In my birth chart, I have Mars conjunct Pluto. Like many people with this placement, I was taught early in life, in ways both subtle and overwhelming, that anger was not an emotion I was allowed to feel, nevermind express.
Mars represents passion, drive, self-assertion, and anger. Mars is a Warrior and a Protector. Because Pluto was the God of the Underworld, this represents a burying of Mars energy. But because anger is a natural human emotion that doesn’t go away when you try to repress it, instead of disappearing, it was dragged into the underworld of my subconscious.
Long after I learned that feelings are just information, and must be recognized, accepted, and listened to without judgment, I struggled to even identify anger in myself. I had come to believe that anger was contrary to connection, compassion, and spirituality. That it was incompatible with being a good person, and in particular a good woman. How could I be angry at someone if I understood where they were coming from? If I thought they were doing the best they could? If I loved them? The unspoken, unseen assumption was that my anger was a condemnation, that it was hateful and destructive.
For me, the greatest gift of astrology has been the gift of acceptance. If I see it in the chart, I have to admit that it’s there, and if I admit that it’s there, I have to deal with it.
And so I did. I learned to appreciate what anger does for me - the way it points to a problem, to something that requires my attention and needs to be worked out. I learned to value the energy it gives me to address what is going wrong within myself or out in the world.
It is not in our best interest to act from anger unconsciously, to allow ourselves to burn up in its passion. But like every other emotion, it has a sacred purpose: it gives us information. It is our responsibility to listen, to honour anger and get to know it. It is from this place of knowing that we can step into the sacred role of Protector, and lovingly express the gift of our anger.
And like everything else, this is a practice. It is not something I get right every time. It is something I aspire to, a process I remain committed to.
My soundtrack in this aspiration is The Hand That Feeds by Nine Inch Nails. Trent Reznor has Mars conjunct Pluto in his birth chart too.