There Will Be Blood

Mars is getting all of the juice now. Men are unhinging. Let's help them hit a better mark in the New Year.

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ONE OF THE FIRST sets of instructions I share with students is that you do not need to know what the signs of the Zodiac mean, and you don’t need to know the qualities associated with the planets as you endeavor to interpret a horoscope. All of that comes later.

Your first encounter with astrology as an Earthling is developing a relationship with space and how space is ‘structured’ in the horoscope. As astrology is an art—you do this by looking.

An example. Look at this chart. But see it as a mandala (a geometric figure representing the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism.) Focus more on the lights and planets and how they are dispersed around the wheel. Because of how space is divided, considering the chart below, whatever Mars represents becomes emphatic.

Astrologer Marc Edmund Jones called the above arrangement a ‘bucket’ pattern. He highlighted for his students how various designs are displayed around the horoscope’s wheel. The planets and lights could be scattered, clumped—or teetering like a see-saw. Or set in series like a locomotive train. The bucket pattern, where a lone planet occupies a hemisphere (or open swath of space), signifies something akin to a ‘red alert.’

Without knowing what Mars is about, this conveys to the student that this is the horoscope of someone who wants to force society to come to terms with whatever their cause of mission is about. You could consider all the other planets that make up the bucket shape as the collective and the singleton planet—because its force is paramount in the person’s life—as a desire to bring everyone around to see the world the way this individual sees it. These views, philosophies, or manifestos are often entirely original—perhaps even perilous. The singleton planet indicates that the individual is an outlier.

So, right away, you’ve developed insights about the horoscope without knowing anything else about the other elements of astrology. This approach assures students that they can proceed with confidence and not feel overwhelmed by the scores of data that go into reading a natal chart.

OK, all that said, what does it portend that Mars is presently a singleton planet in this particular moment of astrology?