In traditional astrology Mars is the Lesser Malefic. However bad be may be he is not quite as evil as Saturn, the Greater Malefic. Both planets have been feared throughout the history of astrology, at least until the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, however, there has been a change. The description of either planet as a malefic is likely to be looked at askance in current astrological circles. In the case of Mars, it is accepted practice to admire the red planet and to see in him nothing but the necessary principle of vital energy as depicted in the horoscope. There are no "bad" planets nowadays. Everything in the chart is there to be used, and it is up to us whether we use it constructively or otherwise. This includes all the squares and oppositions (they are "energizing"), the Moon's South Node and, of course, the Johnny-come-lately planets: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The ancients didn’t know about these; if they had, they would no doubt have regarded them as ominous, too.

What modern astrology tends to do is to turn everything in a chart back upon the owner of it. The outcome is entirely his or her responsibility. "Your chart is what you make of it," we are told. Modern astrologers claim to be giving a psychological description of the person who is going to have the opportunity to make something of his or chart, but if at the end of the description the greatest part of the life pattern to be followed is handed back as "up to you", then even as a psychological description it is inconclusive. Clearly, standing behind all these astrological categories there is a real person who is not described by them, since he is going to make use of them. But is this really true? Is astrology really as limited as this, or were the ancient astrologers nearer the truth when they claimed that astrological influences penetrated everything, including both events and personalities, and that some things were good while others were bad?

Modern occult, psychological and astrological concepts about the nature of the world and each person’s place in it tend to slip unknowingly into the fallacy of solipsism. To say "I am responsible for all that happens to me in this life. I can’t blame anyone else" has a noble sound, but it may bear little or no relation to the facts of the case. The truth is that we all continuously influence other people and are influenced by them every day of our lives. Everyone knows that he can both help and hurt other people. There is a moral choice that affects the welfare of others implicit in practically every situation we meet in life. And just as we affect others so they in their turn affect us. The truth is that benefic and malefic intents are both possible, and so are the actions that follow from them. It is possible for a person to frustrate, ruin, or even end, the life of another person. The paradox is that if this were not possible, freedom would not be possible either. Freedom consists precisely in the possibility of relating in a complete sense to another person, with all the potentialities for good and evil, love and hate, cooperation and concern or manipulation and abuse which are what real life is all about. It does not consist in the solipsistic condition where we alone determine what happens to us and decide whether we are happy or not, without reference to others, for that is really an evasion of the responsibility for external life. We are only truly free when we core out of our personal cocoon and face up to the possibility of evil as well as good.

An astrology that is genuine must be able to reflect and describe Life in this wider sense, and for that purpose its vocabulary must include words for evil as well as for good. We frequently hear that old astrology was too black and white and simplistic, and to some extent this is true. It categorized and polarized things without the insights and subtleties we are capable of today. Yet that is no argument for cutting out categorization and polarization altogether. We have to categorize and polarize because that is the way in which the human mind understands anything. Like a computer that operates on a binary system, it asks a long string of either-or questions: is it this or that? Finally it tots up the yes's and noes and builds its concept of what it is dealing with out of the framework they have provided. The currently disapproved-of words "good" and "bad" are essential categories in this process for they describe something quite real and fundamental about the nature of life itself.

Just as it is impossible to describe a chair adequately by saying it consists of a flat plane supported by four uprights, two of which are continued up above the plane and joined by a crossbar at the top, without saying it is for sitting on, so it is equally impossible to describe life adequately without saying that it has a purpose, and that ultimately everything which serves this purpose is good. Conversely, everything that obstructs or subverts it is bad.

If we admit this then we have readmitted the principles of good and evil into our world picture and we shall have to use astrological terms that correspond, in some measure, to the old ideas of benefic and malefic influences. Moreover, they will not only apply to people. Many of the impersonal circumstances of life — environment, health, accidents, wealth or poverty, and the actual timing of events, to name but a few — can also advance or frustrate life’s process and purpose. These things too, therefore, may justly be categorized as good or bad, without prejudice to other categorizations to which they will be subject and which will all go to build up our final picture of and judgment upon them. Possibly the astrological benefics and malefics can therefore assist us to decide whether a particular event or environment is good or bad, just as traditional astrology always claimed they could. The only difference may be that today we can hope to apply our judgment with more insight.

