Mars in your Astrology Birth Chart
It is crucial in your life to have a clear picture of the Mars you were born with.
What your Mars in particular is like, is a key portion of your destiny, a totally key portion of your learning task, in this life on earth.
You need to get a clear picture of the raw energy coming from the red planet, Mars, and then you need to decode your Mars destiny by the Sign House he falls in, the aspects to Mars, how he appears in the divisional charts. What yogas apply to your Mars? Your Mars will be so different if he is in Mars or Libra, and so different if he is conjunct Pluto or he is conjunct Chiron the Wounded Healer.
And the whole point is, if you do not express your Mars with perception and full awareness and ethics, and if you do not go in for any needed healing of your Mars, you will harm yourself – and all the others in your life.
First a bit about my work, then a lengthy and valuable presentation of Mars. First of all, my Readings: To find out your destiny, and how to heal or empower your own individual Mars, have one of my worldwide astrology readings which always combine Vedic astrology with Western astrology: www.starwheelastrology.com.
Then there’s my Courses: you can do one of my worldwide astrology courses: these are very thorough study of each of the planets in turn, in tandem with a study of the astrological techniques. And the planets and techniques are always studied with reference to two charts: yours and mine. This ensures that the dialogue and the conclusions some to are thoroughly grounded and authentic and genuine.
See: www.mastervedicastrology.com and www.enlightenedastrologycourse.com. And for the Nakshatras, the wonderful 27 Lunar Sign Zodiac of vedic Astrology see: www.nakshatrasadvancedcourse.com. And in my courses, there’s always option for crossover from Western to Vedic Astrology on each planet if you wish (or vice versa: Vedic to western).
There’s always the offering of videos and vision journeys to meet each planet.
So, now: Let’s Meet Mars:
It is so useful to build up ‘clear appearance’ of each planet.
It is actually powerfully helpful of our understanding of life and of ourself to be able to generate a clear picture in our mind of a planet as a being, as a refraction of the Divine, in fact as a God. ‘Clear Appearance’ is a pre-requisite in deity tantra.
So, let’s start to meet Mars by reading the description the Vedic Sage Parashara gave for him:
Mars is cruel. He has blood red eyes. He is ill-mannered yet generous. He is pitta or fiery in constitution. He is prone to anger. He has a thin waist and body.
But as the myths quoted at the foot of this blog reveal, Mars’ aggression and assertion is a mix of Aries and Scorpio qualities, he is quite tied to the way the Sun expresses himself in your chart. This truth of Fire and Water, aggression and turbulence, high heavens and underworld – both need to be taken into account for a full understanding of your Mars.
Mars is quick, decisive and restless in his basic nature; direct, outspoken and assertive. He is willful and harsh in his basic nature. He is cruel and requires hard work and pain. He wants success, and doesn’t care about comfort or harmony.
Mars manifests as:
Action, energy and courage
Independence, initiative, challenge and daring
Mars is energetic, sharp and penetrating.
Mars is action man, who injects action into projects.
The positon of Mars in your chart shows where you will put your energy: the house he occupies and rules, the planets he aspects or affects.
Mars is the principle of differentiation of beliefs, purpose, action and views. He can trash the beliefs or even the rights of others.
But he can be erratically and surprisingly generous and open-handed.
Mars is Masculinity, strength, bravery and will-power
He is ambition, passion, adventure, competition and argument.
Mars is your muscles-structure and your weapons
His condition in your birth chart reveals your Self-reliance and independence.
Mentally, Mars is critical, perceptive, discriminating
He strongly influences sexual maters
He is the essence of our primitive and aggressive urges, including athletics and sport.
Mars is impulse, Goal orientation, Passion, Basic instinct and survival.
The healthy Mars is the healthy warrior able to display anger and strength. Or are you the unhealthy Mars: militaristic and violent? or weak and can’t get started and covering it with excuses?
Mars sparks misunderstanding, hostility, litigation and argument. He can be fueled by discontent.
A weak Mars is impotent, weakening manliness and making achievement difficult
Occupationally, Mars is:
The engineer if in Capricorn: the tool-maker
The lawyer, scientist, warrior
The healer Mars in Virgo; the dentist, the surgeon.
The occultist Mars if in Scorpio.
The way in which Mars is handled in childhood makes a great difference to how we can express Mars energies in adulthood.
The young, impulsive and immature ‘Hero’ we manifest in childhood is noble in purpose and strives to win the blessing and admiration of his parents. He wants his separateness to be acknowledged, not crushed, shamed or abused.
If separation of the Hero is not acknowledged, personalities such as the Grandstander Bully (more than), who aggressively and competitively demands centre stage in his woundedness, insecurity and ignorance (nobody gets close to him; he specialises in denying death – his wound), or the Coward (less than) develop.
A blocked Mars results in a feeling of impotence and victimisation and great unconscious rage
Because of Mars’ relationship with Aphrodite, it is often the ‘seductive’ parent rather than the aggressive parent who performs the early castration.
Expressions of thwarted Mars are covert manipulative cruelty, self-destructive behaviour (esp. if the chart is very Pisces, Libra or Aquarius), being accident-prone, or succumbing to illnesses to do with acquiescence and pent-up rage (migraine, colitis, &c. ? Cancer), crudeness and obnoxiousness, sadism, masochism. The shadow warrior demands control and lives in a rigid hierarchy, with himself as King, of course!
