Strange Arrangement: Moon, Mercury, Mars, Saturn

The Coxing on the Grandmother Land in Ulster County. Listen to a recording of the stream on the player below. Photo by Eric Francis, late Saturday afternoon.
WEDNESDAY, we have a crescendo event. Like other recent aspects, this one is defined by a combination of fast-movers and a slow-mover. The Moon forms a conjunction to Saturn, at the same time that Mercury and Mars form a conjunction to one another — and an exact square to Saturn.

Mercury and Mars are at the top right; the Moon and Saturn are at the lower left. The squares between them are indicated by the red lines. See full chart.

Because it’s the slowest-moving planet in the arrangement, Saturn is said to be taking all the transits.

Without interpreting, let’s just describe the energies that are working on one another. This is the latest in a series of events where fast-movers are making unusually tight aspects to slow-movers.

These include last week’s Scorpio New Moon, and several weeks ago, Mars lining up with the ultra-slow Pluto-Eris square (just as it was completing its two-year run).

The latter incident came within hours of a famous actor shooting someone on a film set with what was supposed to be a cold firearm, making world news for days. I have a video discussing that chart; in my reading of that incident, there was more to the picture than we were told.

From the standpoint of classical astrology, this aspect would not be considered friendly. It consists of the two “malefics” — Mars and Saturn — making a square to one another. We have one planet that likes to push (Mars) and one that tends to resist, contain or hold structure (Saturn) in a dynamic aspect. This setup begs the question: what gives? Something has to.

Stone monument of some kind on the Grandmother Land, which I suspect may predate the European settlers. This is in Ulster County, close to Marbletown, about a quarter mile from the Coxing. Photo by Eric Francis.

Classical Astrologers Have Agita Over This One

In classical (rather than modern) terms, each is in its domicile; Mars rules Scorpio and Saturn rules Aquarius. Those are both fixed signs. So there is a mixture of tremendous force and resistance operating simultaneously.

That is then set off by the Moon and Mars sweeping through the picture. The orbs are extremely tight: they are all at 7 degrees of their sign, and all within about zero to 17 arc minutes (the tightest aspect recognized in astrology is a 17 arc minute, or less, conjunction).

The mathematical odds of this happening are minuscule. Or you might say astronomical. To get all four of those points together at once, including the Moon, which is flying through the heavens, is impossible, but it is in fact happening. (Searching Mars-Saturn squares back to 1993, I find one aspect vaguely resembling this, but the Moon is off by 13 degrees and Mercury is off by three degrees. Searching back to 1985, there is again something similar but again, off by several degrees.)

The question is, what happens? It would seem that something notable, noticeable and even significant is in the works. Today by happenstance, I found this Mars square Saturn in an important news chart from 1978. I was looking at this event because by my telling of history, our extended moment has an eerie resemblance to the specific moment in the 1978 figure — which was not a pretty scene.

The Coxing at sunset looking upstream in a southerly direction. Photo by Eric Francis.

Squares Represent an Inner Dynamic that can be Expressed by Projection

This is a fabulous chart for a predictive astrologer to get wrong. I’ll come back to the news possibilities in the next section. Broadly speaking, though, this chart feels like a hologram of the times we are living through.

Squares move from the inside of consciousness to the outside. They represent inner conditions that can be so unbearable, they need to be ejected, or in psychological terms, projected. The whole challenge of a square, in a natal chart, is to integrate it. To integrate means to take on the tension and work it out; to resolve it rather than make it everyone else’s problem.

In a collective chart like this one, there is the same challenge, but many more people are involved. In many recent articles and presentations, I have been describing how the essence of our time is pitting the individual against the collective. I am shocked every day to be living through a propaganda campaign about how bad freedom and choice are. Yes, freedom implies responsibility, but it does not imply mindless submission to authority. Hello class, that is the opposite of freedom, and the opposite of responsibility too.

With this aspect, I see a lot of people getting to the “this has gone too far” point. What might register as a collective aspect or event involving Saturn is suddenly made very, very personal by the presence of Mars — and even more so by the Moon and Mercury.

Cattails growing on marshy lands approaching the Ashokan Reservoir, as best I can tell, in the town of Hurley in Ulster County. This spot is just outside the protected watershed area. Photo by Eric.

Like an Earthquake or Someone Wanting to Scream

This aspect looks either like an earthquake or someone wanting to scream, and there are a lot of people feeling like they are going through a prolonged experience of both at the same time. Mars in Scorpio looks like a life-or-death crisis, and it’s trapped by Saturn, which is contained inside some public ideology.

This whole chart is about being backed into a corner, and that is how a lot of people feel. The New York Times can vent all the spleen it wants about “vaccine hesitancy,” casting nurses and firemen as misbehaved children, terrorists or mentally defective. Do you care about the vaccine status of someone carrying you out of a burning building or apprehending an accused felon?

If you don’t want to inject yourself or your child with an experimental genetic modification known to have killed more than 18,000 people, you’re going to be in a lot of conflict if someone tries to force you to. And you will be in even more conflict if you might lose your home and your farm for honoring your bodily integrity. (The second link is the story of a nurse in Canada who understands vaccines and medication.)

