Newsroom

Mars Opposite Pluto: LOOK OUT FOR THE FIRE!

One of the funniest things I ever read was in Grade 11 English class. We had an assignment to write short stories, and, as is often the case when we were done, we handed our stories off to the other students to read and/or critique.

One girl in the class (I forget her name) had written an overly sticky-sweet romance story. I forget the details but basically nothing of consequence happened in it — like a Harlequin romance, except without tension or characterization.

It ended with the man and the woman in question kissing in the moonlight or something like that… all fine and well and very typical of the imagination of a romantically inclined teenager. Not Shakespeare, but serviceable.

However, as the story was being passed around, there were suppressed giggles happening when others got to her story. The reason for this is that someone had done their best to mimic her handwriting and added one final line to the story.

That line was this: “Then someone shouted LOOK OUT FOR THE FIRE! and they died.”

---

In a world that doesn’t need any additional tensions, we are currently experiencing Mars opposite Pluto. That aspect becomes exact on the fifth of this month and will remain in effect for about a week after that.

This is a challenging aspect for a couple of reasons. First of all, Mars is in Cancer is a debilitated placement for that planet. And anything opposite Pluto is going to be experiencing a whole lot of tension. There’s going to be a real risk of people lashing out unnecessarily or stupidly or simply because they’ve lost patience.

That’s understandable. We’re all human. But I want you to consider the effect that joke someone had added to that Grade 11 story had on the girl who wrote it. At first she seemed crushed, But she seems to have gotten past that later. Or was that an act. I’m not sure any of us ever really knew. But there was a chance that real permanent harm was done, simply because someone had to tell a joke.

So: however you face the upcoming tensions of the next couple of weeks, please don’t go around shouting “look out for the fire” if you don’t absolutely have to. Your words and your actions will have particular consequences under this Mars-Pluto opposition. And just in general? Can we all please stop damaging each other with our words over our stupid petty tribal disagreements?

Besides: Saturn is building up to the second of three exact squares to Uranus… so maybe now is a good time to practice shutting up for your own sake.