Mars retrograde through Leo & Cancer
Years ago I tracked one of my spiraling out trauma responses all the way back to what I discovered was dead will/dead desire. I was born under a Mars retrograde and this internalized suppression of the will, of passion, of sexual impulse and erotic/creative expression is very much a journey I’ve been on since the beginning. When I got to the end of witnessing myself and all the triggered reacting and self annihilation, I saw my fire—the Mars life force, my ability to create and wake up at all—snuffed out with a bucket of water and cold wet mud. That desire will never be coming back. At least I thought. Not even shame can completely take out desire. Not even when you get comfortable with feeling powerless and are rewarded for it and start to wonder if maybe it’s good and better to keep putting out the fire.
Whenever Mars goes retrograde—a little over every 2 years—it forms an opposition with The Sun and Venus. This is such a significant part of the Mars retrograde journey because it brings a culmination and climax of whatever story has been going on between the actions we are (or are not) taking in life as they align with our identity (The Sun), and our values, partnerships, and experience of pleasure (Venus).
When Mars goes retrograde we are reflecting, we are taking stock, we are seeking clarity around all things Mars.
It is truly a fascinating part of the design of this universe that when Mars is on his retrospective journey it goes hand in hand with a moment of peak fullness and confrontation with the Sun and Venus.
Mars willfully follows desire to the ends of the earth over and over, yet during a retrograde there is an energy of you reap what you sow. It’s time to assess the outcome of all our trailblazing. It might be a moment of achievement and success in some part of life we’ve been putting a lot of effort towards over the last year, requiring new strategy for dealing with the harvest or scaling up even more. No matter how it expresses in your life, when the pinnacle in the story between Venus, the Sun, and Mars is reached, Mars must get self reflective and question if it has been worth it.
Has all the striving, bravery, and momentum brought me somewhere that still feels worthy of fighting for? What now?
Where is desire asking me to make a move now that I’ve come this far?
Desire is a mechanism of both Venus and Mars working in tandem. Venus desires so Mars may be animated and moved into action by it. While every single planet can express their unique energy through both the Feminine and Masculine principles, we can look at their inherent qualities for a deeper understanding of the dance between Venus and Mars—especially as it relates to how their cycles show up in the larger world.
The Feminine archetype expresses All Potentials that exist in the void, nonlinear experience, intuition, creativity and inspiration. The Masculine brings this into linear structured form using logic, boundaries, discernment, and conscious action so we might tangibly experience our desire. Venus and Mars might express this in our lives as waves of emotional flow and intuitive ideas for projects that would be long lost without the cutting away of all options except for the one that makes the most sense to pursue and takes the confines of our earthly circumstances into consideration. This is why the Lovers card in the tarot is a card of choice. We need chaos and order working in harmony. We need the taut tension of their opposing energies along with our Soul as a guide to direct a way forward that honors our integrity and the vision we hold for our life.
This more divine view of the Feminine and Masculine can also really be recognized within the archetypes of Neptune + Saturn, two planets which are also on a journey and beginning a brand new 36 year cycle at this time. Maybe that’s why I felt pulled to explore this further here. Coming from a path that included a lot of dismissal of the idea of gender all together, it has been important for me personally to return to an esoteric understanding of the Feminine & Masculine and really honor their full presence in our reality.
The separation of our Masculine divine will from our Feminine intuitive heart centered knowing has produced a psychotic masculinity so fearful of power they abuse it with ease. Both Mars and Venus as represented by the Masculine and Feminine have been molded like rigid caricatures and continue to suffer in their rejection of one another. Until there is integration of both within, neither can express their purest essence.
I empathize with wanting to deny both out of how fake and contrived they have become, but the amount of diversity that gets to flow through us when we learn to embody both in harmony is endless and capable of encompassing every expression of gender. I’m writing this as someone who has identified as non-binary for nearly 20 years. I hope exploring some of the actual principles help contextualize the deep gift these energies offer us when we lean into them in our lives and might inspire you to learn more.
