When Mars and Saturn Conjunct, Expect Disaster

Something intriguing, and truly terrifying, happened last year from July 29th through August 2nd, and I am sure I'm not the only one who's noticed it. It's like everyone lost their friggin minds and the universe itself became hostile to life. People were quick to anger and nothing seemed to get done. Everything blew up in your face, all at once. It became a Hell on Earth, and it seemed to come out of nowhere. At least, that's how I experienced it.

You see, the two "big bad guys" of astrology, Mars and Saturn, went conjunct in the first degree of Libra. They formed a T-square with the Uranus/Jupiter conjunction on the Aries cusp in opposition and Pluto in Capricorn at the apex. Anyone paying attention should have seen it coming, and with my own natal Mars just beyond 1* Libra, and my natal Saturn at about 17* Libra, I definitely should have. But who would have thought a "silly conjunction" could lead to what transpired?

While this conjunction was happening, a friend and I were RVing our way out to New Mexico. We were on our way through Alabama on the 2nd, taking what I believed to be the more relaxed and scenic route. A severe, record-smashing heatwave was in progress, with temperatures soaring over 110*F and humidity beyond anything I thought was possible on this planet, so we had been driving at night. Each day, when the roads got too hot to drive safely, we'd pull off and either find a motel or pull into a rest area. This particular morning, we had pulled into a rest area and had fired up the generator so we could run the AC. When the generator would overheated and quit on us, which happened at a fairly regular interval, I'd wait a little while before running out to fire it back up. Meanwhile, we were kicking back and enjoying the AC, chatting about trivial things and what had been on the radio that night. I remember my friend telling me a story about something that had happened that morning which struck me funny in a bad way. I knew then that it was important, but I had no idea that it was foreshadowing the week-long living nightmare that would have us actually fearing for our lives.

She had gone to get a couple gallons of water from the restrooms. On her way up to the restrooms, a young shirtless man, American Indian, pointed her toward an old style water pump. Not thinking much of it, she went over and started pumping like crazy trying to fill the jugs. Barely anything was coming out. She gave up and went into the restroom to use the sink at this point, if memory serves. After getting the water and on her way back to the RV, an old man (I think she said he was wearing all black) was walking down the steps next to her and had said something to her. For the life of me, I can't remember what he said to her, but it struck me as a sort of admonition or judgement, whatever it was.

I had immediately remembered that Saturn and Mars were conjunct in Libra, and connected it to that - the young shirtless man represented Mars as "Warrior" (with a mean sense of humor evidently) and the old man was Saturn as "Judge". We both got a bit of a chuckle out of it, but didn't really know what to make of it.

It was only a little while later, on one of my trips out to fire up the generator, that I realized we had sprung a massive leak and gasoline was pouring out from under my friend's RV. An urgent call went in to her roadside assistance service and before we knew it, all hell seemed to be breaking loose. They had called out the fire department, police and hazmat. The entire rest area was being cleared out for fear of explosions. For people who don't like to be in the spotlight, this was becoming humiliating.

Hours were going by as we waited for a tow truck to show up, and temperatures were already soaring over 110*F in that unshaded parking lot. My friend and I were overtired and hungry, and quickly becoming severely dehydrated and sunburned. Nothing was going right. In my attempts to figure out the cause of the leak, and hopefully stop everything from pouring out of the tank, my whole upper body and most of my face had become covered with dirt, melted tar and gasoline. It felt like my skin was on fire as the gasoline burned the surface of my skin. A second call had gone in to roadside assistance...A third... "Someone should be out there in about 45 minutes," they kept saying.

The police and hazmat team had left after a little while, but "fire and rescue" stayed waiting for the tow truck to show. Their "chief", or whatever he was, continuously quizzed me, asking pointed questions as if probing for dirt and honestly looking to piss me off. This guy wanted to pick a fight with me for whatever reason. It was a miracle I didn't knock the guy's teeth down his throat, honestly - I was stressed right to (what I thought was the breaking point) and this guy was purposely, and very obviously, trying to throw me over the edge.

After about the 5th call in to her roadside assistance (it all got pretty blurry after a while), we learned that they had been waiting for an "all clear" phone call from the fire department before they could send out a tow truck. "Wow, what a mess," was all I could say. Once we were told they were waiting for this, and they were told in no uncertain terms that the fire department had been waiting for hours with us, we were finally able to get our tow.

When the tow truck had arrived, the driver insisted that it was ok for us to leave my friend's car on the tow dolly attached to her rig while he towed it. This way I could follow with my rig and my friend, who was in no shape to be driving, with severe dehydration and sun poisoning setting in, could just ride with me as we followed him to the shop. Everything seemed great until he got it on the highway and commenced driving at speeds over 65 miles per hour. I could barely keep up, hauling my rig with my undersized truck, and we could see the car violently bouncing all over the road behind him.

And that's when then the next series of disasters began. You see, the roadside assistance service called him to come out and haul the rig to a closer shop where another company would fix the gas leak. We ended up getting towed miles further, into what seemed the middle of nowhere, to the "shop" run by the towing company. But this "shop" was not a shop at all - it was a scrap yard. We found ourselves standing inside a barbed wire fence and surrounded by busted up cars and trucks, rusty and falling apart, replete with bullet holes and smashed up windshields, in the middle of Central Alabama, miles from the nearest town. The place was truly like something out of a horror film.

