mars.
- Creation moves through a continual dance between tension and resolution. Without tension, everything would remain inert. Thus, tension is what pulls potential into motion.
- In occult tradition, mars symbolizes the force that responds to tension by seeking resolution. Resolution is not the ultimate end, but the completion of a cycle that allows new ones to emerge.
- Underlying mars symbolism is a profound mystery. It asks us to recognize which actions resolve tension and which actions only provide temporary relief.
- Thus, in many ways, mars represents the aim of initiatory mystery traditions: to resolve tension and bring cycles to completion.
- On the flipside, the collective often prefers to remain in a state of unresolved tension and loop through familiar cycles indefinitely. For them, there is a strange comfort in never arriving. So the tension remains alive, becoming this wonderfully seductive thing that produces shared grievance, anticipation, fantasy, discourse, community, and an endless field of possibility where nothing has to become concrete.
- Mars symbolism also communicates the power of libido and its role in the spiritual evolution of the adept.
- One of the first great tensions human beings encounter directly within themselves is sexual tension. Our first “ache” is in our creative and life-affirming center.
- In a reality driven by the impulse toward expression, it is no surprise that our own creative force produces one of the most intense forms of tension we will ever experience.
- This is why initiatory mystery traditions weave sexual symbolism and, in some traditions, sexual rites throughout their teachings. Sexual tension is the Great Tension, and the tensions encountered elsewhere in life are understood as reflections of this primordial force.
- The adept learns to command the libido. To master the force that creates tension within oneself gives capacity to resolve tension wherever it appears.
- The collective, on the other hand, is rarely taught to understand this force or bring it to meaningful resolution. Instead, it is taught to relieve it through distraction, consumption, debate, shame, performance, and endless discussion.
- Having learned this pattern early, we apply it to every other tension we encounter. Boredom gets relieved with distraction. Dissatisfaction with consumption. Creative blocks with criticism of those who create. Uncertainty births ever more ideology, but rarely practical solutions.
- This is why adepts seek fulfillment in the physical world. Because resolution forces reality to answer. There is no magic without will.
- Before resolution, we are dealing mostly with possibility, imagination, projection, fear, hope, and speculation. After resolution, illusion dies and truth emerges. Action reveals what thought alone cannot.
- Ordinary life will orient you toward burning lifeforce in actions that feel like progress but are simply sophisticated forms of relief. Discomfort is reduced temporarily, but conditions remain unchanged.
- The common person wants to feel lighter. The master wants to be left transformed.