Feb 22, 2024 – Venus, Mars, & Pluto conjunct in Aquarius (new moon phase)
Aug 22, 2024 – Venus in Virgo square Mars in Gemini (waxing square)
Dec 12, 2024 – Venus & Pluto in Aquarius opposite Mars in Leo (full moon phase)
July 23, 2025 – Venus in Gemini square Mars in Virgo (waning square)
Jan 7, 2026 – Venus, Mars, & the Sun conjunct in Capricorn (end of cycle/new beginning in Capricorn)
November 3, 2024 – Mars in Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn
Jan 3, 2025 – Mars in Leo opposite Pluto in Aquarius
April 26, 2025 – Mars in Leo opposite Pluto in Aquarius
This particular Venus Mars cycle is special because it began back in February of 2024 with their conjunction at 5 degrees of Aquarius.1 They both joined with Pluto who was beginning a quick visit in Aquarius before returning to Capricorn for the last time. Just last week, Mars stationed retrograde in Leo forming an opposition to Venus and Pluto—who was freshly back in Aquarius for good this time. Venus and Mars showing up in this way point to their integral part of the 20+ year cycle of Pluto moving through this sign, or at least its passage through the first 10 degrees of Aquarius.
Venus and Mars with Pluto is the unflinching look at our relationship with desire.
The way we stomp it out, try to numb or burry it, surrender it before taking action, fawn, get so distorted from conditioning we go wild trying to prove ourselves or attempt power grabs and undercutting of others instead of just owning the things we want and relaxing into the process.
It’s the complicated mess of social media being both the tranquilizer and adrenaline rush of envy and jealousy overflowing from a belief that we cannot have/be/do what other people do—aka our will has been so manipulated into passivity or compliance with a life we don’t even desire we judge everyone instead of taking responsibility for our reality. This is honestly a reasonable response considering how hard it is to know what we desire when what we “should” want has been projected onto us for so long from all directions making it near impossible to discern our truth anymore amid the false flashing lights.
Do you know the difference between your soul’s voice and the voice of the scared parts of you trying to get you to comply? This is also the work of desire, learning the difference.
It is not wrong to desire. Desire is our future self pulling us toward it.
Desire is a guide that can be trusted when we learn how to work with it consciously. Most of us kill off our will to follow desire because it’s too painful to feel the distance between ourselves and what we want. Or we don’t think we deserve our desires or believe they are immoral or wrong somehow.
»»» cue my self processing probably via sometime in 2019, spoken like a true native retrograde Mars in Scorpio
…Look at this…the power of a single desire to paralyze my whole body, to make me unrecognizable to myself. The way I exorcise desire from my being like a priest. Don’t touch it. Don’t let it touch you.
What has my life of queer desiring asked of me? Taken from me? All feeling replaced with an oppositional force that kept me “living” and an impenetrable current of solid rage that is the collection of desire deadened by my own Good hands.
Mapping out the linear progression of my mental, emotional, and physical responses after a prolonged triggered state is what allowed this understanding to be revealed. Looking at it now it so perfectly describes the way Mars can become tortured and violent to the self and others when denied an outlet to follow through on desire, especially when this is compounding over time. Mars reaches beyond our “needs”—this is more the Moon’s territory—and into activating purpose in our life. During the Mars retrograde it’s a wonderful time to recognize how this is working out for you now and where there might be denial or suppression occurring.
All of this action with Pluto on the Aquarius/Leo axis is bringing radical out of the box thinking when it comes to how we are meant to integrate the feminine and masculine within. When embraced, this rectification can take us through a significant transformation of the self, impacting all our relations. It is a swan song about how our divine light channels the collective dream and our true genius, bringing pleasure through the manifestations of our most authentic freakiness and wild imaginations.
Mars will retrograde through the early degrees of Leo and back into late Cancer until the end of February 2025. This dip back into Cancer is a call to remember the edges of our desire through feeling.
Tune in with the air moving gently in and out of your body. Ask yourself :
In my most ideal future, how do I want to feel?