Granting that the idea of benefic and malefic astrological influences may be acceptable after all, how adequate could the traditional classification of the planets into two benefics, two malefics, and the neutral lights, accompanied by an ambivalent Mercury, be to satisfy the requirements which have been outlined? Almost certainly there will be a chorus of assertion that it is totally inadequate and misleading. "Even if good and bad are concepts which correspond to objective realities," we shall be told, "it is still totally impossible to say that Saturn is bad and Jupiter is good, Both real life and astrological symbolism are infinitely more subtle than that. It is in the ways that these principles interact, or in what we personally make of them, that the goodness or badness consists". This sounds like good up-to-date common sense, doesn’t it? However, if you look more closely at what it implies you discover that once again the essence or the problem has been pushed out of the province covered by astrology into that strange limbo where people are able to "make use of" astrology, to "apply" their charts, and so on. These people may be wise or stupid in the use they make of their charts, as well as good or bad, but astrology cannot touch them nor get to grips with their ethics in any way, since it is implied that it has none of its own.

I suggest that it is necessary to go back to the old classification and take a new look at it. Have we misunderstood it, or failed to perceive unsuspected depths in it after all? I believe that we have, and that a re-appraisal is long overdue. A closer look at Mars, the Lesser Malefic, will illustrate what I mean. Who has not experienced sudden trouble, often associated with violence or tumult or pain (or all three together) under prominent adverse directions or transits of Mars? And when, where an afflicted Mars is prominent in a birth chart, has the native not had a life in which temper, impatience, bitter competition, confrontations and enmity play a leading part? Is he not habitually subject to sudden accidents, bruises, cuts and burns? Moreover, even when Mars is not afflicted but merely rising in close proximity to the Ascendant, how often do we not see prominent birthmarks or accident scars on the face? They may occur even with a notably well-aspected Mars. A Martian person is always a pusher and noted for hurry and impatience. With fortunate aspects he may be successful and be applauded for "cutting through red tape", etc., but even this always involves problems and uncomfortable readjustments for other people. Mars never really cooperates. He challenges the world in which he finds himself, both as regards people and circumstances. However much he may control or modify the impulse, the Mars native always yearns inwardly to assert himself by flattening those around him.

How much of this is" good"? Is any of it really good? The with-it modern astrologer will undoubtedly reply that everything I have listed is an essential aspect of real life. Without the dynamic Mars impulse manifestation would remain static. Nothing would get done because there would be no fighting urge towards achievement. The accidents to the native himself and the discomfort suffered by other people may be regrettable, but they are the unavoidable accompaniments of the process by which energy overcomes inertia. We must accept them as incidentals in a cosmic order that on balance is overwhelmingly positive, constructive and good.

As against this I maintain that there are other principles in the horoscope that make for achievement much more constructively than Mars ever does. The creative impulse and energy of the Sun and the large vision and jovial impetus of Jupiter are obvious examples. The Mars principle is always destructive. I am not, of course, for one moment suggesting that all people who have Mars rising or prominent in their charts are evil. The chart as a whole will show whether the person concerned has the temperament and the character to modify or turn the Mars impulse in a constructive direction. I do say, however, that the Mars impulse itself is always evil even though, due to the operation of Divine Providence in all things, good may sometimes come of it.

