USA's Mars Retrograde

From New Age Village

Emily Baumbach

Q: In your December issue of Expansion, you said that the USA’s progressed Mars was turning backwards. Here is my question: Mars in retrograde has had its impact in important ways. Mature and Old Soul values have taken precedence in our lives and is changing our history. How will the current Venusian prominence effect us nationally and individually in the future? (J in Atlanta, GA)

Did you ever see the movie long ago called The Mission? Robert DeNiro starred as a violent man in 1600s South America who killed his brother, then realized what he’d done and went into years of self-imposed suffering and self-punishment to assuage his guilt. On a mission through the jungle, he insisted on carrying the baggage of the entire party, refusing help from anyone. This is what Mars retrograde will feel like in this country.

Mars Retrograde

When a progressed planet turns retrograde, it appears to be going backwards from our surface-of-the-Earth perspective. All planets go retrograde from time to time, with the exception of the Sun and Moon.

When a planet goes retrograde, we can expect the symbolic energy of that planet to go into hiding. That lets the energy of other planets get louder, more apparent. For instance, when expansive Jupiter goes retrograde for about four months each year, we tend to shrink, get smaller, get more practical and check reality on a regular basis. When Saturn goes retrograde each year, we expand, feel better, feel younger and overall have a greater sense of wellbeing.

With the USA’s progressed Mars turning retrograde for at least the next few hundred years, we can expect (as you mentioned) a surge of feminine energy and karma payback in this country. Here’s what is likely:

• More women, gays and minorities will be in power. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are just the beginning. Nancy Pelosi’s motto is “Partnership, not partisanship.”

• Women will use feminine power (not masculine power) to make a difference using compassion and connection. Think Oprah Winfrey and Angelina Jolie.

• We’ll move away from the long-time historic Goal of Dominance model into an Acceptance or even Submission model. Our Aggression will become introverted. We’ve blown our chances to dominate the world, and now it’s time for us to pay the piper.

• Due to some strong challenges from Pluto, Neptune and Uranus between now and 2021, the country will be brought to its knees in terms of world power. With so many challenges for the coming 13 years, one after another, the karmas of our Baby and Young Soul past are coming to the surface to be completed. It will whittle down our national Arrogance and make us a humbler, kinder people. Violence will always be with us, but it will go out of style, given time.

• Spiritualist and Idealist energy will replace the historically recent Cynic Attitude model. We’ll be hopeful and humbled by the events of the next 13 years. (It all started in September 2001.)

• As a nation we’ll become more sociable and friendly — less invasive and territorial. This trend will affect immigration policies, with the small possibility of dissolving the borders with Canada and Mexico. As the American national identity weakens, we’ll be more open to creating a North American Union. Baby and Young Souls would of course feel threatened by such a mix of cultures, but Mature and Old Souls who like to travel back and forth will welcome it. Whether Canadians and Mexicans would want Americans traipsing all over their countries is another story.

• We can expect a flourishing of art, music, poetry, dance, interior design, the fashion industry, restaurants, wines and culture, as we move more solidly into being a Mature Soul country.

• Expect a flourishing of philosophy and deep thinking, even in the mainstream. We’ll be hungry for meaning after decades of superficiality.

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• The collective will also be hungry for mirroring, whether it admits it or not. Mirroring can be personal, in the form of therapy; or it can be global (as in the United Nations rapping our knuckles for the Iraq war).

• Movies, books and television will meet our growing need for reflection, so we’ll see more documentaries and morality plays, fewer crime dramas and superficial fluff films. Television in particular will showcase more family shows and courtroom dramas than Dog the Bounty Hunter-type shows.

• We can expect more cultural refinement, and a focus on beauty rather than gross violence.

• Our cultural power around the globe will be on the wane. Other countries will become more fashionable. However, we’ll move into a more seasoned niceness, not unlike soup that tastes better the second day.

• The military and police forces will shrink or at least become more civil to people after 2021 (if not before), not unlike Bobbies in the UK who don’t wear guns. We can expect more military base closures and less financial support sent to soldiers. Police officers will be held accountable for their actions.

• The criminal justice system will be improved (slowly). Violent authorities being violent with violent criminals will become passé. Expect more mind control and dietary adjustments to handle prisoners. Ultimately, education (including learning to read) will help heal many prisoners who have always felt left behind by the system.

• Expect fewer lawsuits and more mediation.

• We’ll see an emphasis on nature: balancing it, protecting it, nurturing it. Today’s alternative energy sources will be tomorrow’s mainstream.

• We’re already seeing the value of protecting small farms (especially organic farms), our forests and our cows. The Pluto in Virgo generation born 1956-1972 are just now coming into their own in terms of power. That’s the generation responsible for keeping food and water healthy.

• We’ll see more social, sexual, medical, financial and racial equality: the balancing of genders, classes and tribes. It will be the reflection of a newer, wider desire for everyone to have an equal sense of personal worth. The process of waking up from inequality won’t be easy, however. We’ve been dreaming inequality for simply too long for it to be cured overnight.

• We’ll see a focus on marriage and legal partnerships. We’ll redefine marriage to include polygamy (try a woman with more than one husband), gay marriage, and marriages between platonic friends who step in to support each other just as family members would.

• We’ll feel like hibernating more, going to battle less. We’ll lose our ambition, and we’ll feel nationally sleepy. We’ll slide into inertia, and we’ll work on our collective self-karmas (embarrassing tendencies).

• We’ll somehow attempt to balance the national budget, however we can expect even more budgetary crises throughout the next 24 years. We haven’t seen the worst of it yet: Pluto still has to oppose the USA’s Venus, Jupiter, Sun and Mercury; and it’s entering the USA’s 2nd house of income, where it will be until 2031.

• Finally, we’ll learn the art of Relaxation. Some of this will be enforced, but some will be voluntary: a relief from the hard-driving ambition of these past 231 years. In the USA, it’s time to wind down, open and soften.

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