Astrology

By Jade Emory
Oahu Island News, August 2004

War & Peace

War, peace and standstill exist in our own unconscious feelings and thoughts, not just in Iraq. In our inner lives, war or peace is a choice. Astrology helps make it a conscious choice.

Astrologically, Mars governs war or work. Venus governs peace. The trans-Neptunian planet Admetos governs standstill, or changing standstill to expertise.

Three thousand years ago, the Chinese oracle “I Ching” taught that peace and standstill are opposites, and two completely different hexagrams describe war. War, according to the “I Ching,” is the expression of force, cunning or guile. In modern terminology we would call this “having a private agenda.” It is instinctual, reactive, not contemplative and primarily concerned with dominance, even if the reason may be for a collective higher good.

Conflict can be avoided if rights and duties are exactly defined at the beginning of an undertaking, whether that enterprise is an international economic or political activity or a children’s summer camp. If Mars in your birth chart is expressing as brute force, power-tripping or withholding assistance that is necessary to create solutions (known in psychology as “passive-aggression”), the chances are that you are not yet in touch with your higher Mars potentials.

Passive-aggressors are covert anger cases, lying to themselves and others about their inner war. Passive-aggression leads to standstill. Tantrum-throwers are overt anger cases, lying about others to get their way, definitely causing war. The evolved Mars choice is to be pro-active in eliciting cooperative solutions for issues at hand.

Peace, on the other hand, requires even more effort than war. Peace needs conscious cultivation of the Venus potential from your birth chart. It tends to be fair, unselfish, interested in the well-being of others and its own, creating beauty and harmony within, and projecting these vibrations out into its environment. It subsequently prospers. But if Venus gets lazy, it creates standstill. If Venus gets greedy or self-indulgent, it creates war.

Some people try to compartmentalize genders into sexist roles, but it serves both to harmonize our individual masculine (Mars) and feminine (Venus) potentials. Since both planets have higher and lower options, cultivating sensitive respect for our impact on others will yield better results. Self-effort will replace war, love will replace fear, modesty will replace competition and humanitarianism will replace selfishness.

Oahu Island News Contributing Editor Jade Emory holds degrees in psychology and education, has taught in American and Canadian universities and has been a counselor since 1970. Jade passed beyond the earthly bonds of her body in 2020, and is studying astrology on the other side.