Fire; spirit and life

The fire signs are Aries, having to do with the first of spring, Leo, the dead-center of summer, and Sagittarius, the very end of fall. Their corresponding planet rulers are Mars, the Sun, and Jupiter. These three planets and their signs indicate the intensity of our energy resources and how full of life we are. Whereas water is depth of soul, fire is the spirit with which we extract from our depths and infuse the world with our light. It also represents the heart-centeredness of our expressions and interactions. From the grace of fire comes our range of optimism and what quality of doors we open in our fervors. From fire comes the playfulness and confidence of our egos, as well as the furthest reaches of belief as to what we can and will experience. Earth is more about accomplishment and visible material manifestation, but fire is ephemeral—the very experiences that define what living means by the heart. Laughter has most of all to do with fire, and joy itself comes from this realm. It’s our human right, and what makes life worthwhile, the flames that lift up our souls.

The houses of fire in the chart have to do with the fullness of our experiences, how confident we were in those experiences, as well as how powerfully responsible we were for their creation. Do we create the reality we want and dance through it or fall into something we didn’t wish for, belatedly, and in blindness? Though there is a great amount of blindness to Mars, the first planet of fire, it is different than blindness in the shadows—it’s a blindness by the light where illusions and preconceptions disappear, where deeper desires are awoken in our cells to which our bodies respond, truly alive. Mars is the very wick of our will, and our seat of power; the intensity of the force by which we beckon and participate in what we are passionate about. Having any passions at all is Mars’ realm, and how you embrace, wear, and embody these passions are Mars’ ornaments. Archetypically the planet of waging war and the ethos of the masculine, Mars is the only way we can expect to delve into and triumph over our challenges unless we all expect to be carried. Mars is blind, blind belief in ourselves which opens up access to our god-like resources, our animal selves—the strength of our bones, sharpness of our instincts, trust in our deepest desires. Deep joy in the self and real embodiment is a reward of heeding our Mars and letting it run rampant through our bodies. So Mars is the apt ruler of our first house, the breadth of self, the very first breath—the desire to be. It encapsulates our first steps into this world when we cry out for life, and feel what we feel, to hell with all else. No thought of consequences or what comes afterwards with Mars. This planet is what’s pure in us, and can be reduced to the most feeble embers but can always be revived; it is still our fire, our spirit, our desire to live, and we can revive it so long as our bodies go on. The lighting of our spirits is always done before the cruel, laughing face of Mars. Cruel because no doubt we’ll experience a knocking down and roads that humble us; laughing because we’ll be finding our joy as we conquer, even as we fall. Mars is our pure drive, our pure fight, and at the end of the day is what we’re most proud of about ourselves, how much we fought. And when we’re really pushed or really angry, it’s not only what revives us, it’s the only thing left. Burn it all away and there remains—Mars.

Mars has to do with respect also, self-respect, and self-worth. Deep anger always creates boundaries around the self—shunning others who come near like a force field, to keep away, while your flames smolder down. Mars is necessary for self-protection because Mars is instinct and we need our instincts alive and bared in our own self-interest. Fire is all about the resources of the self, coming into yourself, and filling up your God body, the destiny for you alone, the manifestation of your individuality. Too little fire in the personality and the person suffers from languidness, indecisiveness, as well as an inability to come into the body in an active, willful way. Strength diminishes with the desire to go on. That person will likely be drawn to some very fiery people to make up for it, to lead him or her in a way, to feel what fervor is. And what is this fervor…. it’s seizing the day, what joy is. It’s terrible to lack it. But joy exists in everything—permeates everything, it is in sadness, underneath, in the appreciation of what was, it’s in what we build and can rely on. Without the hope of joy we wouldn’t lift a finger to build, it’s in what we explore with our minds, for there’s joy in discovery, in understanding. But the actual symbol, the feeling of pure, radiating joy, that is fire and only fire. If we lack fire we have to look to the sign and positioning of Mars, then secondly the Sun, and Jupiter. For myself, I’m not extremely fiery; I’m mostly water, and air. But I do have two planets in Sagittarius, and my Sun is in a square with Mars, which means I feel full of life. That I must embody deep energy by bringing it to my surface. I also have Moon very close with Mars, meaning my emotions are fueled with fire—I am quick to anger, I know my desires, I possess instinct. Still with me, I lacked that barrier of self-protection, I could only access it when I was really pushed to anger, and then I’d tend to flame everyone I loved away. It’s hard to control fire when it touches your Sun or Moon, that takes time, and interference from other planets, wisdom from elsewhere. But wherever Mars is in your chart, you work with it, own it; it’s where your self-confidence comes from, as well as the lessons you need to learn, for Mars brings challenges upon us, confrontation, tete-a-tetes—or in other words, experience.

