Aggression: An energetic, forceful behavior response best viewed as a direct attack on an obstacle, opponent or enemy; an assertive fight impulse in a conflict situation. The impulse to hurt or punish those perceived as antagonists or enemies.
Aggressive action: An energetic, assertive response to circumstance; the energy and initiative to survive and accomplish; and the resilience to bounce back from mishap and adversity. When the going gets tough the strenuous extra-effort needed to overcome obstacles and opposition. Energized competitiveness in a competition situation – the impulse to defeat rivals and win. The need to make haste, take urgent action or rush due to circumstance or a time constraint.
- Aggression is combative: it sees fighting as the best solution
- Aggression is forceful: it takes assertive action
- Aggression is enterprising: it initiates action
- Aggression is courageous: it faces adversity with fortitude and grit
- Aggression is impulsive: it’s hasty and impetuous
- Aggression is fast and immediate: it wants instant gratification
- Aggression is impatient: waiting is not an option
- Aggression is short sighted: it doesn’t assess long-term consequence
- Aggression is traditional: the past guides present conduct
- Aggression is adventurous: it dares and takes a chance
- Aggression is resilient: it bounces back from adversity and
- Aggression is harsh: it’s cruel, insensitive and brutal
All things considered aggression – the dynamic urge ruled by Mars in astrology – has a bad reputation. It’s often described as the most destructive human impulse: a harsh, brutal animal behavior that is more at home in the jungle.
Aggression conjures up disturbing mental images of violence, hate, spite, explosive anger, viciousness, cruelty, unprovoked attacks, property destruction, vulgarity and shouting matches. At first glance it appears to have no admirable qualities, but appearances can be deceptive.
Why aggression?
Mars proclaims: Life wouldn’t be life without a bit of conflict.
The whole purpose of life on earth, and its evolution from mineral to human, is to develop the selfish instincts and animal qualities of the soul. Combat with harsh environmental conditions and the struggle for physical survival ensure their continued development.
Problems and difficulties are not overcome by weakness, nor is accomplishment made without aggression and courage. Those who permit their competitors – for food, mate and shelter – to force them to one side are not fulfilling the highest purpose of their physical destiny
Nature has been at great pains to develop these race preservation qualities; and having been developed through the struggle to survive with other life forms they are naturally selfish.
On the animal plane they are self-centered and largely dedicated to the destruction of enemies and the gaining of sustenance. Selfishness does not consider the consequences of its actions, nevertheless in order to preserve and provide for self and family, creatures develop initiative and an energy supply. This aggressive energy supply is the force behind the animal soul of every man and women.
A great deal is said in condemnation of the animal propensities that so frequently crop up in human behavior; but they are merely your most valuable assets in a state of under-development.
You should not encourage their expression, yet without them to furnish energy, still higher functions would have no power. Without this animal energy the human soul has no force: it would accomplish nothing.
The animal propensities are the sole source of humanity’s energy: the reservoir from which you must draw for your spiritual accomplishment.
Intellectual force on animal plane seeks selfish ends and on the spiritual plane seeks good for all. So, whilst in the flesh, spiritual energy must draw its force from the volume of energy developed by the animal, transmuting or diverting it from a selfish to an unselfish purpose.
When the abilities and possibilities, developed in the fierce struggle of its animal past, are turned to higher purposes devoted to the welfare of others, the human soul ceases to function on the plane of the brute, and rises to something which can be termed divine. Therefore, before there’s a vigorous divine soul, or a vigorous spirituality, there is usually a vigorous and active animal soul present.
Life is a non-stop fight for survival where conflict experiences involving strife, haste and energized effort ensure the continued development of the aggressive part of your consciousness.
Your aggressive urge plays a vital role in your efforts to survive the fast-paced and fiercely competitive human-life environment. You will have to fight to overcome the environmental constraints, physical impediments and destructive thoughts and feelings that thwart your personal development: Not fighting isn’t an option.
So, the creative intelligence of the universe factored in a universal mental energy that ensures souls on developmental journeys would develop energy and a fight impulse. God’s agents are the planets and Mars is the planet that marks for and provides souls on developmental journeys with energy and a fighting spirit.
Praise for aggression
It’s explosive, dynamic, forceful and resolute: the can-do energy behind everything you will ever accomplish.
In a conflict situation it’s your fight impulse. It’s your initiative and enterprise when overcoming obstacles and opposition and your willingness to dare and take a chance: to risk everything on a single throw of the dice.
When the chips are down it’s your courage and resilience. It’s your capacity to handle loss, bounce back from failure and then, when another chance for happiness appears, to risk it all again.
It’s assertive, industrious, creative, adventurous and passionate. It’s your aggression and you couldn’t live without it.
The aggressive component of your soul or character is not sedate, calm or composed. It erupts with explosive force. In a conflict situation it initiates a forceful fight response and takes assertive action.
