Dear Friend and Reader,
Today’s aspect seems to come to us in the spirit of the holidays. Mars sextile Neptune suggests thoughts of altruism and an understanding of the balance that must be met between give and take.
It seems to me that we either have too much of the give or too much of the take in our culture. This sextile suggests a moment of recognition that without both of them, we are likely to go nowhere, or at least not where we intend to.
I think it works like this: Mars is the energy of courage and the energy to go out into the world and push. Mars is the piercing gaze. Neptune is the realm of idealism, the plain of possibility, hope, faith. Mars and Neptune work out an understanding in this aspect that if Mars doesn’t have anything to push against, he’ll fly out into space, and if Neptune isn’t pushed, he’ll never move. So the two of them learn to work together, understanding the differences and weaknesses of each other.
It’s important to mention that this “weakness” isn’t the same kind of thing that our culture harps upon as being a source of shame. Rather, weakness in a system is a call to integrate something into it in order to make it stronger. Case in point: you are making bread. You mix all of the ingredients together and set it aside to rise, but when you return, you find that it hasn’t risen as high as you would like it to. The yeast, it appears, does not have enough to eat, it is weak and running low on energy. The solution? Add more sugar.