Mars in Cancer in the Eighth House

The placement of Mars in Cancer indicates that you have a need to feel emotionally safe with respect to your desires and the actions that you take to pursue these desires. This usually manifests in your having desires for those things and situations that confer an emotional sense of well-being. These include things such as closeness with family, being nurtured and nurturing, etc. Generally, both the close attention that you pay to satisfying these desires and your concern that actions taken by you not jeopardize the foundations of your emotional security result in a certain cautiousness. Having Mars in Cancer, your natural caution often causes you to self-limit the scope of your desires and action. Much of the behavior and many of the personality characteristics associated with Mars in Cancer are a result of the emotional qualities of your desires and actions.

The placement of Mars in Cancer is often problematic. This is symbolized by the natural square between Cancer and Mars-ruled Aries. Cancer is the Cardinal Water sign. The active water element of Cancer symbolically drowns out the Mars fire. The active and forceful energy symbolized by Mars is slowed and diffused as it is forced to operate through the water element. Circumscribed by a wall of water, Mars may find its place boiling pots or stirring emotions.

Mars also symbolizes the animus in the psyche. Thus, if you are male with Mars in Cancer, you are likely to model your masculinity in order to incorporate characteristics typically associated with Cancer. If you are female, you are likely to be attracted to someone who projects or embodies Cancer-associated traits. For a male, there may also be some conflict between the masculine energy associated with Mars and the feminine energy of associated with Cancer. You may, in some sense, feel emasculated by being under the influence of the “womanish” Cancer energy. However, if you have a more secure and positive sense of your masculinity, this placement suggests an opportunity to explore and incorporate your feminine side. If you are female with Mars in Cancer, you may either be attracted to “weak” men or to men who have balanced their masculine and feminine natures, depending upon your own conceptions of masculinity and other psychological factors.

Insecurities

With Mars in Cancer, your insecurity is expressed when the active principle within you is hesitant to assert itself, lest it provoke a threatening response. Ironically, your fear of what the world outside your safe confines can do to you has only made you weak and vulnerable. Thus, you serve others, complacently, while your own needs and desires fail to find expression.

Mars in the 8th House:

Mars in the 8th House is generally well-placed. This view, however, seems to be greatly influenced by Mars’ association with desire and sexuality. The 8th House is traditionally the house of sexuality and Mars’ placement here suggests a masculine sexuality that is “in its element.” Following this line of thought suggests that you are generally able to intimately express your sexuality.

Another dynamic that is suggested by Mars in the 8th House is the enhancement of your ability to act through the power that comes from intensity and focus. This is a power that generally comes from within you and allows you to act with force and confidence. It is your intimate involvement with your actions and with the thing or situation acted upon that is the source of this power in action.  Having Mars in the 8th House, you, generally, are not afraid to act. You know, often intuitively, both the appropriate form and the ultimate consequence of your actions. Your actions may, therefore, appear to others to be strong, powerful and fearless. This often inspires trust and respect. The outcome of this is often that you are placed in a position where you can lead or manage others.  With Mars in the 8th House, the intimacy that you wish to experience through your actions is often viewed by you in terms of control. If you can control through your actions, then you can enforce an intimate relationship with the object of control. This desire for control sometimes becomes an obsession. It may extend to all of your actions, from a desire to have power over others, to a desire to maintain control over your own actions, to a will to dominate your sexual partner.  As an individual with Mars in the 8th House, sometimes this desire for control can have an inhibiting effect on your active function. You become retentive and may have difficulty acting. You may wish only to act in secret so as to protect your “power.” The polarity of this is the urge to liberate the power of action that resides within you.

Insecurities

Having Mars in the 8th House, if you are inwardly insecure, this will lead you to crave intimacy but you find none that you can obtain. In actuality, your ego will always stand in the way of experiencing intimacy but you are not willing to give up your ego. Instead, you are determined to be master of the “other,” whether this “other” is your partner, your associates or the situation in which you find yourself. With Mars in the 8th House, you cannot let go because, in your eyes, this would mean losing control. Therefore, all of your actions are bent upon securing and maintaining control. In this way, you seek to tie others to yourself.

As an individual with Mars in the 8th House, if you cannot control a situation, then you may react with one of two polar responses. You may lash out violently, desperately trying to enforce the intimacy of your control. Or, you may withdraw into your own intimacy, where you can be assured of “control” and where you can brood over the wrongs that have been done to you and plot your revenge.

Focus of Desires

With Mars in the 8th House, your desires are generally bound up with seeking intimacy or control.  This may manifest as a desire for sexual intimacy or for power. For some individual with Mars in the 8th House, this desire for power may be expressed through the occult. For some, the desire for intimacy may be focused on that experience of ultimate intimacy with life and death.  Your desires are likely to be private and to remain private. You may consider them to be too intimate to share, even with those closest to you – or, certainly, only with those closest to you.

Uncover deeper insights into your personality, motivations, & desires with an In-Depth Astrology & Numerology Natal Chart Analysis.

Article referenced from:

• Gargatholil, Depth Astrology: An Astrological Handbook – Volume 2: Planets in Signs

• Gargatholil, Depth Astrology: An Astrological Handbook – Volume 3: Planets in Houses

Click Here to Access the Complete Depth Astrology Collection with full excerpts.

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