mostly in terms of how it effects us personally. Here we have a mix of personal and political: clearly these generals feel strongly enough about impending war with Iran to make a public, collective statement. At this point in its retrograde, Mars is working into a trine with Pluto in Capricorn and an opposition with Pallas Athene in Pisces. We have the war impulse/warrior being turned ‘against itself’ or inward, courtesy of the retrograde. These former generals — one variety of modern-day warrior — are instead aiming to serve the greater good of humanity, apropos of Virgo.
In a trine with Pluto in Capricorn the flow of energy functions to facilitate some disruption of, or attempt to dismantle, the institution of war or government’s traditional role in war-making. Yet Mars is applying to an opposition with Pallas in Pisces — a feminine warrior archetype in a feminine sign. The drive to act possessed by these former strategists (the eight retired military and intelligence officials) is in negotiations with a more creative expression of the strategic impulse. Hence a full-page letter in a prominent newspaper rather than, say, staging a coup.