They asked me to pull the car off the tow dolly so they could back up the rig into the shade and start working on it - no problem...but as I put the car into gear, a loud grinding sound erupted from underneath. The car rolled back off the dolly and the driver's side wheel went sideways! The ball joint had snapped, quite obviously from the violent 70mph towing, and now nobody wanted to fix it!

At this point, trying to handle all the pressure, as I argued angrily with the people that ran the scrap yard, I found myself shaking all over and on the verge of hysteria. All I knew was someone had to fix this. We couldn't even put the car back on the tow dolly the way it was! My friend, at this point, was beginning to pass in and out of consciousness, and was becoming delirious, because of the extreme heat and dehydration combined with sun poisoning from severe sunburn. My keys had gone missing and the pets were locked up in my 5th wheel, baking in the full sun.

I found myself in the middle of a literal Hell on Earth.

I don't know who made the call, but somebody decided to cut me a bit of slack. Someone was sent out to fix the car. A small miracle. Of course, they weren't going to fix it for free - we would have to pay for parts and labor. They had no idea how that ball joint broke and assumed zero responsibility for it. Being stuck the way we were, I said no problem...I just wanted things fixed so we could get away from there ASAP. Interestingly, the timing of this small reprieve coincides with the Moon coming within a 3* orb of my natal Sun in Taurus.

But then a new disaster began. Yes, another disaster. Evidently, after arguing with the woman in the "office" (if you could call it that), she had decided to call her brother to come "beat me up". It was suddenly like a fight scene from a grade school playground - this guy comes walking over and starts pushing and shoving me. Six others come out from nowhere and begin circling. I remember the guy having some kind of long metal tool in his hands - a tire iron? I'm yelling at this guy to calm down - that I don't want to fight anyone - barely believing this is happening. He's in a fit of rage, yelling about something to do with his sister and me threatening her, and can't even hear me. My friend suddenly appeared in the middle of all this, pushing the guy back and yelling at him. Absolute chaos.

Honestly, I remember so very little, and everything was basically a blur, but no punches were ever thrown and nobody got hurt. It's like another small miracle occurred. Next thing I remember was that I was trying to help the guy who was tasked with fixing the gas leak, handing him tools again. I assume I was starting to black out because of the extreme stress, both physical and mental. A good portion of the day is nothing but a hazy fog.

Anyway, the "shop" was proving itself completely incompetent at this point, and was unable to fix the gas leak. We ended up spending the night boondocking (no water/electric/sewer) in their dirt "parking lot" and once everyone left the scrap yard for the night, we contacted the roadside assistance service and told them all of what had happened. They seemed extremely concerned and informed us to call the next day if they weren't getting it fixed right away, or if there was any more trouble whatsoever. I had some water still in my tanks and a fully charged battery, so I was finally able to get the gasoline and other filth off my skin. At this point, though, I was pretty numb all over and wasn't feeling any pain. We settled in and talked about the events of the day in utter disbelief. Needless to say, we waited all night for someone to show up looking to "disappear" our bodies in that scrap yard.

The next day we were woken at 7:30am and informed they wanted to start on fixing the leak "first thing". Hours went by as the temperature increased and nothing was touched. At noon, we gave the roadside assistance another call to let them know that nothing had been done. They replied, in a somewhat snotty tone, that they couldn't do anything about it and we'd just have to wait. I can tell you, the look on our faces must have been priceless.

About an hour later, however, the "shop" decided to send someone out to begin working on it. Less than 2 hours later, they told us it was fixed and we owed them some outrageous amount of money. They claimed to have adjusted the carburetor, replaced hoses and all other sorts of unnecessary and non-approved work. We happily payed them and left that place as fast as we could.

On our way to the highway, we pulled off to wait for the roads to cool down as it had been another scorcher with temperatures around 110*F. We couldn't afford to ruin expensive tires on hot roads, especially now. Besides that, we desperately needed a mental and emotional break before we got back on the road. The ordeal of the last two days had been rough on both of us, so we got some fast food and sat in a grassy spot under a shade tree, relaxing for a couple hours.

As the sun got lower in the sky and the roads began to cool, we made our way back to the rigs to get ready for the road...and we found another puddle of gas starting to develop.

Another call in to the roadside service - and we flat out refused to have the same people work on the leak. After some arguing and talking with supervisors, they called the place we were supposed to be towed to originally who showed up in record time to tow the rig. The story of what had happened at the last place had been told, so this shop went the extra mile to make sure we were comfortable - even going so far as to get us water and electric hookups so we could shower and run the AC...but then the waiting game began...

Hours went by...and then days...without any work being done on the leak. The one mechanic they had on duty was being called over and over to on-site truck repairs, one after another, until he could barely stand up straight. We didn't dare complain. The mechanic was friendly, plus we had water and AC now, so we felt that to complain or seem impatient would be insulting...if not to him, then to the universe itself.

Days went by as we waited patiently for him to have time. Each night we spent there, we found ourselves keeping our ears perked, listening for the people from the scrap yard looking to get revenge for our complaints. We started to feel like prisoners - like we'd never get out of Alabama without leaving my friend's RV behind.

Finally, as Venus conjuncted with Saturn on the 9th, the mechanic found a couple hours in his day to fix the leak. He told us that he felt bad we had to wait so long, and gave us a deal on labor. And that night, we were back on the road.

I'm wondering if anyone else out there had an experience last summer coinciding with that Mars and Saturn conjunction. If you did, what happened? Was it related to heat? Combustion? Anger? Broken metal or bones? Delays?

I, for one, will never underestimate the power of transits again.