With Sat­urn at 13º of Libra and Mars, (the faster mov­ing plan­et), at 13º of Sagit­tar­ius, we are deal­ing here with what Astrologers call a wax­ing sex­tile of Mars to Sat­urn. This is the moment in the rela­tion­ship between Mars and Sat­urn where what was released or start­ed at their con­junc­tion has reached a point in which we are shown some way in which to bal­ance and inte­grate these two energies.

The orig­i­nat­ing moment for this present cycle, their last con­junc­tion (or “New Moon”), was on July 31, 2010 at 0º of Libra. So the issue of this cycle con­cerns the inte­gra­tion of Mars ener­gies and Sat­urn ener­gies with­in the theme estab­lished by Libra, by relationships.

Mars rules desires, the ener­gies that serve the self as we seek to push out and secure our own self-inter­ests. Sat­urn rules real­i­ty, the respon­si­bil­i­ties and roles that we have com­mit­ted our­selves to in order to be part of any­thing. So, what is the answer or guid­ance offered by their aspect today?

The expe­ri­ence of Mars in Sagit­tar­ius con­cerns the les­son that our desires must be guid­ed, inspired and focused by truth. It speaks to the prin­ci­ple that our self-asser­tion must be cir­cum­scribed and giv­en mean­ing­ful pur­pose by beliefs, philoso­phies and religion.

With Mars in Sagit­tar­ius we are very enthu­si­as­tic about our truths and beliefs as we seek to extend our­selves out­ward. Yet, giv­en that Mars can excite us to over­do, we may become too self-right­eous, to dog­mat­ic about our truth. We may push too hard to be free to do what­ev­er we wish to do. We may harm oth­ers by a too nar­row asser­tion of what is truth for us. The offer­ing of this aspect between Mars and Sat­urn is being brought to bear by the mes­sage of Sat­urn in Libra.

Sat­urn in Libra reminds us that the truth of any rela­tion­ship is that we must move into it by forg­ing or cre­at­ing agree­ments, under­stand­ings, rules or laws. We all must acknowl­edge the truth that when we move into asso­ci­a­tions with one anoth­er, that is, when we enter into rela­tion­ships, we can­not just make it up as we go.

Sat­urn in Libra rep­re­sents the truth that we must make objec­tive our inten­tions with regards to one anoth­er. We must estab­lish guide­lines and rules for how we will relate to one anoth­er as a pro­tec­tion for all con­cerned. We cre­ate a social space, a real­i­ty, through which we can be ful­filled in and through our rela­tion­ship. By forg­ing these agree­ments, we can each pur­sue our self-inter­ests, while agree­ing to con­duct our­selves in a man­ner that is social­ly accept­able, sus­tain­able and mutu­al­ly beneficial.

The mes­sage and promise of the sex­tile aspect of Mars and Sat­urn is that we can all make some sig­nif­i­cant progress in our rela­tion­ship life at this time. The issue will have some­thing to do with how we inte­grate our self-inter­ests with our oblig­a­tions. This means we need to hold our­selves and oth­ers to account for how to bal­ance our desires with our duties.

We often hear the cry for “my rights”. But the asser­tion of any and all rights must and always will be tied to the ful­fill­ment of our respon­si­bil­i­ties. This is the mes­sage of Mars and Sat­urn, that you must and should pur­sue your truth, but you must always act in a way that is respon­si­ble too.

The Solar/Lunar rela­tion­ship is the arche­typ­al cycle, the mas­ter cycle, upon which all oth­er Astro­log­i­cal cycles are based. Every month we see the beau­ti­ful pageantry played out before us of the New Moon, First Quar­ter, Full Moon, Last Quar­ter and back to New Moon rhythms of the month­ly cycle.

At each moment of the cycle, at each turn­ing of the wheel, a very spe­cif­ic ques­tion and answer is offered to us by “the lights” in sky. The New Moon rep­re­sents a begin­ning, when a new impulse and ener­gy is released into our real­i­ty. The First Quar­ter rep­re­sents a turn­ing point, the turn­ing of a cor­ner or cross­roads, of the work­ing out of that orig­i­nal impulse. The Full Moon is the moment of rev­e­la­tion, the point at which the orig­i­nal impulse or idea has come to full, objec­tive man­i­fes­ta­tion for all to see. The Last Quar­ter is anoth­er turn­ing point, but this time, instead of a choice of which way to go in order to build out from and ful­fill the orig­i­nat­ing idea, now the issue is to take the real­iza­tion expe­ri­enced at the Full Moon and incor­po­rate that under­stand­ing into the unfold­ing cycle of life. Final­ly, we come to anoth­er New Moon, anoth­er release of poten­tial which will guide us dur­ing the next month­ly cycle.

We are able to take this basic cycle rela­tion­ship, and the mean­ings gen­er­at­ed by each cycle moment or phase of the Sun/Moon cycle, and apply those inter­pre­ta­tions to the oth­er plan­e­tary pair cycles. The basic tem­plate pro­vid­ed by the Sun/Moon cycle can be our guide for the under­stand­ing of each plan­e­tary combination.

At the same time, we must be aware that the inher­ent mean­ing of each com­bi­na­tion of plan­ets will deter­mine the con­tent, that is, it will denote the theme of what is devel­op­ing in the var­i­ous phas­es of any cycle. But the pur­pose and mean­ing of each phase in the cycle will fol­low this tem­plate found­ed by the exam­ple set forth by the Sun/Moon cycle.

Astrol­o­gy is, in part, a sci­ence of cycles. The pri­ma­ry cycle with­in Astrol­o­gy is the cyclic rhythm of our jour­ney from Dark­ness to Light. As we look at the var­i­ous com­bi­na­tions of the plan­ets day after day, we can always come back to this fun­da­men­tal truth that is revealed to us by the dance of the Sun and Moon.