INTIMARE: Mars' Long Journey Through Cancer
Or, why you cannot have intimacy without conflict
Mars is plagued by his own duality. At once the god of anger and brutality, but also of virtue, heroism, and courage, Mars is more complicated than we think, but the planet’s expressions in certain transits convey this complexity. As of September 4th, Mars ingressed into Cancer, the sign of its fall, and began its 7-month journey through the sign. At the end of 2024 Mars will briefly leave Cancer, but will return during its retrograde, and then will carry on moving through Cancer well into Spring 2025.
I want to explore the competing natures of Mars: conflict and intimacy. It’s difficult to remember that Mars possesses both of these qualities—they seem so disparate and contrasting, why would we think of the two together in a planet? It’s also rare that we see conflict and intimacy expressed at the same time, but we get the glimpse of it as the dry hot planet Mars traverses through the wet cold sign of Cancer. This transit is emblematic of the lovers’ quarrel. Mars, the masculine, feels taken hostage by the emotions of the feminine (which change quickly as Cancer is ruled by the Moon and the Moon changes signs every couple of days) and what plays out during this transit are passive aggressive fights and sensitive overreactions. It’s not going to be an easy 7 months, but this is why we must familiarize conflict and intimacy and how they are inextricably linked.
INTIMARE: v. to tell, communicate, notify, to declare (as in war); adj. most or very secret, intimate, private
I’ve been reflecting on an astrology class taught years ago by Olivia Pepper and Charlie Cross where they introduced us to the word INTIMARE and its distinctive Martian quality. The word is both a verb and an adjective meaning to declare war, or describe something as intimate or private: conflict and intimacy.
In martial arts, there’s this notion that your sparring partner is the person you share the most intimacy with. In order to know how to beat your enemy in war, you must know them intimately. Conflict often breaks out among partners/entities that were at one point deeply intimate with one another because frustration inevitably builds on close bonds. The deepest darkest secrets you know about your loved ones can be used as ammunition against them in a fight. I immediately think of the adages “You always hurt the one you love” and “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” In Contact Improvisation, a dance form created in the 1960s by dancer and choreographer Steve Paxton, you are always making contact with another dancer while you’re dancing; always negotiating issues that arise out of direct contact, or running into one another. It’s a choreographic art form using conflict and intimacy as the medium. You do not find either of these qualities on its own without the other. The dualism of Mars begins to make sense now. The god of war is also the god of sexual aggression because, on some dimension, there’s no difference between sex and war.
What Mars traveling through Cancer for the next half year is saying to us is: intimacy creates conflict and conflict cultivates intimacy. Each are two sides to a fundamentally martial characteristic. The retrograde at the end of the year is going to demonstrate the tenderness bound up deep inside of how we approach conflict and interpersonal issues. If we can expose the raw vulnerability beneath the anger and passive aggressiveness, then we have passed the test.
More to be revealed in the fullness of time, these are just some impressionistic musings at the beginning of this strange and emotional chapter.