Why is any of this OK with anyone?

Reported deaths from the covid shots equal the total of all reported vaccine deaths from all products during the past 30 years that the CDC’s count has been kept.

Lurking right behind this, though few are thinking about it, is: what is coming next? No cannot mean no when you have no right to say no. The fallacy of believing that the collective trumps all individual rights is that there is no collective unless there are free people. And this chart is about people being trapped inside an ideology, and a legal and economic structure, that they cannot escape. What gives, and why all the pressure?

What threat could possibly be so bad that we kick police officers, firemen and nurses to the curb?

Ashokan Reservoir near the former township of Browns Station, looking northward from the Beaver Kill Dikes — accessible from the frying pan parking area. Photo by Eric Francis.

Saturn Meets the Healer: Sextile Chiron

This chart will have public implications. When I cast for Washington, DC, we get a chart where the aggressive action is concealed (Mercury and Mars lurking behind the 10th house cusp), and acting like a veiled psychological fear. The Moon and Saturn are in the 2nd house: there are personal financial implications, though that is not a shocking prediction.

More interesting is a longer-range contact. Saturn in Aquarius is about to form an aspect to Chiron. If Mars square Saturn feels like bashing one’s head into a corner, Saturn sextile Chiron feels like the tumblers aligning in a lock, and the door opening.

Or you could say that Chiron in Aries is much better suited to engage the seemingly intractable, restrictive forces of Saturn in Aquarius. This meeting of Aries and Aquarius is through a golden mean sextile aspect. It places equal emphasis on the individual and the community, while keeping sight of how these are distinct concepts.

Mars square Saturn is not a critique. It is a blunt confrontation. Saturn sextile Chiron is analytical, describing weighing and balancing ideas, and finding some sane relationship between you and the rest of us. Additionally, we speak of the “collective” in our time as if it is a real, rather than a theoretical, idea.

Ashokan Reservoir, along the Beaver Kill dykes. Photo by Eric.

Who is in Charge and When Was the Election?

Who are the individuals leading this collective? Groups have leaders. Who is in charge? Who is making the decisions right now? Who is making the declarations? Who decides what is “good” and “not good” and who is protecting those in the minority?

Who says what ideas are relevant, and who determines what the rest of us must follow? What are the underlying values that are driving events forward? Who profits? Who loses?

This diagram adds Chiron to the chart. You can see it on the lower right. The sextile is the blue line. The aspect is exact November 26. See full chart.

In the flow of time, Mars square Saturn leads to Saturn sextile Chiron. This looks like an experiment in our concepts of personhood. Mars is a valid concept of human identity, though in this instance, its efforts are frustrated. Yet they also demonstrate a way of thought that is itself meeting extreme resistance (Mercury in Scorpio, obsessed with death). And yet Mercury offers the possibility of expressing its anger and other challenges.

Open your senses and you will see, feel and hear the answers to these questions — if you are interested. Nobody is going to force you to have the truth, or some common sense, injected into your body. The truth is a voluntary state of being.

Only deception needs to be enforced at the point of a gun, or a medical instrument. Most people are smarter than believing the lie, but will usually do what you say when you point a gun at them, or threaten their food supply, their home, or to end their career.

What is so strange is, most people will usually rise up and resist when you threaten their children.

Eric signature

PS — I keep meaning to say this, and I keep forgetting, no matter how many articles and podcasts I do about this aspect tomorrow. Apart from all else, this is the time TO TURN A CORNER. It is a time to make a decision, perhaps something that has evaded and eluded you for years or decades. Square is the aspect of ACTION. Yes, something happens, and that something is you may choose once again, and this time — your decision sticks because it is time, and the full weight and power of your psyche is behind it. — efc


4 thoughts on “Strange Arrangement: Moon, Mercury, Mars, Saturn”

  1. Hello Eric,
    Thank you so much for your writing in this article. I did not click on the link re 1978. Maybe tomorrow. Friends of mine are resisting the jab and may lose all. To underestimate the damage being done to my friends is almost beyond my comprehension.
    I could ramble on, but there is a very good interview of Dr. Mercola and Catherine Austin Fitts out there. (I am very low tech, almost Amish so I don’t have the link to give you.) A Greg Brown song, “All the Money’s Gone,” explains it better than I can.
    The obituaries in my local paper tell a tale. So many dying, at home, or in a hospital with no cause given has taken my interest since the jab came on. Imagine all dying right before its time to collect Social Security. Peace to you Eric, and for all of your work. Brings me Great Comfort and almost a strange kind of joy. Confirmation might be a better word. Thank You.

  2. Mars square Saturn is the old paradigm, might is right, oppositional.
    Chiron sextile saturn feels like an individual who has done a lot of work on themselves. An evolutionary moment when chiron the rainbow bridge mediates through the turmoil, Because Chiron has seen the shadow, he’s been forged in fire, and even the meatiest of meatheads respect his scars. Its like a bar room brawl mars square saturn, and just when you think blood will be shed, chiron comes through the side door, ready to speak sense to both sides.

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