The fact that good may cone from evil is an important principle. We ought to spend a few moments at this point giving attention to it, in order to get it into clear perspective. There is a famous passage in the Bible, in Isaiah 45:7, which tells us that God himself is the author of evil. In the King James Bible it reads as follows:

 Amazingly, people who maintain and want to prove that there is no such thing as real evil quite often advance this passage to support their position. They argue that because God himself is the ultimate and absolute Good nothing that He creates can possibly be truly evil. Since He will work good from it. It can only be evil from our point of view. But that is far from what God says. He says He is the author of both good and evil and He lists them as opposites. He didn’t make evil good; He made it evil. He made a very definite distinction between the two, which it is our business here on Earth to learn to recognize. What He may make of either or both of them, by means of His Providence, does not blur the distinction at all. It certainly does not justify us in concluding that it does not matter which of them we choose. For us, our choice will make all the difference in the world. If we choose good we choose to work with the Divine Purpose in manifestation. If we choose evil we choose to work against it. Jesus commented on the principle, as is recorded in Matthew 10:39, pointing out that in the first case we find life, even if we lose our lives, while in the second we inevitably forfeit life despite all our efforts to save it. The old astrologers instinctively discerned the truth of this distinction, and it is implicit in their separation of the planets into two contrasting groups, the benefics and the malefics. They saw truly which planets worked in inward harmony with the Divine Plan and which did not, both outwardly in external events and circumstances and subjectively in the characters of the people born under them. Instead of brushing their classification aside, as if inapplicable in view of more profound modern insights and its motives, we should more humbly prepare ourselves to perceive its true profundity from a modern perspective.

Let us take an even closer look at Mars. I have already pointed out that the essential principle of Mars is destructiveness. Because this principle is present and operative to some degree in all of us — latent in some, overt in others — it has tended to become institutionalized. In all nations and states, at all periods in history, there has existed an institution expressly designed to regularize destruction and to set the seal of acceptability and respectability upon it. This institution is the Army. The real reasons why the armed forces have been an integral part of human society since its inception are not those we hear most frequently. We usually hear that it is there for our defense. If we didn’t have it someone else's army would overrun us. However, every "someone else" uses precisely the same argument about us in order to justify the existence of his own army. The real purpose of an army is to enable a few persons within each social group to control and direct the general destructiveness of that group. By focusing it upon certain specific objectives and confining it within definite patterns and norms, they usually manage to prevent the disintegration of their own group that might otherwise occur if its natural destructive elements were allowed to have free rein. In times of civil war, of course, these destructive elements are unleashed upon the group itself and the awful realities are revealed. In any war situation, moreover, once the resistance of one side breaks down, the other side almost always perpetrates the most gross and evil brutalities upon it. The control over violent evil is then relaxed: a blind eye is turned on it, and it is regarded as temporarily "justified". Pious platitudes are muttered about "teaching aggressors a lesson" and so forth, although all that is actually happening is that the Victors are indulging in an orgy of brutality without fear of reprisals against an enemy too weak to resist. Naturally a longing for vengeance is aroused in the victims, and this will almost certainly provide an excuse for more violence at some future time.

But the matter goes further than just this. Although destructiveness is the special sign manual of Mars — the characteristic that it always manifests to some degree, in some form or other — the planet also shares the Greater Malefic’s anti-life and anti-freedom tendency. This is particularly evident in the army's insistence upon discipline. Saturn and Mars are frequently contrasted as being the planets of inertia and energy respectively, and one often sees Mars represented as the champion of freedom and enthusiasm, opposing Saturn as the principle of discipline and restriction. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Freedom and enthusiasm as astrological principles are represented by Jupiter and the Sun, and anyone who only thinks of Saturn in connection with discipline has obviously never been anywhere near the army. The Mars principle reigns supreme in the army, and this institution is dedicated from first to last to the inculcation of discipline and the suppression of individual freedom and initiative. Army parades are in effect parades of robotized individuals, all forced to stand in an identical stiff posture, wearing the same clothes, subjected to the same haircut, and all obliged to execute the same jerky robot-like movements in response to commands shouted in a coarse and domineering tone. Recruits are subjected to several months of this to condition them thoroughly_. They are then instructed in various lethal techniques, which they must be prepared to carry out mercilessly and efficiently, with no possibility of humanitarian thoughts towards the enemy intruding to impair their destructiveness. The most devastating armies are those composed of individuals who have fully identified themselves with the military anti-life ritual, and who can therefore deal death without remorse as they are themselves already nine-tenths dead while in uniform. The remaining one tenth is the irresponsible childlike individual whom society everywhere accepts as the "typical soldier".