Simply by being born, affixed, crucified into a time and a place, as symbolized by the birth chart and the orientation of your planets around the whole, or the cross, we become breathed into our Sun sign. The cross marks our angles—Rising sign (Sunrise, East, Mars), Midheaven (Noon, South, Saturn), Descendant (Sunset, West, Venus), and the Imum Coeli (Midnight, North, Moon) while our world, or the rest of the houses are positioned around it. Interestingly, our Sun sign, what most of us are more familiar with, is not associated with the first house of self or the angles, but worked into the middle of our chart in the fifth house and the time of Leo. The Sun is the greatest symbol of who we are and what our ethos is, but the light is too broad. Everything in between, everything in terms of our experiences, our minutiae, choices, and deeps—we have to look to all the other planets interacting with us for that, but still, whatever planets interact with your Sun color your world like rose-colored glasses. You absorb that planet into your identity, and take on the qualities of that planet and the corresponding signs; this is how we focus much deeper than the general sun sign. Some people even have an unaspected Sun, meaning the Sun was completely aloof from all other planets—and these people, it’s interesting, in their broadness, lack the energy for definition and direction. It comes later, but it comes brightly—usually aligned with something definite in their times, that is beyond them.

The raw energy of our pure spirits being born, that symbol lies with Mars and the first house, which then toils through the gravity of this earth and the limitation of our choices and desire for discipline (the second house), and then our associations, influences, and the strange pathways of our minds (the third house), down to our home-space and our emotional bodies (the fourth) before arriving at the pure joy of being ourselves and creating life out of our all important individualized source, the fifth house, that of the Sun. If who we are was concrete, fixed, or unchanging, the Sun might have to do with an earth sign. But it doesn’t. It has to do with fire because who we are is not immutable, or completely known, like stone, but always in the process of changing and being discovered. The lack of what we find in the center of us, around which we hang so much—desires, affiliations, acts, habits, and lineages—is still, a lack, a pure unknown, untouchable and indefinable as the burning ball of the Sun. More than anything what defines us in life is our own individual experiences, and living them to the fullest. The joy of creating in your own way, whatever your practice is, whatever you make, or give birth to—this is also the realm of the Sun, where we are most like gods, and filling in our god-bodies. But the Sun’s nature isn’t to shine unimpeded forever; it’s checked by clouds, storms, icy winters, by the fall of night. And we, too, need checks, we need to know lack, repression, sorrow, the agonizing drum roll of timing. That’s why joy is so ungraspable when it bubbles up inside of you, but so undeniable—it’s not a constant, it’s always being lost and found again, it has to do with alignment, something we attribute to divine timing, the realm of the gods, also under the dominion of fire—Jupiter. Alignment is a shifting, catastrophic, and holy thing, when volcanoes erupt, and the old ways of life are burnt away. The right to seek what is your own path and your own fate is always in the dominion of fire. It’s often why fiery people tend to “be the life of the party” or steal life, encompass life—drawing everyone’s eyes toward them. It’s singularity manifesting as universal, the highest wavelength of mad joy, that seems to be like God, that sways people—symbolized by the Sun. These are some of the secret tellings and whisperings of the fire.

