“I am reborn. This is my dream. Real life has just begun. Deliberate living. Conscious attention to the basics of life, and a constant attention to your immediate environment and its concerns. A job, a task, a book. Anything requiring efficient concentration. Circumstances have no value; it is how one relates to a situation that has value.”
–Christopher McCandless
In 1990, shortly after graduating from Emory University, Christopher McCandless began a journey across North America, intending it to be a spiritual and transformational odyssey. His travels ended tragically when he died of starvation in Alaska in August of 1992, after spending more than 100 days living off the land. However, his story stands as a powerful illustration of how a blended Mars-Pluto energy might manifest.
With Mars in Pisces in the 8th whole sign house of his natal chart, McCandless’s drive for courage, boldness, and action may have been directed inward as much as it was outward. He could have felt compelled to give himself over to self-exploration, to surrender to intense psychological and spiritual experiences with radical honesty and clarity of intention, and become a ‘spiritual warrior’ who had no fear of mortality or the unknown. Mars in this chart also rules the 9th (Aries) and 4th (Scorpio) houses. This rulership of his 9th house might have given him a strong drive to seek the truth and a higher purpose in life. His love of philosophy and transcendentalist poetry, along with his deep love of nature and strong spirituality, speaks to these ideals. Mars ruling the 4th house could point to violence in the home, a known fact about his background, and perhaps be a factor that served to push him toward his goals.
McCandless had strong opinions about money, feeling that it was inherently evil and corrupt, giving it away, even burning it in order to free himself from its influence. His Pluto in the 2nd house in Virgo indicates his extreme attitudes toward material resources. This potential is further echoed by the Pluto-Uranus conjunction in the 2nd house. In a lecture on Mars-Pluto combinations, Jessica Murray states that people with these aspects can have a need to “self-immolate,” to burn down and recreate themselves. His 2nd house placements also correlate to the need to “prove oneself to oneself.” McCandless’ natal Pluto is opposed by Mars in Pisces, forcing his Plutonian drive for regeneration and transformation to face and confront in his lifetime.
In Astrology, Karma, and Transformation, Steven Arroyo describes Mars as the energy available to accomplish specific tasks in the outer world, and Pluto as the energy available to accomplish work in the “underworld” of the unconscious. When the two are combined, there can be unlimited potential that may be expressed in extreme ways, releasing power from the depth of one’s being. McCandless may have had an intention for evolution and personal growth that involved claiming his freedom and independence and cutting away things from his life that he felt were unnecessary. Pluto could have helped to move this along by giving him the ability to be deeply resourceful and decisive. This showed up in the ways he survived while on the road, and how he was able to completely cut himself off from his family. Arroyo also discusses how Pluto can influence Mars by turning the Martian desire and will into obsession, or a type of “possession” that compels the person to follow the overwhelming forces they feel.
Indeed, McCandless seems to have become gripped with extreme fanaticism when it came to pursuing the path that he had laid out for himself, and this is what led him toward the self-transformation he sought. As much as Christopher McCandless has been criticized and called foolish for his lack of preparedness in the Alaskan wilderness, when I look at this chart in terms of how it played out, it really does seem that his motives and intentions were pure.
Additional Resources:
Mars and Aries as the Spiritual Warrior article by Steven Forrest
Mars Our Warrior – Mars Our Destroyer webinar with Darby Costello
Mars in the 12 Signs article with Steven Forrest
