The Cyclical History

First, let’s start with my memories. Sometimes it happens that the pattern in question repeats itself literally, or at least, uses the same literal symbols to make its point. In April, 1997, for example, as transiting Mars was square my natal Mercury, a woman hit my truck in a parking lot of a store where I was shopping. This time, I was not in the vehicle, nor did I get angry afterwards, since there was little actual damage to my truck. The anger was played out, in this case, by those who saw the accident and urged me to call the police. In any event, here was another situation in which I was broadsided by forces beyond my control, using the same symbolic equation, Mars = moving vehicle. I did not see it coming, and I could only react after the fact. I choose this situation, out of all the memories connected to my Mars-Mercury story, because of these similarities, and the sense of recognition or resonance they evoked.

More important than the literal repetition of symbolic elements, is the metaphor of being broadsided, and the emotional and visceral response that this kind of experience tends to trigger in me. I was broadsided in this larger, metaphorical sense, for example, in February, 1998, as Mars was square my Mercury, when I got a call from my sister in Florida to inform me that my father had just been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and was fading fast. I was broadsided in August, 1976, as Mars square my Mercury, when I tripped over a rock I didn’t see on the beach in California, while playing football, and broke my elbow. I was broadsided in late spring/early summer of 1953, possibly while Mars was opposed my Mercury, as the neighborhood kids ganged up on me, and stuffed ashes in my mouth.

I don’t remember the exact date of this last incident, since it happened when I was three-and-a-half years old, well before I started keeping a journal. The familiar progression of emotions from relative contentment and well-being to extreme vulnerability to anger (which emerged later over the course of the next 3-4 years) marks this incident as one that belongs to this particular track through soul space, regardless of the exactitude of the corresponding transits. In all three incidents, and others I have not mentioned, the experience is one of being broadsided by a twist of events I did not foresee, and perhaps could not have foreseen; moving through this familiar emotional pattern at various levels of intensity; and often undergoing major changes in my life, as a consequence of these triggering events. As I sift and sort through my memories of this Mars-Mercury cycle, I become more conscious of the pattern, and grow in my capacity to recognize its essence throughout its many permutations.

In this way, as I sift through my memories in relation to a particular astrological cycle – in this case, the relatively fast and frequently activated Mars-Mercury cycle – I am able to cull out specific memories that evoke the emotional tone of vulnerability and anger in the wake of being broadsided. Doing this provides ample subjective evidence that there is a pattern, and that I can correlate the pattern with some process related to my natal Mars-Mercury square that works itself out in cyclical time.

This, however, is only the tip of the astropoetic iceberg, for as Carl Jung pointed out, only about 10% of the depth of meaning to be found in any symbol is available to the conscious mind. The rest can only be found by diving below the surface of that which is recognized, to see what lies beneath. We will begin diving deeper in the next post in this series.