When Mars touches a Black Moon, the lack passes through impulse, conquest, anger and the ability to decide. The intensity of the void passes for an urgency to act, and the person believes they would have to win, break away, fight or obtain at once in order to feel alive.
What Mars brings into play
Mars is the function that begins: it desires, it decides, it protects, it goes toward what it wants and against whatever stands in its way. It needs an adversary or a goal, and it feels alive in effort. When a Black Moon enters its field, this need becomes charged with a lack that no victory closes. The intensity of the void is taken for an order to act, and the person fights, leaves, conquers, without the hollow shifting by a millimeter. Here one meets people whom nothing stops and who do not know how to stop, and others, paralyzed, who endure the strength of others and are outraged by it.
Liz Greene and Howard Sasportas make Mars the fighting principle of the Sun and of all the inner planets: without it one is powerless, and someone else's Mars crushes us. Their central idea: Mars is the first instrument of separation. As soon as one takes a stand on what one wants, one defines oneself as separate, and this is irreversible, like the cut cord; from there comes the fear of Mars, and from there the role of the first quarrel in a couple, the first crack in the garden of fusion. Aggression, for Sasportas, is innate and serves four ends: to protect oneself, to master the world in order to learn, to make oneself independent of those who dominate or overprotect, to become what one has to become; one attacks a problem, one wrestles with a question. Mars speaks straight, faces an honest enemy and is struck down from behind, and the knife in the back is emotional manipulation. A Black Moon in contact with Mars touches this capacity to say what one wants, and it is this capacity that goes awry in both directions.
Mars and a Black Moon are linked at 5.5° or less for the conjunction, and within one degree for the opposition and the square. The true, mean or corrected Black Moon that is touched gives the tone, the sign and the house tell where it plays out, and the pages Lilith in the signs and Lilith in the houses give the details.
The conjunction: Mars becomes the veil of the lack
The conjunction fuses strength and the void, and the person no longer distinguishes their desire from their lack. This contact is read through four moments.
The veil, first. One would have to win, break away, fight or obtain at once in order to feel alive. The person lives at a pace others cannot keep up with, they leave a job as soon as it slows down, a bond as soon as it holds them back, they seek confrontation because confrontation makes them exist, and each victory leaves the hollow intact, so that another fight is needed at once. They take this agitation for vitality, and it is a way of not feeling.
The intensity of lack passes for an urgency to act: one must win, break away, fight, or obtain immediately to feel alive.
The Black Moon, the three faces of the Call, volume 1
Denial, next, with its two faces. In the first, Mars seems absent: powerlessness, indecision, fatigue, an inability to say no, and the forbidden strength returns in the shadows through repeated conflicts, accidents, a diffuse irritation, abrupt gestures that surprise the person themselves. In the second, the strength lies with others: adversaries perceived as aggressive, free, selfish, who carry what the person forbids themselves, and whom they fight or admire. The one who dares nothing and the one who attacks unceasingly are two faces of the same refusal.
Greene and Sasportas describe a blocked Mars, and it can be recognized in these charts. Castration is more often the work of the seductive parent than of the violent one, the parent who says that the child's anger hurts them; a spanking is better than the lesson that aggression is dirty. Repression turns against oneself, accidents, migraines, troubles of the belly and of desire, and that depression which is the apathy of powerlessness; Perls's question, against whom are you depressed, often opens the reading. What one represses, others express for us: the nice passive person provokes other people's anger and asks why everyone is getting angry, the dominated husband and the tyrant bleed from the same wound and despise each other, the woman who flees a brutal lover for a passive companion feels a victim of both. Ideologies of detachment send Mars down to the cellar, hence envy and covert rage; fanaticism is a blocked Mars, and an honest Mars leaves others in peace. Their image of the Hydra is apt: force multiplies the heads, and one defeats the monster only by going down on one knee to lift it into full light.
Disidentification requires no longer defining oneself by victory, resistance or defeat. Anger is heard without becoming sovereign, desire indicates a direction without granting every right or demanding that every obstacle be destroyed. This moment often comes after a victory that changed nothing, or after an anger that destroyed what it meant to protect, and it can be recognized by a new question: if I am no longer the one who wins, what do I want?
The instrument, finally. Mars reclaimed becomes courage, decision, the protection of boundaries and the ability to take the necessary action. The person still acts, sometimes more than before, yet they no longer act so as not to feel, and the energy that served conquest opens a path. They know how to begin, and they also know how to stop, which they could not do before.