There are, of course, individuals who seem to be completely cut out for an army career. They adopt the stiff, upright bearing with satisfaction because it accords perfectly with their own inner natures and the way they want to appear. Such people have a desire to impress or to wield power over others, and they acquire a sense of prestige through the institution that is the symbol of power par excellence. There have even been whole nations that have identified themselves with the military ideal in this way. Examples are the Greek state of Sparta, the woman-dominated nation of the Amazons (who typically cut off one breast to signify their renunciation of softness), and Rome. Though almost always inferior in numbers to the enemies who surrounded them, these peoples succeeded in flattening their adversaries through superior discipline, better weapons training and courage. One must never minimize the courage of Mars. It is born of genuine subordination of the personality and ego to the military ideal. In its own way it involves just as perfect a concentration of the mind and transcendence of the lower self as that achieved by yoga adepts, although these may be following quite different ideals inspired by benevolence towards all of humanity - They too develop courage. Courage and concentration are, in fact, closely related principles, as may be clearly seen in the proverbial case of the mother who is entirely possessed by her love for her child. Mother love can result in such a degree of one-pointed concentration that no act of heroism becomes impossible. The fact that those who are dominated by Mars can also achieve this same inward one-pointedness, though for cruel ends, should teach us a great deal about the effective mechanisms of human psychology if we are prepared to look squarely at the facts instead of only seeing what we expect or wish to see. The cruel concentration of Mars is the concentration of the natural predator, the wolf, the tiger, the eagle, and also the expert human hunter. While we may admire the steely efficiency of all of these, we should never blind ourselves to the pain they inflict and their essential destructiveness.

Nevertheless, in astrological terms, no one is ever wholly and completely a Mars individual. In any one of us Martian traits may be blended with a myriad different influences, bringing motives other than mere cruelty into play. Thus it has been aptly said that a surgeon has to be cruel to be kind. In a good surgeon the streak of cruelty is always there. Dr. Christian Barnard, the famous South African heart specialist, has related how as a child he performed all sorts of "operations" upon small animals. In adult life, however, this cruelty was sublimated in the service of healing. Even in the military field the same principle holds. Clausewitz’s classic remark that in war the most ruthless course is always the kindest one demonstrates this. A general’s aim should always be to take whatever action will put the quickest end to the whole conflict. This is always the kindest way for the enemy as well as for one's own troops. Considerations like these can give some insight into the way Providence may act to bring good out of evil, though it will certainly not be limited to these instances alone.

Born as we are into a world that is made up of both good and evil inextricably intertwined, our task is to eschew evil wherever we can and, where we cannot, to transmute as much of it as possible into good. The unavoidable omnipresence of evil is the essential message of Christ’s parable of the wheat and the tares Matthew l3: 24 -30). It is discovered that a mischief-maker has sown thistles and weeds amongst a farmer's wheat, and his servants wish to root out the unwanted plants. He forbids this; pointing out that in the process the wheat would be rooted out as well. It is best to wait until both have grown to full stature, at which time each will be fully recognizable. Then the harvest can he reaped and the weeds can be bound in bundles and burnt. The early Gnostics and some of their so-called "heretical" successors in medieval Christian Europe truly perceived the deeper meaning of this parable. The orthodox Catholic Church condemned and persecuted the Gnostics, Manichaeans, Albigensians and Cathars because they insisted that good and evil are equally balanced in the world. It is actually impossible to conceive of one without the other, just as it is impossible to conceive of light without darkness as its contrast, or heat without cold, up without down, big without small, and so on. This manifested world is a dual world in its very essence, and can only be understood and coped with if we are prepared to engage in the continuous mental process of distinguishing and separating the opposites which go to make it up. We can only be finally free of evil by leaving the world altogether, which is what the "parfaits" among the Catholics wanted to do (and many Buddhist and other Eastern ascetics still do). They were persecuted as if they condoned evil, or as if they elevated the evil principle to a position of equality with God, but this was really to misunderstand their position. God is beyond good and evil and the author of both, as the passage (Isaiah 47:7) quoted earlier clearly states. It is here, in this world, that we have to accept the inexorable presence of evil. But in so accepting it the Cathars (like all the other Gnostics) never called it good. On the contrary they recognized it for what it really is, and so should we.

