Mars and Chiron

As an astrologer, one of the things I follow closely is a little planet called Chiron, which is the planetary gateway to higher consciousness. Speaking of 1987, it was in that year that Barbara Hand Clow proposed that the Chiron/Libra archetype is about knowing the self through the other -- and relationships, in particular those with space aliens, were one thing she mentioned. As Chiron's about-to- end, very short trip through Libra peaked last August, NASA announced that life existed on Mars. There is "an-other" (nice call, Barbara). On July 4th 1997, the Pathfinder landed on Mars, which coincidentally was also moving through Libra, sending back the first pictures in 21 years -- in an entire generation! The first thing science confirmed: their gadgets actually worked. The second: there was once lots of water on Mars. Just recently, you could be considered a heretic weirdo for saying you believed that kind of garbage. (Astrology has understood this for many centuries ... fiery old Mars is the co-ruler of the water signs). It's now clear to me, not from NASA but from common sense, that those pyramids on Mars really exist, the face on Mars really exists, and also that something uncool happened there a long time ago bringing that civilization to an abrupt end. Sifting the truth of these things is often used as a substitute for seeking God, and it's not. But it helps us gain a very important picture, within our world of relativity, of who we are and where we are. Now, for some very peculiar reason, the boys at NASA landed the Pathfinder on the 50th anniversary of the famous UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico. What a "coincidence!" So much for that old cover-up. While the US government is unlikely to put out a press release saying "Uh, we've been lying to you for 50 years about UFOs," they can drop subtle, or in this case, not-so-subtle, hints. And this ain't sci- fi, folks, this is Houston. On Sunday, Aug. 10 at 10:55 am EDT, Mars and Chiron form a conjunction in late Libra, bringing this cycle of the "encounter with the other" to its culmination. The "other" includes interactions in your personal relationships: consider how much you really have learned about love in the past two years. This rather momentous conjunction marks a big shift in level for all of us, especially in the area of legitimizing maleness and the sacred warrior archetype.