Your aggression has no patience, no fear and no sense of consequence. It’s not peaceful, gentle, conciliatory, considerate or patient. It’s impulsive, forceful, assertive, excitable, impatient, reckless, combative, antagonistic and thoughtless.
Your aggression has survival value. It plays a vital role in your efforts to survive a fast-changing environment not by adaptation but by force.
It sources your physical strength and the energy needed to survive and accomplish. It generates more energy when the need arises: when risk or danger requires fast action, or an obstacle or opposition thwarts your aspirations, or when extra-effort is needed to reach an important goal.
You’re investing energy doing this, that and the other and you’re after big dividends: the glorious feelings you feel when you win, succeed and achieve.
Aggression and the natural world
The natural world paints a vivid picture of danger where life-forms compete and fight to survive. It reveals a hostile, harsh environment where plants and animals struggle to survive by taking aggressive action. The need to reproduce stimulates sexual activity. In the animal kingdom the capacity to take aggressive action often means the difference between life and death.
The natural world displays this aggressive struggle to survive vividly. There are enemies, competitors and environmental constraints to overcome. Conflict initiates an aggressive response.
The acquisition of food, water and shelter requires incessant effort and to overcome the obstacles imposed by a changing environment requires initiative and energetic effort. Staying alive requires food and the big fish eat the little fish. Opponents, rivals and enemies must be attacked and defeated. All life forms fight to survive.
In the interest of individual survival this dynamic urge caused the cacti to grow spines, the rose to bear thorns and the eagle to grow talons. It gives the bee its sting, the cobra its venom, the funnel web its poisonous toxin, the jaguar its speed and the lion its strength.
You’re part of the natural world. Your being here has a purpose and you’re fighting to survive in a harsh, competitive environment.
Your aggression provides you with the energy, initiative, forcefulness, daring, courage and enterprise to live and keep on living. You want to be a winner in the game of life so you call on your aggression to attack enemies, fight opponents, compete against rivals and take risks. You strive to achieve. It even provides you with the courage to visit your birth chart where the meaning and purpose of your life is revealed as personal truth.
Female and male aggression
Men are from Mars but women have an aggressive urge.
Female and male aggression is essentially the same: the same aggressive impulse strives to overcome obstacles and opposition by taking assertive action.
Both initiate strife and conflict and both can resort to violence in a conflict situation, but men are much more inclined to resort to brute force.
After puberty boys have on average 20 times more testosterone than girls, and testosterone stimulates muscle growth. And, as physical strength is determined by muscle size, men are, on average, 30% stronger than women. And this hormonal feature has men objectively feeling their unconscious aggression much more vividly.
This biological difference no doubt matches and supports an identical psychological difference and explains why some men in a conflict situation are naturally inclined to resort to brute strength and physical force. But violence is not an exclusively male behavior.
Hitting and slapping are classified as low-level violence and some women resort to physical force and brute strength in their conflicts. Men and women are biochemically different and this means their innate aggression expresses differently, but in both instances, it represents a forceful response to conflict.
The manner in which female and male aggression expresses is a social issue. Society has set acceptable standards of male and female aggressiveness and these standards influenced the way your parents handled your aggression. You tended to copy the aggressive behavior of your same-sex parent.
If a girl your aggression was socially engineered to conform to an acceptable mode of feminine aggression and if a boy you were permitted to express your natural aggressiveness in a masculine manner that was sanctioned by your parents and society.
Boys in general are openly confrontational when angry. They act on their aggression. They very often hit and punch. Girls are less confrontational when angry. They express their aggression verbally. In a conflict situation they engage in vicious gossip, indirect hate campaigns, cruel criticism, rejection, ostracism and devious vendettas.
Aggression and competitiveness are classified as masculine behaviors yet the female soul possesses an aggressive urge. And while creativity, warmth, dance and play are classified as feminine behaviors the male soul has an affectionate social urge.
The male stereotype is self-sufficient, tough and aggressive. The female is warm, caring and submissive. The movies portray fantasy heroes as violent and aggressive. Television frequently reflects these same stereotypes. It also distorts and exaggerates the level of aggression taking place and provides an unlimited array of aggressive behaviors for children to observe, imitate and learn.
A close examination of gender specific aggressive behavior in the animal kingdom may reveal distinct differences in male and female aggression. Maybe there are important evolutionary reasons why masculine and feminine aggression differs. If so, the female soul may develop a unique mode of female aggressiveness, which she brings to her human-life experience; and the male soul may develop a unique mode of male aggressiveness, which he brings to his.
These differences will serve definite evolutionary purposes. But, no matter what, your society has established definite regulations regarding what you can and can’t do in a conflict situation and if you transgress these rules, you’ll be disciplined, penalized or punished.
This article contains words written by Elbert Benjamine.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
