Mars/Saturn and the Male Physche. One synastry reading after the other lately has centered around a single theme…the old chestnut of men who will not commit and women who are struggling to keep them, or to move things to the ‘next level,’ whatever that may be.  Of course, when you do synastry readings for a living, this topic is bound to come up again and again, and there are different perspectives on each situation according to the natal charts and the progressions and the developmental lessons each person is learning at the time.  There is no set answer for what is the right move in these situations, and I certainly don’t take sides.  In fact, I may err in the other direction at times, sympathizing with the point of view of the person who is not in the room, to allow him a voice in the proceedings.

However, there seems to be a process in male development that is more of a hurdle to overcome because of the contrasting nature of the two planets involved in the expression of male sexual maturity:  Mars and Saturn.  Sexual maturity is a goal for both sexes.  But each sex has a different process it must go through to get there, and it isn’t always an obvious route.  The feminine side of the journey, the journey between the Moon and Venus and back again, seems, at least at the beginning, like an easier ride.  I’m going to start off this article, which may tick some people off (especially the ones who like to split hairs when they know we are discussing general patterns), by saying that we are taking a new approach here.  We are used to talking about the integration between the male and female halves of the psyche–this is the Jungian concept we base our synastry on.  We will see that the steps between the two male and two female elements within one psyche may cause their own issues and lack of progress.

The other thing I want to say is that the Mars/Saturn element in the male psyche is one of the things I love most about men.

When a man cares for you, even as a friend, he will look after you; not in a maternal way, but in a ‘keep an eye on things’ way.  He will walk ten blocks out of his way in the opposite direction to make sure you get to the bus stop safely, and he will stay there with you even if it means he may miss his last train.  He will make sure that you have cab fare ‘just in case’, and he will fix the leaky faucet while he is feeding your cat.  If he isn’t practically inclined, he will do small things for you that enrich your life and make you feel that you matter.  There’s a watchful quality that men have–they keep their eye on you even though they try not to let you know about it.  It’s a natural instinct and it’s wonderful and much appreciated by those of us who do recognize it.

But Mars/Saturn doesn’t always work in sync, and exploring when it doesn’t is what this article is about. If you’ve read my series on the M.C. and I.C. and Saturn as a relationship planet, you may understand these concepts a bit better.  But let’s start with the cardinal cross.

If you look at the cardinal cross, you will see that it consists of two sets of traditional relationship planets.  The first angle, Asc/Desc, relates to Aries/Libra and Mars/Venus, which rule them.  It’s the ultimate marriage of ‘Self’ and ‘Other.’  The ‘I’ and the ‘Not I.’  Our second set of relationship planets, the Moon and Saturn, indicate, in an obvious way, “Mother” and “Father”.  However, this pairing actually represents, not only literal parenthood, but the generating side of life that relates to material expression, creation, and experience.  In astrological terms, this is represented by the dance between the progressed Moon and transiting Saturn, which work in partnership to join the inner world (represented by the I.C.) with the outer (represented by the M.C.)  In fact, the I.C. contains the consciousness roots of the psyche which must be mined by the M.C. in order for there to be a creative flow between ‘in here’ and ‘out there.’  We can only create with the material within us, and the I.C. is representative of that material.  Where do you think the word ‘matter’ comes from, or ‘mother,’ (for that matter)?  No wonder Cancer is happy there.  But there is no doubt that Mars and Saturn are two different worlds entirely.  Mars is instinct and inspiration, and Saturn is practical and ambitious, with an urge towards completion.  One remains in the land of infinite possibilities, and the other is only concerned with what is real (at least, in soul terms).

I think astrological symbolism can be quite poetic sometimes.  The two relationship functions, both having their spiritual and material sides, bi-sect one another in order to create the cross of matter which is our imprint on the infinite, represented by the circle.  In other words, the two relationship axes create the space in which we live our lives, defining the infinite potential of the chart.

And this concept of ‘infinite’ potential is where we find ourselves coming back to the Mars/Saturn issue.  Because, if you think about it in cardinal terms, we begin the initiation into matter with the inspirational Aries, but we must end with Saturn, and with a concrete world.  Aries has the entire chart in front of it, and is shackled by nothing.  Where Saturn has gathered up what is come of concrete experience and not only builds with it, but forms it, supervises it, looks after it, and, in his more spiritual guise, declares it sacred.  This is a big leap, from the 1st house to the 10th.  And this is the masculine journey, bookended by the two planets involved.

I must say, right off the bat, that we all must come to terms with this journey, male or female.  We all must take our inspiration and make something real of it, and in a woman this could be said to be, in simple terms, the function of the animus.  To do, to act, rather than just receive and react and/or seduce.  But men are more directly in touch with their masculine planets, as women are more easily in touch with the Moon and Venus.  We are those things, we don’t need to project them to understand them.  We experience them directly, without filters or representatives, and we express ourselves through them.  Any mother of both boys and girls will tell you that the two are completely different in the way they relate to the world.  (I remember my brother once taking my niece Layla to a birthday party when she was about 3 or 4.  He said there was so much negotiating and analyzing and compromising going on that he was exhausted just watching it.)

I’m not denigrating female experience when I say that the leap between Mars and Saturn is a larger and longer one than the leap between the Moon and Venus. (The female journey is complex in its own way, which I will explore in the second half of this series.) First of all, we all start in childhood as representatives of the unconscious and instinctive Moon.  Our sense of ourselves as a separate consciousness begins at what they used to call ‘the age of reason,’ which in many cultures begins at around age 7, or the first quarter of the progressed Moon or transiting Saturn.  At this age we begin or orient ourselves via the I.C./M.C. experience to ‘me in here’ versus ‘you out there.’  We become more aware that there are families we belong to and individual duties and functions that must be performed, and institutions that we are required to pay heed to. (Also, this phase relates to the ‘girls/boys are yucky’ stage.)

At age 14, which coincides with the double whammy of the progressed lunar full Moon and the first Saturn opposition to itself (does anyone pass age 14 without scars?), we move forward to the Asc/Desc axis again, and relationships are pretty much the only thing on our minds at this time, whether we admit it or not.  At 21 the focus becomes finding a place for ourselves in the world (although, of course, we haven’t left relationships behind), and the very pressured tone of this time has to do with the squeeze of both the third Saturn quarter and a waning lunar square–it feels ‘now or never’ whether it is or not.  And at 28, we begin the precarious cycle all over again.

And this is where it gets difficult, because this is where we can drop the pieces of our psychic wholeness, and we most likely won’t turn around to pick them up again until our Uranus oppositions 14 years later.  I have written before about the cardinal cycle and the way we have a tendency to identify with our own sexual planets and ignore or project the ‘other’ halves of our psyche, with men having a tendency to relegate a part of Moon and Venus to girlfriends and wives and women doing the same with Mars/Saturn, projecting rather than owning those energies. (How large a part is a cultural matter and dependent on individual experience.) At age 14, we are very much aware of the differences between the sexes, often splitting up into sexually divided tribes at this time.  By 28, we may feel that we are fully formed and have all the answers according to our sexual development.  And we would be wrong.

At 28, we begin (or should begin) our first, tentative steps towards integrating our masculine and feminine halves.  Many of us do it half-heartedly, hoping a relationship will come our way so that we don’t have to do the messy work involved.  But something else is at work which is just as important.  This is the time we need to start growing into the more mature expression of our own sexual divide.  Men confront the Mars/Saturn split, and women have to contend with the Venus/Moon cycle.