And lastly, that planet of alignment, Jupiter, the planet that cracks open doors in your favor, ruling over the last and most advanced of the fire signs, Sagittarius. To experience an open pathway with support and acknowledgement is Jupiter’s blessing, the planet responsible for lifting you up to your deserved prosperity, rising you to the heights. Fire is our rising, it is the phoenix, emerging, coming into being—growing ever bigger. So Jupiter is the combination of laws on this earth between space, time, and the temperature of cultures that opens—through alignment— for a person to come into his or her own. To be blessed by Jupiter is to be given room to speak and an audience to hear you. It means gifts are strewn at your feet, that you are visited, that there are signs the angels hear you. Jupiter is bathing in blessed waters, perfuming yourself, laughing while impossibly young, and robing yourself in the garb of a king or queen. We all have access to our higher selves, and the irony is that even in poverty, even when beat down, you need to treat yourself as a temple, as a god or goddess of this earth, to soothe the inner part of you that feels burned, rejected, or invisible. To soothe and speak to that part of you, whispering of its right to light and fortune, to rising up and overcoming, breathes enough optimism into your body so that you can lift your head. When I see Jupiter in connection with the Sun in the birth chart I know that person is singularly blessed. If a trine, the person uses the blessings humbly, or innocently, same with the conjunct. If square or opposite, the person hits the wall of conceit before rising higher and must work through his or her prejudices or suffer pushing people away who would have been fulcrums of support. The path of Jupiter teaches awareness of all people’s right to ascendance and justice; thus, too much for one person tips the scale unwisely, and can deaden the feeling of blessings, or halt them all together. Too much satiation, greed—these are abuses of Jupiter. One way to deal with the planet is to act like a Sagittarius, people who by and large I find to be less attached to their fortunes than most. Interestingly I haven’t noticed that Sagittarians particularly open doors others do not, travel any longer, or possess greater fortunes. No, for a Sagittarius, the path of Jupiter is a more symbolic, individual touchstone, by which even when brought down by disappointment, loss, or poverty, these people find inner strength, they do incredible things. Their resources of energy are great as with all fire signs, and Jupiter is not the planet of blessings for nothing; it helps them with regeneration, and seems to protect them just enough so that there is capacity for joy and support even in the darkest of places. They see the lighter side, can twist humor out of what’s most depressing, and attract attention to themselves like magnets, for when they do blaze it is very high and very true. But the Sagittarian is not known for needing much coddling; it is the sign of the homeless wanderer for the truest blessing is the mere gift of life, and with this gift of life in the body, the person goes, with the utmost respect for humankind, into the world to see and to understand. Only a person free of the tendency toward judgement, erring toward the higher sense of radical acceptance, can move seamlessly through various cultures, places, and even time periods. But there is a desire to turn what one sees back toward the self, and transcend limitations, even transcend the body, securing one’s self more through the art of meaning than by deed. It is no wonder Jupiter was the ancient ruler not only of Sagittarius but of Pisces, the sign of renunciation. Alignment with Jupiter is with that of the inner path, and we need this interior sense, we need this instinct intact, for it is sometimes the only torch we can find in the darkness.

Together, Mars, the Sun, Jupiter, make up our ability to fight for, create, and walk our own path. Through these planets we experience being in the right place at the right time, the laughing heights of learning about ourselves, and falling in love. Lastly and most of all, fire has to do with love. It’s the love of being in your own self, in your body, or the aching lack of love that leads you into falling in love with someone else, and through that act either you affirm that you have the right to joy and happiness, and you double your heights, or you feel unworthy of it and all is sacrificed. But, life revolves around this instinct for joy either way. Even when things fall apart, deep down at our darkest hour, we discover a little flame still lit, the potential to start again, to try love this time, beginning with loving ourselves. Without self-love, our steps have no meaning, we walk no path. Where we travel to fails to thrill us, everything is dulled. It’s like we take no part. Our work falls apart, devoid of passion. And in love, it’s joy bobbing up out of the unknown between the cracks of two people that keeps relationships stable, where the two people are continuously caring for themselves and each other and each other’s dreams, not money or contracts or even stability. To sustain our loves we must be like children, our inner child has to be out playing. Though sometimes that child cannot be touched or found until everything falls apart, all winds die down, and we find ourselves utterly broken. We can’t hear the child until she or he is crying. That’s when we find and hopefully make a practice of doing what makes us happy, and this is always in alignment with respect and allowance for others, because joy is stymied if self-interest is too boisterous. Balance, alignment, as well as patience makes the fire sustain. It it something we learn over a long period of time, beginning with Aries which rules over infancy, to Leo, the very height of childhood, and finally Sagittarius, the age of 50, when our cultivation of joy becomes our greatest of achievements, and what sustains us into old age. Joy requires that we upkeep daily the conditions we need for clarity, play, creation, and connection. Fire also rules over all aspects of performance and dance, of singing high or low, beating your breast for rain or stamping your feet for snow; fire is our hearth, our beating hearts, our blood flow, the movement of sentience.