IT'S NOT THE TOOL IT'S THE WIELDER
MARS IN CANCER 2021
April 23rd
4:48am PST: Mars enters the sign of Cancer
May 12th
7:47pm PST: Mars in Cancer sextile Uranus in Taurus at 11°19’
June 5th
12:45pm PST: Mars in Cancer opposite Pluto in Capricorn at 26°27’
June 11th
6:33am PST: Mars leaves Cancer
Distinguish the tool from the (ab)user
Over the years of scrutinizing the whitewashed capitalist wellness space, I’ve become utterly jaded by spiritual bypassing, over-emphasis on the work of the individual, conflation of self-care with self-coddling, and a real poverty of willingness to do the uncomfortable but extremely vital labor of community tending. Unfortunately, watching the never-ending tides of wellness-abuse has also meant that I’ve soured into abiding judgement of the very tools that have helped me to recognize complicity, heal myself, and stop consciously and unconsciously perpetuating violence.
In this state of disenchantment, I have begun to reject tools before I’ve even tried them.
Intention can be conscious or unconscious. In my understanding of healing, we seek to make our intentions conscious so we can effect or change them.
Bypassing: to neglect or ignore, usually intentionally.
Neglect is a difficult kind of harm to call out because it’s not what someone is doing - it’s what they’re not doing that is harmful. It is passive, often unconscious and difficult to perceive or name. Moreover, neglect left unnamed precipitates erasure, silencing, and oppression by omission.
Bypassing as a form of neglect is common when we cannot see or acknowledge our intentions. It is more especially common, when it benefits us to deny them.
Bypassing is a tool of the h-wyte supremacist capitalist agenda (WSCA).
When people with certain privileges use wellness tools to bypass their complicity in a white supremacist system, they often materially (and otherwise) benefit from that bypassing. Thus we can see, our healing tools are being corrupted and co-opted by bypassing.
Bypassing is a tool that is using our tools.
Spiritual bypassing is the practice of using spiritual tools to avoid doing the work that helps us all get free. Some of that work is healing your own trauma. A lot of personal trauma is a product of collective or generational trauma (whether your ancestors were the oppressed or the oppressors or some mélange of the two).
Using a tool to avoid actually dealing with painful feelings related to cultural wounds doesn’t get you healed - it gets you a hefty pile of shit buried under your yoga mat. It’s oxymoronic.
On a related note, I’ve been fixed in a cloud of resentment for the way the WSCA has smothered our tools for living well in spiritual bypass.
My dear friend and elder Jen Lemen says we blame when there’s not enough community support. Maybe it’s just the endless struggle of the last year but I know I’ve been steeping in a rotting pot of blame towards tools that have no inherent moral value. Tools are neither good nor evil. So it’s time to pick up that shit and add it to the compost.
Here’s a story that might better explain what I’m trying to get at…
I met my partner last summer, amidst forced moves, wildfires, and a sea of other traumatic events. Due to extreme externals this year, I have needed a more-than-usual amount of support when it comes to relational tending. My partner has been well-learned and practiced in the art of Non-Violent Communication and thus, advocated for that as a tool we could use together. I know a little about NVC but not a ton - enough to understand the concept and not enough to practice it well. Enough to abuse it without even knowing I’m doing it. And knowing that I could abuse it, knowing that it has been abused by others in h-wyte wellness and social justice spaces, I quickly decided I would not try to learn it. Because I didn’t want to abuse it. Only recently could I acknowledge that this way of orienting has me completely stripping myself of agency, potential for skill, trust in my own intentions and capacity to effect them. I was allowing myself and my tools to be abused. If it wouldn’t work anyway, why try?
I believe intention does matter. Impact might carry more weight, but impact is influenced by intention (though not dependent on it). Impact is often a result of how well we wield our tools in collaboration with our intentions.
In rejecting the tools, I’ve been denying the possibility that my intentions matter, and declining to maturely engage them. I’ve been determining outcomes without participating. This is avoidance, control, and interestingly, also a form of bypassing - all of which are tools and symptoms of the WSCA. By not engaging NVC and other wellness tools with conscious intention, I have been promoting the WSCA. This conditioning runs deep and is a problem I would like to remediate.
“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” - Audre Lorde
What happens when we understand ourselves as the masters of our wellness?
What happens when we understand that no-one can take these tools and dismantle the house of healing - unless we let them?
We have a responsibility to guard our tools with care and discernment. We have a responsibility to see our tools as teachers. We have a responsibility to learn to wield our tools with precision. We have a responsibility to the relationship between our tools and our agency.
Mars is considered to be in fall in the sign of Cancer.
Ruled by the moon, Cancer is a sign that is focused on nurturing growth, wading through emotional waves, tending earth, ourselves and our bodies.
Mars is a soldier. Mars injures and confronts. Mars is up in arms to fight. And in Cancer, Mars’ tools are tending and caring to the point of smothering. In Cancer, Mars will try to weaponize our emotions. In Cancer, Mars will wield fear to avoid the fight - will effort to circumvent using a tool, rather than trusting its own skill and intention. But Mars in Cancer also presents us with an opportunity to cut away at the capitalist confusion machine that keeps us from compassion and competence.
While Mars is in Cancer, we’re in bootcamp to identify our inclination to neglect.
We’re exercising to move beyond bypass. To leap toward action with superb skill. We might have to army crawl through the WSCA mud but when we do, we’ll wield our wellness tools with victorious finesse.
Because Mars in Cancer also carries a pack of pristine care. Is a master of mothering. Can keep an experience at arms length and still keep a close eye on it. Mars in Cancer might abandon the sword, but it can swaddle our shortcomings until we grow beyond them.
One of Mars in Cancer’s greatest tools is vulnerability with ourselves. And Mars in Cancer is more than ready to rip off the bandaid and tend the wound.
While Mars is in the sign of Cancer we can become the warriors of our individual and collective wellness.
We can train for more tenacity when it comes to uncomfortable conversations. We can learn the loopholes that help our nervous systems through conflict quicker, and more rapidly to the recovery in resolution.
Mars in Cancer has the might of a mom who’s got it on lock. Who’s intimidatingly vigilant. Who’s definitely not putting up with avoidance, denial, abuse, or any other kind of supremacist behavior. And still, will make sure every kid learns a lesson. Will feed an army with the snacks unfailingly packed away in her bag. Will know way before you need that nap and will send you off to rest so you can fight for the life that gifts itself to you everyday.
If this resonated with you and you want to talk about Mars in Cancer, where this transit and your natal chart Mars are featured in your personal horoscope, you can book a session with me.