We all want more and better for ourselves, whoever we might be and whatever we might have, and we’re often willing to go to great lengths to make that happen. However, singer/actor Chris Brown is providing a painful object lesson in the wisdom of The Buddha (or was it Buckaroo Banzai?) who proclaimed: “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Brown (born May 5 1989, 12:30 PM, Tappahannock (VA) is known for several platinum hits, but is perhaps better known for hitting his on-again, off-again girlfriend Rihanna. He has recently been ejected out of rehab for an incident where he smashed a window of his mother’s car, and has been ordered to immediately find another facility — his time there legally mandatory: part of the deal that arose from the felony charges arising from an assault on then-girlfriend Rihanna. Chris is a Taurus, and Taurus people are usually considered pretty placid until they get riled up. But temper doesn’t come from the Sun in a birth chart — it comes from Mars. Chris has what’s considered to be a difficult Mars placement: Mars in Cancer.

There’s no such thing as a “completely good” or “completely bad” placement for any planet in a birth chart, but some are a lot easier to deal with than others. The Sign of Cancer is inherently emotional, wrapped up in deep feelings and strongly-recalled memories and the psychological groundwork laid in childhood. Mars, on the other hand, would prefer to cut to the chase and knock down some obstacles and just get on with it already.  Combining the two can make for either a tendency to passion or to histrionics.

Chris Brown’s Mars situation is further complicated by a conjunction with Chiron, which doubles down on the childhood and bonding issues he’s already wired to have. And just to make this theme more powerful, willful Mars is amplified by an opposition to Uranus, astrology’s Natural Born Rebel. A Mars-Uranus aspect is also a key player in the birth chart of George Zimmerman, who I wrote about recently.

And now, as both Neptune and Chiron go direct, trine Brown’s Mars, he is being given the opportunity to face his demons and do something about them… or perhaps those energies will simply make it easier for him to lash out. Thus far he appears to be responding by busting his mother’s car window. As transiting Mars prepares for its long trip through relationship-oriented Libra… which in Chris Brown’s Third House, which determines how his mind works and how he expresses himself… we can only hope for the best.

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“I’m in shock, because, first of all, that’s not who I am as a person, and that’s not who I promise I want to be.”

-Chris Brown

For at least as long as there has been astrology, there has been the ongoing debate about Free Will versus Predestination. A lot of people dislike the whole notion of astrology in the first place because it’s entirely too mechanistic for their tastes. Are you broke because you were born with troublesome aspects to your Venus and Jupiter? No one wants to hear that sort of thing. We all — myself included — want to believe that we can transcend our limits and become better, happier, richer, more loved and more wonderful human beings… so who wants to be told that they were born with the whole sky stacked against them that way? On the other hand: it’s a popular sentiment to say that “you create your own reality.” That’s a fine notion, and I generally believe it, but it’s pretty obvious that there are a whole lot of kids living in slums in Brazil who, despite having perfectly good imaginations, haven’t become millionaires yet.

Personally, I like to think how we handle our flaws — like a temper, for example — is at least somewhat in our control. You’ve got a Mars in your birth chart somewhere, and you may not have any choice over the condition it was in when you were born, but there’s always hope you can find a constructive use for it. For example, you’ll often find that people with a strong and/or agitated Mars placement become pretty good chefs: Mars rules cutting things and heating processes. Perhaps we’re all like Master Chefs saddled with a limited kitchen. Give a chef the right equipment and ingredients, and he or he can produce a masterpiece. But what does a master chef do when dinner time is coming soon and he or she is stuck in a limited kitchen with little or no budget, and only the ingredients on hand?

It’s possible, if you’re a Master Chef, to produce a delicious meal out of peanut butter and chicken nuggets. But if you lose control of your Mars, all you might create is a terrible mess, and you might leave a lot of people hungry for a meal they’ll never get. Either way, we can only hope for the best. Good luck, Chris Brown.