Over the last few days I have been reading and watching things about the Portuguese Commandos. It is an elite troop, known as the Red Berets, with a very specific reputation, built around a training course that is violently harsh on the body and mind, almost a process of deliberate mortification, in which people are taken to physical and mental extremes that many simply cannot endure. There are known cases of deaths during training, even.
The historical figure most associated with the Commandos is Jaime Neves, a general who also played a very important role in the PREC, a tense phase in which Portugal, having just come out of a dictatorship, became an almost miniature Cold War scenario, with several projects for the country trying to impose themselves. Also, by sheer coincidence, I find myself writing and publishing this precisely on the day that marks 13 years since his death.
This is not a military history website and that is not my interest here. What caught my attention was the violent symbolism behind the Commandos and, above all, the extremes that some human beings are able to endure, impose on themselves, and impose on others. While reading testimonies and watching videos, I could not help thinking that, inevitably, people shaped for this kind of world must have a very strong, blazing Mars, since Mars is the planet of conflict, belligerence, aggression, violence, roughness, and the capacity to endure and exercise harshness. So I went to take a look, in a very simple and superficial way, at Jaime Neves’s natal chart.
He was born on March 24, 1936. The exact time is not known, so it is not possible to work with the houses. Even so, the essential thing immediately stands out. Mars is in domicile in Aries, which is its most choleric, abrasive, and intense form. It is the Two of Wands in the Tarot, the combination of sign-planet that starts everything in the plane of manifestation. Mars is a hot and dry planet by nature, and in Aries this is taken to the maximum. It is direct action, aggressive initiative, attack, a force that does not wait or negotiate.
To make this even more evident, this Mars is in a perfect trine with Jupiter, also in domicile in Sagittarius, another Fire sign. This creates a very intense relationship between cardinal Fire and mutable Fire, between martial capacity for action and a system of unshakable ideas and convictions. Jupiter in Sagittarius is the pure idealist, the believer in a mission, a vision, a cause. Combined with a Mars like this, the result can only be a type of warrior and idealistic leader, someone who not only fights, but deeply believes in what he is doing. It is easy to see how such a configuration could leave a permanent mark on the PREC and play a decisive role in that period.
Another essential point is that the Sun is also in Aries, where it is exalted, and therefore totally subjected to Mars in the same sign. Sun in Aries is the Three of Wands. So you have the Two and the Three of Wands combined. This means that the whole identity of the man is profoundly martial and ready to do waht it takes. He has the plan and the means. It is a typical leader’s ego, difficult to oppose, incisive, with clear signs of hardness and roughness.
An exalted Sun and a domiciled Mars are two hot and dry principles operating at full strength, with a sanguine and choleric nature, still further fed by that Jupiter in Sagittarius which gives him meaning, justification, and ideal to action. The fact that there are about 20 degrees between the Sun and Mars makes this combination even more precise, because Mars is neither under the solar beams nor combust, which would make it weaker. It is an extraordinarily clean and exact configuration, with both warmongering planets operating at full throttle.
To make the picture even more extreme, the Moon, which is the principle of sensitivity, imagination, and emotional reaction, is also in Aries. In other words, even the lunar part is under the sign of Mars. And, being a New Moon, it is also swallowed by the Sun. Sensitivity is crushed between Sun and Mars in the same sign. This describes a human type in which even the way of feeling and reacting is martial, direct, aggressive, with very little room for hesitation or withdrawal.
Even without knowing the houses, this chart is extremely evident. It is a chart saturated with Aries, saturated with Fire, saturated with Mars. And I would almost bet that Aries occupied one of the angles, because this kind of configuration rarely remains hidden or confined to the interior. Everything here points to someone made for action, for command, for confrontation, and for pushing others and himself to the limit.
There are human natures built this way. When history catches them in the right, or the wrong, place and moment, they leave a mark.
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