What shape is your ego in? April’s transits will let you know, for better or worse.
But first we’d better figure out what we mean by “ego,” a concept about which the modern Western mind is deeply ambivalent. From the psychologists, we hear that a healthy ego should be strong and well-defined (which implicitly means yang: robust and forceful [tough luck, Mars in Pisces]). But from pop culture – and definitely from personal relationships — we hear that having a “big ego” makes us an asshole.
It’s schizoid. We’re conditioned to see the ego with confusion and suspicion, at the very least. Yet we all have one, and are supposed to know how to manage it.
Astrology is at least as ambivalent towards this feature of the psyche. It is straightforwardly linked to the planet Mars, which is traditionally 
labeled a “malefic:” bad, by definition.(1) Under the old system, Mars in a given sign was either less bad (e.g. in Capricorn) or more bad (e.g. in Cancer), but always bad.
Mars without stigma
Happily, the more value-neutral schools of astrology regard Mars without this stigma. Most practitioners believe that, as with any other symbol, whether a Mars works well or not depends upon the native’s self-understanding. The question is whether the planet functions as an agent of the life purpose.
In this reading, Mars, a.k.a. the ego, is the part of us which, like our arms,(2) reaches out into the outside world to assert our individual will. It’s how we muscle our way through the world.
If our Mars is in good shape, our desires and actions support our raison-d’être: the Sun. The Sun is our essential will, and Mars is the force that thrusts our will into the here-and-now.
Mars Retrograde
Now is a good time to consider the various ways this force makes itself known, because Mars is going into a period of review. It begins its retrograde on April 17th and will not go direct again until the end of June.
A planet in retrograde keeps us from taking that part of ourselves for granted. It’s as if the car that gets us places (Mars) is now in the shop. It may still have its motor running, but it’s not going anywhere. It’s in the dark garage, being examined. How is it running? What makes it go? What needs to be tweaked? By getting to know its workings better, we can make it more efficient.
During Mars’s long retrograde (4/17-6/29), we may find that projects left undone are kicked into the event level. Maybe something we 
skipped or shirked when Mars was direct will now rear its head to be resolved.
As skywatchers know, Mars transits make notorious triggers. When within orb, Mars is likely to awaken any long, slow, important transits that are going on at the same time.(3) It’ll happen this summer when Mars catches up to Neptune, Saturn and Jupiter. The year’s big T-square will explode into manifestation.(4)
But not until Mars’s retrograde pulls it back into Scorpio for a while. This planet occupies only two signs from 
January 2016 through the end of September: Scorpio and Sagittarius.
Scorpion or Eagle
Of the two creatures associated with Scorpio, the scorpion and the eagle, it’s the former that has become cemented in the popular mind as the sign’s official mascot. Not the far-sighted creature soaring above the fray, but the creepy crawler with the sting. (5)
Mars in Scorpio, which matches up the sign with its original planetary ruler, has a connotation in pop astrology of dramatic wickedness. And it is true that the self-orientation of Mars, when paired with a sign as tenacious and secretive as Scorpio, can be ruthless and underhanded.
But this placement is no more dastardly than any other, when operating with awareness. It conceals (Scorpio) its motives (Mars) instinctively, which is why it is often extraordinarily effective. Scorpio, a water sign, implies that this effectiveness comes from depth, not breadth. Mars in this placement uses psychological insight to manipulate circumstances to get what it wants.
Unconscious assumptions
Whether or not we consider this modus operandi scary and evil depends on whether we think any and all manipulation is inherently wrong, and whether we think there’s something inherently suspicious about getting what we want.
The first order of business during this transit is clearly to get in touch with our feelings about the ego.
Notes
1 Mars likes to express itself literally: its transits tend to render covert processes overt. See “Transits of Mars: Beware of What You Want, for You Will Get It.”
2 Mars governs arms in both senses: bodily limbs and armaments.
3 Traditionally known as a “Translation of Light,” this happens when a faster-moving planet carries forward the energy of the slower-moving planet.
4 The “crisis of faith” square, between Neptune in Pisces and Saturn in Sagittarius (discussed in detail here), became a T-square when Jupiter in Virgo clicked into place. The configuration’s main subplot, Jupiter’s square with Saturn (see last month’s Skywatch), was exact on March 23rd and will be again on May 26th.
5 In symbolic language, it’s generally the extravagantly negative images that have the most impact. We humans seem to resonate with the negative pole of any given polarity; the “bad” ones have a titillation value that the neutral or “good” ones lack. Vice is far more attractive than virtue in Milton’s Comus, the villain is a juicier role than the hero in action movies, and in astrological stereotyping the shadow side of a given placement tends to be the one that people remember.
