Mars Square Neptune, the Ego’s Tales, and Self-Trust Amidst Uncertainty
Is anyone else feeling absolutely humbled by life right now? Are you also thinking, I can see the changes happening to my earthly avatar and I’m anxious about where it’s going.
It’s like a trust fall deeper into the unknown part of yourself, or like getting lost and finding new trails on your way back home.
If this is you, congratulations: you are still alive while in the midst of the latest eclipse portal.
We recently experienced the Leo solar eclipse on August 12, the opening event of this approximately two-week transition that closes with the Pisces lunar eclipse on August 28.
This week sits between these two events, in the space between the reality we’ve known and whatever comes next. We’re moving through the absence of old identities, foundations and beliefs, toward whatever newer and truer identity our earthly avatars are becoming.
The week begins with Mars square Neptune on August 16.
Mars moves our hero’s tale along. It is our drive, our will, our anger, our desire to do something about the circumstances we find ourselves in. Neptune dissolves whatever it touches, blurring the boundary between what is happening and what we imagine is happening, between ourselves and everyone else, between the present and all the memories, fantasies and projections we carry into it.
Mars has been in tropical Cancer since August 11, and Cancer is part of my natal signature. I have Mars at 2° Cancer, which returned for me on August 15.
Mars is in its fall in Cancer—under-resourced, out of its element, and compelled to move through emotion rather than pure assertion. Its condition asks us to act from a different kind of strength: emotional security, protection and care.
I have Mars opposite Neptune in my natal chart, so this tension is familiar to me.
I see this pattern in my relationships, particularly with men, and in my own masculine expression: holding back my desires, getting lost or sidetracked from my ambitions, projecting authority onto others, and seeking permission to live my life or save me from self-neglect.
I’ve learned to transmute this distorted sense of agency into my art, into breathwork, yoga and my writing practice. Through these modalities, I feel more in control of my life. I feel a sense of direction. I return to them to ground me when I get lost in the projections my ego creates to keep me feeling safe.
This was a hard aspect to understand because I had to learn not to be emotionally reactive and stop projecting feelings of powerlessness onto others. I learned to redirect those feelings through my practices: to feel the difficult emotions, move through them, and gain distance by giving them language or form.
Feeling a little lost has become part of my process. Learning to trust myself through it is the tension that often creates something beautiful, if I allow it to flow through me.
I’ve learned to live beyond the hero narratives given to me.
Because no one is coming to save me.
Releasing this narrative brings up a lot of grief. Becoming more devoted to myself makes the grief easier to bear.
For a long time, I looked for a savior, hoping someone would see me in my victimhood and hoist me out of danger, tell me I deserved better, and protect me from future harm.
I’ll repeat myself:
No one is coming to fucking save you. And knowing that can set you free.
On the day of my Mars return, I woke up with heavy feelings and anxious thoughts about my dead mother—the terror drop in my stomach that I’ve learned to manage over time.
I breathed into it, watching the racing thoughts dissipate, doing my best not to latch onto them.
I felt myself sink into the bed and float slightly above my body, watching myself lie there with my eyes closed, breathing into my stomach and letting the out-breath linger a little longer with each repetition.
I calmed myself down enough to hop out of bed, throw on some sweats, and head to the laundry room in the building basement.
It was 9 AM, and I was happy to start my chores so early on a Saturday morning.
By the time I took my clothes out of the dryer, my neighbor, a kind Jamaican man in his 40s, arrived to start his laundry. I greeted him, as we were already familiar, and chatted him up. We talked about the weather, his summer travels, and the gentrifying building.
“I talk to some of the new neighbors,” he said. “Some of them are nice people. But I know some folks don’t always get along.”
I took the opportunity to tell him about a different neighbor who I did not like at all.
This neighbor attacked me while he was drunk, looking for a phone that never existed in my apartment.
I told him that I vowed to make my attacker’s life miserable. One time he approached the building entrance as I was exiting, and I slammed the door behind me, making sure he knew I actively hated him. I would see his packages in the mailroom and throw them in the trash. I called him a coward to his face when I saw him outside and dared him to prove how much he hates women to the rest of the neighborhood.
“Fuck that guy,” I told my neighbor.
He looked shocked at my retelling.
I expected him to scoff, dismiss the event as not a big deal, or worse, defend the neighbor through some kind of arbitrary male solidarity. Because that is what the male-folk tend to do.
I had already decided what he would do before he did it.
And you know what?
He didn’t.
He sat there waiting for the wash cycle to end, looking me in the eyes and listening. He didn’t judge me, argue with me, or ask what I did to provoke him first.
“You know, my wife is the same way,” he said. “She gets upset and doesn’t let things go.”
I thought of my mother and it made me chuckle.
He said he tells his wife to forgive certain injustices because it’s easier to live in peace. It’s easier to let the activation go and not make more problems when there don’t need to be any.
I fucking know, I thought to myself.
It’s not about peace—I have a point to make.
I told him that it wasn’t easy because I wanted justice and nobody seemed to care. Nobody defends Black women, so goes the story.
But that’s when it clicked for me.
I saw the pattern.
The traumatic thing had happened to me. But I could also see that I was choosing to perpetuate the role of victim by acting on the story I told myself.
That instance did not need to live in the present. But I was attached to my role, and I wanted it to continue because I wanted to indulge the righteousness of my anger.
It was almost addicting.
I had gotten so comfortable with the habit of blaming someone for my anxiety and fear, and with waiting for someone to protect me before I could feel safe in my own body.
It doesn’t help that there are so many fear narratives circulating right now. I could see how easily I let my own seep into my sense of self, rattling the chain of grief connected to the childhood trauma of abruptly losing my mother.
Seeing these feelings arise, talking about the past experiences that inform my behavior, and understanding how I project the role of victim onto myself has revealed how deeply this distorts my understanding of safety, vulnerability and even creativity.
It has shown me where I am giving away my power to a reality I am projecting rather than the one I am actually living.
So how can we empower ourselves with a different story?
We’re learning through our relationships how we can sink deeper into our healing practices, becoming more detached while maintaining connection with who and what we love.
Mars is about acting on our sense of agency, while Neptune expands the possibilities and dissolves the boundaries around what we believe is possible. The tension of the square asks us to act on what we’ve become aware of.
Once you know, choosing a conscious practice to change the pattern becomes essential: moving through uncertainty, trusting yourself despite what the reality of the old story insists upon, and creating something with sincerity and devotion even through the heaviest, most awkward, most stagnant moments.
The practice is the thing that allows us to keep moving while the larger sequence of time unfolds, as if it were pencil marks drawing our paths across a sheet of paper we call existence.
This eclipse window offers a beautiful opportunity to get creative with our becoming.
It’s a terrifying yet necessary trust fall.
And astrology offers a panoramic view—not so much to tell us what will happen, but to give us perspective on the patterns we are already living through and the timing of what our loving actions are asking us to become.
Lately, I’ve become more devoted to the little things.
Spending more time beautifying myself. Wearing the nice clothes more. Drinking the water. Hugging the trees. Moving my body. Learning to tend to myself even more than I’ve allowed myself to before.
Because I need it.
I deserve it.
And I don’t need anyone to validate that anymore.
This is what it means to trust yourself through the unknown: not knowing exactly who you are becoming, but believing you can stay devoted to yourself while you find your way home.
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