Mars Cazimi 17 November 2023: The Tower
Mars is the traditional ruler of (cardinal fire sign) Aries and (fixed water sign) Scorpio in Western/Tropical astrology. Mars Cazimi begins tomorrow, Friday 17 November, as Mars conjuncts the Sun in the night sky to within around 1 degree, seen close to Capella, aka the Goat Star, a star regarded by the ancients as an omen of high renown.
Cazimi comes from the Arabic word word "kaṣmīmī " which in turn is thought to have evolved from the Greek "kardia" meaning “in the heart" and in this context meaning, "in the heart of the sun."
This Mars Cazimi marks the start of a new 2 year Mars cycle for each of us, upping the ante wherever it happens to be sitting in your own birth chart. In which astrological House might that be for you?
Mars is ardent, proud, fierce, pro-active. Living it large. In Tarot, Mars may be expressed through drawing The Tower card, The Emperor or the Death card (modern ruler Pluto) and the potential for destruction could not be plainer, as we are witnessing right now in tragic real time world events.
The Tower represents shocks, explosions, collapses, and tears things down for good or ill.
The Emperor is law and order on the one hand, and wise governance, or conquest, excess, tyranny and cruelty on the other.
The Death card may and often does refer to human mortality, to death in the literal physical sense, but may stand for any and all kinds of endings.
Mars Cazimi is warrior energy. But it is more innocently, the ebullient primal energy of the first ram lamb of spring. Young energy. Birth itself is a fierce act, whatever kind of birth it may be; a person, an animal, a nation state, a business, or some great creative work; a building, a bridge, a machine, or a work of art, music or literature.
Life as Professor Malcolm so famously put it in Jurassic Park, “finds a way.” And Mars in Aries MAKES a way, charging headlong. Mars in Scorpio clears the decks and steams or plots its way through. But where the passion is, and the will-power, like it or not, the thing gets done.
The zodiac sign of the Scorpion is also a symbol of rebirth and another face of Scorpio is the Phoenix. Maps get redrawn. We can rise or launch or build anew. It’s that kind of wind about to start blowing through. We can stand foursquare in our power, raise the roof, blast free and shake off the dust during a Mars Cazimi. If we have been stuck, it looks as though we are going to get ourselves unstuck during the next two years.
Once more unto the breach.
“Happiness we can only find in ourselves, it is a waste of time to seek for it from others, few have any to spare. Sorrow we have to bear alone as best we can, it is not fair to try to shift it on others, be they men or women. We have to fight our own battles and strike as hard as we can, born fighters as we are.”
–Axel Munthe, The Story of San Michele
Bon courage! Let us discover what new things we shall do over the next two years, driven by the adrenaline of this incoming Mars Cazimi in Scorpio season, and thank you for reading.