Pay attention to the sensations that arise. They may tell you something really important about your desire. When we focus on a feeling we wish to have versus a specific outcome it allows the universe more opportunity to delight us in ways we could never have dreamed up on our own. It’s also much easier to release attachment to outcomes when we do this.
It is true that desire makes us painfully aware of every insecurity we hold. But this is divinely orchestrated for our advantage. It is the prime opportunity to witness the lies that are making up the beliefs that structure our psyche and block our expansion. Flail around in them for a while and you eventually learn how to swim and then realize you are the water too and everything you’ve ever wanted is possible but it’s up to you to take responsibility and be willing to relentlessly work within the laws of our earth sphere to make it happen.
What is the dream in your heart that will not quit?
What are you excited to suffer for in this life?
We are so fucking lucky to have limitations. Without them, we’d have no desires to pull us forward.
I’m continually floored by discovering how deep desires go. Some have recently resurfaced that I actually thought were scorched earth. The discovery had me overwhelmed by the emotional knowing that desire is an indestructible force of Love that guides us toward our evolution.
Get right with your desires. Be willing to be hot for the pursuit of them no matter how many months or years or decades it takes to get there. It doesn’t matter how old or young you are, there is no end to desire. Where there is desire, there is aliveness, potential, and a path.
Relax into the feeling you want to permeate your life. Let it shape your actions now so you slowly and consciously become the person who can receive it.
Blessed Mars retrograde everyone. All my love,
Evan
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Wow, Evan, there’s so much here! Never knew how every Mars Retrograde tracks with oppositions to the Sun and Venus. And with Pluto in the mix this time for extra spice. Have been tracking the Mars cycle since February when it entered to Retrograde window in 17 Cancer which happens to be my Venus degree, Mars’ first pass, Direct, through the window, what I think of as its preparatory stage. Then Mars entered its Retrograde proper phase of the cycle on December 6 and is currently finishing up (tomorrow) with its passage through the 6th degree of Leo. Mars passed through this degree Direct from November 23 – December 1 when I did not have access to all of these scrumptious insights. I will now savor them for the remainder of Mars Rx and on in to the final synthesis passage through the window, culminating on May 4 with Mars’ exit from the window/portal. From April 29 – May 1, it will make its final pass through the 6th degree of Leo which I come back to because that’s where it is now. I’m a student of the degree symbols of the zodiac, the Sabians being the most well known but there are others too. What follows is one of the symbols for the 6th degree of Leo with adapted commentaries from 3 of my teachers. Much of what you have written resonates with the spirit of this image and the notes. With much gratitude…Pleiadean Symbol: A person decked out in beautiful finery converses with another person who is naked.
Adapted from John Sandbach: To feel in to pure truth as well as the variety of outer forms in which it is clothed, it is necessary to survive the full gauntlet from cloaking obfuscation to minimalist simplicity. That there is a conversation going on signals an open connection between conscious and (what were) unconscious processes.
Adapted from Tara Brach, borrowing a metaphor from Joseph Campbell: Imagine a circle of awareness with a horizontal line going through the middle. Whatever is above the line is aware and whatever is below the line is outside of awareness, what may be called trance. To the degree that you have beliefs, emotions, feelings of loneliness, longings and urges that are below the line, they not only control your behavior; they hide your essential self (your trans-temporal integrated ego self) from your evolving, still to be fully integrated, ego self. They shape who you think you are and who you feel like you are. They keep you feeling separate, like a wanting, addicted slave. They perpetuate trance. And so, the pathway of awakening from trance is to feel in to what is below the line, with mindfulness and self-compassionate awareness.
Adapted from Peter Brown: Experience is not hidden nor concealed; rather, it reveals itself nakedly with direct engagement. Feel in to this opening to deeper understanding. “When the eye is single, everything is filled with light.” (Matthew 6:22) The engagement is ongoing, with absolute nakedness/intimacy, as the radiating presence of your actual experience.
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