Mars in Cancer is a Mars that often feels perpetually enraged at having to choose the safe path.

This Mars can show up in vastly polarized ways. There are Mars in Cancers out there who perform as shells of themselves, purposefully cold and restricted from any and all emotional display, when they are most agitated. There are Mars in Cancers out there who are known to kick and scream, to cut people off and away.

The thing that Mars in Cancer is really about, the thing that relates all of these expressions of Mars in Cancer, is the struggle to regain a semblance of control while everything around them feels like it’s veering and throttling right out of their hands.

This is Mars in fall. It’s a Mars that doesn’t always and hasn’t always felt like it has its reigns in its hands or reigns at all.

There are things that we all do when we feel that we are out of control. We might place ourselves into regimented and enclosed cycles. We might use drugs to control our emotional escalations and depressions. We might take bewildering risks because choosing risk can make it feel more controlled than having it flung right at you. We might carry our resentments to the grave because controlling the emotional narrative seems safer than not knowing who we can become or we might become even more upset than someone else when we learn that they are upset with us for the same reasons.

You see now why there isn’t one Mars in Cancer. A planet in fall is a complicated placement and not one to be predicted. There are many ways to express lack.

Mars in Cancer has a complicated relationship to its own power because of this. It must learn to see itself as powerful. It must learn that it can and is sometimes willing to fight back and that the willingness to fight back is enough even when not everything is under one’s own control.

Sometimes, Mars in Cancer likes to heighten molehills just to psyche themselves out. They like to make small issues larger because it feels safer to fight in the small than the large. This is fear giving Mars in Cancer an ultimatum—this is fear taking power away. Only the worst options, catastrophic options, are available.

Mars in Cancer trembles at its own will to power. It must be encouraged to learn its power slowly through loving support, never loud admiration but quiet consideration. This is a Mars that can tell the difference between bullshit and sincerity. How? Through time. Mars in Cancer knows that, if you really care, that you will stay with them through time. Remember, now, that planets in fall are slow moving. This is Mars in meticulous Cancer, who keeps track and keeps track through time.

It doesn’t like to let you go, this Mars. It is exceedingly patient with you and will never let you go. It’s a clenching Mars.

This is the other thing about Mars in Cancer—it doesn’t want to go alone. What’s the point in that? Mars in Cancer expects to go together. The whole point in doing anything at all is to get to places, to grow, to develop, and to learn together. It doesn’t care about speed. If anyone falls down, Mars in Cancer will be the first to come after them. It doesn’t care if it has to wait for days or years before that person is ready to get going again. It will wait and then wait some more.

There’s a stickiness to Mars in Cancer, I’ve found. If you want to do anything with a Mars in Cancer, such as watch a movie that you want to see with them or to get them to listen to a favorite album, it is better to come into the movie or album in a meandering way. They don’t like to force their will on anyone else and they don’t like to be pushed into things themselves. They can accept a choice if you stumble into it together.

This is Mars in Cancer power. It’s a Mars that works like glue. It fixes things to other things. It glues alliances together. It never neglects those who need help.

Mars in Cancer likes to dilly dally with you. They’ll stick by you ruminating over the same choice for weeks because they don’t really believe in goals. They just like you and they like talking things over with you.

What Mars in Cancer fears the most, I’ve realized, is that they’re not concerned with the question of whether they can do it—they’re most concerned with the question of whether or not they will have to do it alone. Mars in Cancer hates having to do it themselves. The question of whether they are capable is besides the point. They don’t want to be abandoned to their own efforts. They want you to help them move a chair not because they can’t lift it but because they want you to be there.

Mars in Cancer never, ever takes the side of the stronger over the weaker, not even when all of the stray cats that they gather scratch at them and scream, trying to claw their eyes out. It’s a matter of instinct, not principle.

You see why Mars in Cancer sometimes feels that it has chosen the safer path. It chooses the path that will allow it to be with people. It chooses the path where it can try to become safety for the helpless. Mars in Cancer knows what it is like to be bullied, you see.

Mars in Cancer is wonderfully perceptive. Some may say that this is because they are used to seeing hidden threats from all around them. This also means that Mars in Cancer is a wonderful artist because they are well trained in the skill of perceiving and judging reality. They will notice things that other people might not. There is a sensitivity here that can sometimes feel psychic.

Mars in Cancer is like a well trained martial artist. It has all kinds of swords, tools, and fortresses at their disposal. They know how to defend and they can predict how a confrontation will go. They have spies and they also have taught themselves how to see in the dark.

But Mars in Cancer’s true power isn’t in all of this preparation, which they have an abundance of. It is in its own familiarity with itself. A Mars in fall is a Mars that knows itself.

When Mars in Cancer realizes that it has not always taken the safer route but that the decisions that they have made only feel safer because they are also the only decisions that it already knows, this is when Mars in Cancer realizes itself. They will realize that they have been choosing themselves, in some way, their whole lives. They will realize that they have always been powerful and that this being powerful has not killed them but has helped them survive.

There is not just one essential thing that makes Mars in Cancer so powerful. It is their diversity of strategies. When they realize that they can and have always chosen when to use their many survival strategies, they use that power not to move mountains but to go to where they remember someone has fallen. They use their power to pick that person up and then they go on together.

Some of the greatest loves in my life are Cancer Mars people. Maybe it’s my Cancer Moon. I like the way they move, without hurry and oftentimes late. I like that they care more about how we need each other over the goal of pursuit. I like their humor because, unlike rigid and strident Mars placements, they always know how to have a laugh.