Contrary to the tenets of much of the present day’s so-called scientific psychology and sociology, evil has a real existence. Moreover, we all really know that it has, and act upon this knowledge in the way that we live our lives, whatever contrary theory we may intellectually profess to believe. Every time we look for the best or the most advantageous way to handle a particular situation or problem, we are implicitly distinguishing between good and evil. And however much we may gloss them over or "make the best of them" we all know that a vast number of quite objective external things are evils. Take a person born with a strawberry mark on his face, or a clubfoot. However much he may improve the situation through his response to it, however much it stimulates him to achievements he might not have attained without the affliction, the fact remains that both a strawberry mark and a club foot are still intrinsically evil: for they distort or fall short of the perfect plan of creation, which can never be fully accomplished until they are put right. Evil is thus not merely something that exists purely within the mind, or a matter of attitudes to things, as many books by esoteric and religious authors frequently claim. It has an external reality as well, and we all really tacitly admit this when we try to protect ourselves against ill health or crime. Attitudes to ill health and crime only acquire relevance after we have first recognized them as evils, for then we can begin to learn to do something about them. Any other approach only leads to the proliferation of evil.

Probably the greatest danger we have to face in connection with evil — whether in the cruel aggressive form represented by Mars (which always produces pain and operates through human beings in an overt or covert delight in inflicting it), or in the even more terrible cold, heartless, negative restrictions of Saturn — consists in personal indulgence in it. Open indulgence in cruelty still occurs today, and not only in savage or semi-savage parts of the world. More commonly, however, it is exercised under various justifications or excuses, or with the pretense that, in the way it is being practiced, it is a virtue. Just as the excesses of victorious armies at the end of a war are justified as "righteous anger" at whatever the enemy is supposed to have done, so in ordinary life we too often delight in finding, or creating, situations that give a color of justification for aggression. We say that because of one or another thing we have a "right" to feel angry, to take vengeance, to withhold sympathy, help or understanding, or to cause pain and suffering. Possibly Mars is less in evidence in this way today than it was in the past, for in normal civilized life there are fewer opportunities to be openly violent than there used to be. Children are thrashed less, for instance, and dueling has been made illegal. On the other hand, opportunities to withhold sympathy or to be cold and hard may well have increased, particularly in bureaucratic situations. This is the field in which Saturn loves to work, and coldness and hardness are the hallmarks of the Saturnine approach. But coldness can easily flame into anger, just as anger and cruelty can often be followed by indifference, for the two malefics really work well together and complement each other, even though they appear to be opposites.

Sometimes it seems as if the whole modern world is caught up is a desperate search for the secret of how to live without really living. In place of genuine interaction between individual people our society has adopted a system of behavior and conversation patterns which lay down the right or fashionable thing to do or to say in almost every conceivable situation. It is as though we were all seeking a substitute for really having to think or feel. In the 1940s the great jazz singer Billy Holiday recorded a song about just this terrible aspect of the times in which we live: "We had meatless meat and milkless milk, and now we’ve got loveless love". The whole of life is becoming ever more mechanized and denatured, and the more mechanical it becomes the more opportunities abound for covert "justified" evil and cruelty. The bureaucracy of Saturn has the civilized world solidly within its grip, while the Third World lives in equally Saturnine poverty or starvation. The only real way out lies with the path of the benefics, the way of trust and goodwill between peoples and genuine personal interaction between individuals, whatever their official positions may be. The world needs as explosion of love. But instead it continues to look blindly for a "formula" for peace, while the spirit of Mars gloats at the prospect of the annihilation of all life as the Third World War approaches.

This article was published in Considerations V:1, January 1988

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