The beginning of each year is always marked by a flood of pleas for peace. Leaders and institutions come forward with the same refrain: concord, understanding, ceasefire. But, beneath the sublunar sphere, human wishes are always shaped by the higher forces that press upon incarnation. After all, what moves above manifests below, as planets are physical materialisations of incorporeal Spirits, vehicles of Divine Will. As the world wrestles once again with fires and eruptions, the cause can always be traced back to the nature of the stars. And, among them, the one that governs conflict, quarrel, and iron is Mars. The choleric, visceral, hot and dry Mars.
And where is the god of war at the start of 2026? Exalted in Capricorn. Coincidence? Surely not. Exaltation is the second of the essential dignities, just below domicile. If the planet domiciled in its own sign acts like a patient sovereign in the long run, secure in its authority, the exalted planet is a sprinter, hurling all its strength the instant the pistol fires. Mars in Capricorn is precisely such a disciplined warrior who knows where to strike. His fire finds in cardinal Earth the perfect field in which to labour, to release fury with accurate method. Normally, this would make Mars especially effective: imagine a craftsman of iron, a sculptor shaping Saturn’s lead into solid pillars. In the Tarot, the Three of Pentacles (the card associated with the decan of Mars in Capricorn) is called Works, a word Crowley used to define it entirely. The labouring warrior, the one who descends into material toil, acting with force and purpose.
All Threes in the Tarot point to Binah, the supernal sphere of Understanding in the Tree of Life, where structure and comprehension are born. It is the moment when Spirit accepts the discipline. And no other planet embodies this so fully as Mars. In the grand archetype of Adam Kadmon, it is he who rules the Ascendant, Aries, the first motion of incarnation itself: the one who begins, who strikes, who brings the invisible into form.
But, in this opening of the year, Mars’s exaltation has been eroded by its accidental condition. The planet has applied to the Sun by conjunction: first entering under its beams, then into combustion, passing briefly through the heart of the Sun in cazimi, and now returning again to the shadows. The result is clear-cut. The warrior, who usually strikes with precision, becomes intoxicated by solar glory, blinded by his own flame, confusing strength with omnipotence. Combustion is always perilous for Mars. Being a malefic and discordant planet, any disturbance of his nature makes him insolent, excessive, incapable of discerning his targets. In Capricorn, this wounded exaltation turns the strategist into a fanatic, possessed by solar hubris, attacking in the name of ideals or banners poorly weighed, convinced he serves a noble cause while fuelling destruction.
Even so, as Mars slowly withdraws from the Sun, though still under the beams, he begins to regain some of the clarity and stability proper to his exaltation. However, still in Capricorn, Mars is applying already to a conjunction with Mercury. The latter, already burned and submerged in solar light, is the significator of reason, thought, and speech, precisely those faculties now crushed between the fire of the Sun and the hot iron of Mars.
In the weeks ahead, this conjunction is likely to manifest as a general hardening of discourse and a deterioration of the channels of understanding. Mercury, deprived of the cool detachment required for reasoning and of the lightness proper to dialogue, becomes an involuntary accomplice to martial and solar fury. What should be discernment turns into aggressive calculation; tactical intelligence decays into polemic. Two choleric, hot, and dry planets inflame the air and scorch the instruments of communication. The opening of 2026 is marked not solely by the exaltation of Mars, but by the capitulation of the reasonable Mercury.
Kύριε ελέησον