A lot of the Mars in Pisces content I’ve seen talk about how mild and well tempered this Mars placement is. In my series on Mars, I’ve tried to hold off on talking about how mild or angry any given Mars placement might be. This is because I think that the amount of angry someone tends to be has little to do with what sign their Mars is in and more to do with how much friction their lives contain.

I do not think that Mars in Pisces is an unaggressive Mars. I don’t think that about any Mars placement. However, I think that it is interesting that Mars in Pisces is so frequently described to be a peaceful Mars placement.

Mars in Pisces is an escape artist.

I have Mars in Pisces. I remember talking with a friend who also has Mars in Pisces and playing a game where we gave each other different social situations to try to escape from just for shits and giggles. I had a roommate who also had Mars in Pisces. I remember once I noticed that he had left dishes unwashed in the sink and told him “You should wash your dishes” to which he responded quite merrily with a “I know, right?” before escaping into his room. Once I talked with this roommate about what we do when faced with conflict. Just swim away. We both agreed that fading out was our most commonly used strategy.

We know how to get out of situations, Mars in Pisces. I know that I can’t help it sometimes. It’s just instinctual. When I enter a space, I know how to leave. I get anxious if I don’t and the anxiety figures it out for me. I go to a basement food court that is built to be disorienting with a group and I am the only person who can confidently march us all to the exit in under a minute’s time. I keep track of my steps when hiking. I’ve never gotten lost because I always keep a mental map of how to get the fuck out.

I don’t think that Mars in Pisces is always flighty. There are a great number of things that I am deeply committed to. However, I do know that no one can keep me somewhere. I can always find a way out.

There’s another side to Mars in Pisces that is sometimes understated and it has to do with the ruler of Mars in Pisces being Jupiter. Mars in Pisces is not a Mars that makes small and deliberate little steps towards something. It’s a Mars that goes big or goes home. Mars in Pisces is just as reckless as Mars in Sagittarius—sometimes, often, more so.

Mars in Pisces is willing to sacrifice. It’s willing to discard, to give up, and to let go even when we don’t know if there will be more.

Sometimes Mars in Pisces’s tendency towards self sacrifice can be quite cute. We give the better cut of meat to the one we love. We accidentally cut a sandwich unevenly and we give the larger chunk to the other person even though we are very hungry. We see the hardest task when in a group project and we take it on because we know that no one else wants to. We carry the heaviest bag from the store. We do this quietly because we prove that we care about something through self sacrifice.

Other times, Mars in Pisces’s tendency towards self sacrifice can be a lot to handle. We are too ready to give up on our own ambitions for someone else’s comfort. We drive ourselves like a workhorse because we think that it is better to give up our own time and health for a larger mission. We let people go even when they have not asked us for it because we doubt that we will be good for them.

There is something incredibly romantic about sacrifice. Jesus did it in the story about him and the world’s sin. Sacrifice, in a way, is about forgiveness. I think that the reason why it is so hard to pinpoint a Mars in Pisces’s sense of aggression is because we tend to aggress through forgiveness. It’s like we have some kind of hard on for mercy.

Mercy is erotic. Mercy is not erotic because it is self effacing or undignified. Mercy is erotic because it comes from a place of power and power is sexy.

On the surface, Mars in Pisces can appear to be someone who is all too ready to give up power. We sacrifice and we forgive and we rarely hold grudges. However, this is actually the expression of a larger type of power. You see, it takes power to forgive someone else. It takes power to grant mercy. The power to extend mercy is larger than any given context. It takes some moral superiority to be merciful. That’s the Jupiter rulership speaking.

Mars in Pisces is not interested in specific confrontations. We are not interested in battles. When faced with one too directly, we will swim away. We will refuse to engage because confrontation feels nitpicky and small minded. However, if given the opportunity to do so, we will forgive. This forgiveness does not mean that we have given up in any way. It means that we are trying to float above the situation at hand.

There is something here about the power of Mars in Pisces. Our power doesn’t really come from our forgiveness. Sometimes we even use forgiveness performatively and stage it in a calculated way. We get upset when people reject our forgiveness because they feel that they have not done the wrong that our forgiveness tries to describe them as having done. The power of Mars in Pisces is not in its forgiveness but in its ability to act with the larger picture in mind.

Mars in Pisces is aware that resolving a conflict does not mean that we will heal from it. It is aware that conflicts are frictions between people who are captured by larger systems and that, very often, these people have limited power in reshaping the systems that capture us. Very often, when Mars in Pisces leaves a conflict, it does not mean that we stop caring. It means that we understand that conflicts are better reshaped by their premises rather than resolved according to them.

We are often calm about conflict because of this. We don’t feel the urgency of resolving a conflict right away. We don’t need everyone to play nice. We might see a conflict as pointless. We demand a purpose to it all. We are aware that a roommate dispute about domestic labor is really scarcity of time, busy work routines, and a high cost of living. We are aware that spats about scheduled time off between coworkers is really about chronic understaffing. It is hard for us to feel fully angry if we feel that a fight has no purpose.

But when we do feel that something has a purpose? When we really do care about something? We put our all into it. We are willing to give up our lives for something meaningful.

We are romantics in this sense. For better or worse, we will give things up when we care. It’s inexplicable and it’s also pleasurable in its own way.