64 Horoscope Guide
not get everything we want by working
through the dissonance of the detriments;
however, as many musicians will tell you,
we can work through dissonance to find
fulfillment, just as a musician may move
through the diminished chords toward
resolution.
Mars in the Dark
Contrast all that with Mars’ movement
through his dark dignity, Scorpio. Mars in
the eighth sign may act underhandedly at
times, sometimes necessarily so, but some-
times this indirection becomes overly sub-
tle, inducing us to remember the sentence
in the Bible telling us that the serpent was
the subtlest beast of the field (or something
to that effect). Mars in Scorpio can get lost
in his secrecy, sometimes taking it to the
extent that he refuses to manifest, or insists
too much on his privacy, or thinks that he
must always go it alone, or always win the
power-struggle, and so forth.
Mars in Scorpio does seek power, of
course, and sometimes will see that power
as necessary. After all, power relates to
our ability to bring about changes in the
world (and the rate at which we do so),
and if we choose the changes with care,
Mars in Scorpio can bring much benefit to
ourselves and others. Those changes gener-
ally involve something in the social world,
of course – though not always, as Mars-
in-Scorpio sometimes puts great empha-
sis on personal transformation. So Mars’
movement through Libra can serve as a
fine preparation or training ground for the
subsequent movement through Scorpio. In
considering this matter, we should remem-
ber that Libra symbolizes the 12th house
position of Scorpio, so it can serve as a
challenging preparation for the fruition that
may come during the Scorpio passage (or
perhaps the later one through Capricorn,
Mars’ exaltation and another sign with
strong connections to social hierarchies).
But we see here what we see so often
with the dignity-detriment/detriment-dig-
nity dance: that the detriment passage sup-
plies something that the dignity passage
often leaves unrecognized and unexamined.
Sometimes this unexamined material can
point a person toward unacknowledged
potentials; sometimes it can lead a person
to what Joni Mitchell (a Scorpio) perhaps
referred to when she sang that a person’s
dreams may lose some grandeur coming
true.^1Act With Care
Mars-Saturn interactions have a bad
reputation. Let’s face that fact. Let’s also
face the fact that they have earned that
reputation. Knowing that, expect that they
will bring some amount of frustration,
some need to hedge our bets in some
areas, and some willingness to (again
borrowing from that Canadian songwrit-
er) accept the ways our dreams may lose
some grandeur, particularly when faced
with this fallen world which Saturn rules.
However, because Saturn deals with form,
we should also move toward putting things
into form – to, we might say, bringing the
dreams to fruition, even if it is less grand
than we might have wanted, but with a
kind of truth in it that we should recognize.
One of Saturn’s truths goes like this:
the dream will always lose some grandeur
when it emerges from dream into form.
Meaning? You can’t put things into form
without doing some limiting, for to give
form is to give limits. But unless you
put things – dreams, inspirations, hopes,
yearnings, what have you – into form,
you may end up with nothing; and though