The opposition: Mars stands on the side of the response
The response to a Black Moon stands opposite it, in the opposite sign and house. A Mars opposite a Black Moon, within one degree, occupies that place, and the person acts against the void rather than with it. They are effective, decisive, courageous, and they hold at a distance the area where the lack lies, even though they are the one who can enter it.
A Mars in house VI opposite a Black Moon in house XII: the person works relentlessly, solves problems, repairs, and regards inwardness, retreat and silence as a waste of time; it is the others who seem fragile, depressed, lost, and the person shakes them up. Or a Mars in Aries facing a Black Moon in Libra: momentum is their nature, and they attract hesitant, conciliatory partners who carry the waiting and the measure they despise.
What this aspect builds, when it matures, is a strength that consents to be passed through by what it cannot defeat. Mars, placed on the side of the response, has the good fortune of knowing how to act where the lack is waiting for a gesture, and its task is to turn toward the opposite area and bring its capacity to begin there, without demanding that this area let itself be conquered. The act then ceases to be a headlong rush and becomes a protection.
The square: the price of passage or the trial of the return
At 90° from the Black Moon in the direction of the zodiac, Mars stands before the response, and strength must accept a form and a limit; with the True, it must also bear being reworked and adjusted, like iron under the hammer. The person finds themselves in situations that resist their momentum without breaking it: a profession that demands method, a partner who does not give way, a body that imposes its limits. They oscillate between forcing their way through, in which they break what they wanted to obtain, and giving up, in which they abandon the effort as soon as something resists. What this friction builds is a strength that agrees to yield a part of itself without believing itself betrayed, and that senses the moment the limit is reached before concession turns into rejection.
At 270°, Mars stands after the response, and what strength has conquered must rejoin ordinary life without becoming a new role; with the True, strength must know how to smolder without going out, keeping a reserve it no longer has to prove. The person has often already obtained what they wanted, and the tension bears on what they do with their strength when there is nothing left to conquer. The risk is forcing the flame out before its time, for fear that it will die, or smothering it so completely that it turns against the house that held it in. The response consists in keeping an intensity available, without spending it to reassure oneself. If Mars squares two Black Moons, on the same side of each, the two trials overlap.
Trine and sextile: the same question without crisis
The book does not read these aspects, and they remain secondary. With a trine, the person acts and lacks without conflict: action and lack do not collide, and their anger finds an outlet without destroying anything. They underestimate this ease, and they have trouble understanding those for whom acting is a violence. The sextile offers, without insisting, the opportunity to put one's strength in the service of the void rather than set it against the void, and this opportunity often goes unnoticed. The response, here, can be chosen, and it is a chance one can take only if one sees it.
Mean, true or corrected
With the Mean, Mars filters essential orientation: the person fights for a cause, a vision, an ideal, and the lack expresses itself as an enemy to be brought down. With the Corrected, it filters the search for a living accord and a habitable form: the person looks for a way of acting that welcomes their desire and takes reality into account, and the lack expresses itself as a momentum that either forces or gives up. With the True, it filters the lack in the instant: rising anger, sudden desire, the urge to strike or to leave, and the lack expresses itself through the body, right away. When Mars touches several Black Moons, it is a single underlying phenomenon, strength as a whole caught in the lack.
Frequently asked questions
What does Mars conjunct Lilith mean?
That the lack passes through impulse, conquest, anger and the ability to decide. Mars becomes the veil of the lack: the intensity of the void passes for an urgency to act, and no victory is enough as long as strength plugs the hollow instead of opening a path. The orb is 5.5°.
And Mars opposite Lilith?
Mars then stands on the side of the response, exactly opposite the Black Moon. Strength has been built against the void, and what it holds at a distance in the opposite house is also what it has to live. The response asks the person to bring their capacity to begin into that area, without demanding that it let itself be conquered.
Is Mars square Lilith difficult?
It is demanding. At 90° in the direction of the zodiac, Mars stands before the response and must accept a form and a limit, and with the True, be reworked and adjusted like iron under the hammer. At 270°, it stands after the response and must bring what it has conquered back into ordinary life, and with the True, smolder without going out. The planet lives the trial that the side names; it is neither its cause nor its verdict.
And Mars trine or sextile Lilith?
The book does not read them. They raise the same question without crisis: the person acts without asking action to fill the void, and can answer the lack by choice. The risk is failing to see the ease they possess there.