Neglected or thwarted Mars can result in: chronic depression, misery, apathy and deadness, tiredness or inability to sleep properly, Escaping into philosophies or ideologies of non-attachment or selflessness – a difficult issue for the idealists. Fanaticism is often the product of blocked Mars. Mars can become corroded by guilt and castrated by condemnation of the body and lead to projection and persecution. Someone with unacknowledged anger may needle the partner to act it out. There is the ‘nice’ person who arouses anger in others. The violent and controlling person have the same problem with Mars as the passive impotent person.
A square or opposition between Mars and the Sun is associated with problems of expressing potency – ending up inauthentic and powerless: what Robert Bly calls the naive male – the person who has no front door to his house, even the walls are missing; he lacks any sense of boundaries – thieves come in at any time, taking what they want. No one can truly respect him because he does not respect himself
This person needs to befriend the warrior, to coax him out into the open and help and heal him, to initiate him, to establish an inner dialogue with the child whose warrior was wounded.
There are many wounded children within us: the Trickster is very common, the wounded lover is the shyest and most vulnerable inner child. The Divine Child that we were (potentially) can manifest many forms of woundedness. The wounded warrior usually shows up as the Bully or the Brat – all these sub-personalities need to be accepted and integrated.
As the Warrior begins to heal and mature, we can (for the first time) begin to feel his proper expression in our lives:
He faces life head-on, he is alert and mindful and responsive to his environment; he has his code of honour.
He has the passion to engage life – and knows its fragility.
He lives with conviction. He makes every act count.
Mars and his relationship with the other planets:
It is very important to understand how one planet treats another planet, and also what this tells about past life scripts that on the one hand, have to be understood, worked with, burned or healed; or on the other hand these scripts can impel us to achieve our special spark of success in this lifetime, this incarnation.
Sun: Sun is your Inner King, Your Divine Masculine, Your Divine charioteer: what tone and direction will he set for your Mars?
Can he give Mars commitment and stability?
Can he control your Mars?
Do authority figures in your life support your Mars?
Mars will be shamed or angry if the divine Sun does not respect him.
Sun will agitate Mars if Sun imposes wrong expectations, ideals or dogmas at odds with the person’s Mars needs and Mars nature, and this leads to explosion and anti-authority reactive rebellion, loss of the person’s path of inspiration.
Saturn: You also need to check out discipline and structure-awareness in the chart to see how Mars will function.
But Saturn can shame Mars for action or sex, and tell Mars that taking action is futile and will fail.
And Saturn can starve Mars causing great frustration, difficulty initiating, difficulty balancing action and structure, and difficulty utilizing logic, or difficulty in successfully manifesting the qualities of the House in question.
Jupiter: You need to check out Purpose to see how Mars will function.
Uranus: how inventive or erratic will your Mars be?
Neptune: Will your Mars seek to penetrate the realms of intuition, dreams and illusion?
Pluto: how explosive will you be?
Chiron: Chiron is the wounded healer of your destiny. Will your Mars be too strong? Or too weak? Or alternate between the two?
Mercury: Is your Mercury intellectually incisive or sharp-tongued?
When Mercury starves Mars, our thinking processes will nullify needed action!!!
As always check the House involved. For example, if it’s 7th House our concepts may frustrate marriage.
Mercury as mentalism can agitate Mars and make him very frustrated, aggressive and ready to fight
Venus and Mars: Not good bed fellows.
Moon and Mars: not an easy combination, but if they do work well, Mars can achieve the needs and wants of the Moon and create happiness.
The Essence of Mars – A More Detailed Summary:
So, to summarise, here is Mars in the abstract, before he is experienced through the lenses of filters of our birth chart: the lenses or filters of Sign, House and aspect:
Will: Mars is the will of the self. your independence, self-will and confidence, or the lack of it. Mars is goal-orientated action. His nature is electrical, violent, insatiable and thirsty: the urge to penetrate and unite with.
Spiritual Expression: Mars is the energy for questing spiritual realization and the achievement of truth, giving self-discipline; in some charts asceticism, in other charts occult intuition, bioenergetics or energy for healing. It all depends on the sign, house and aspects of Mars in your birth chart and his position in the divisional charts, and how Mars is faring predictively in your astrology. Mars causes discontent which impels us to seek ‘better’: ideally, to seek the truth. He can also bring out the dark side of the Earth energy: titans, destroyers, chaos.
Emotions: Mars is our passions. He is our emotional and vital capacity for self-projection. Mars is certainty; he is critical, perceptive and discriminating. He is the lawyer and the orator, the machinist and the miner, the engineer, the inventor, the planner, the researcher, the warrior, the soldier, the murderer.
Mental and intellectual Consciousness: Mars is also the mental faculty which decides which action or thought to go for.
Energy of Mars: In an ancient sense, Mars is the flame contained in matter.
The Strength of Mars: Mars is your needed strength to have interests and do things.
Mars is a Divine energy, of which each of us has a special refraction of, we experience Divine Mars through filters of Sign, House and aspect.
This Mars energy is one of boundless courage, energy, sexual potency, passion, and arrogant action.
Mars is our arms, muscles and physical prowess.
Mars is our competitiveness, our accidents, our involvement in war or in impulsive action, exploration, inquiry, sport, war, arguments, injuries, ambition, sex and blood.
And he can predict health issues and disease in our life.
The Men in your life: Mars will tell us what we need to know, so as to benefit from it, so as to heal it or work with it, the true nature of the masculine principle that entered in your life from your Father, your Brothers (even from your mother). The position of Mars can also indicate premature death in a chart, the loss of the husband, impotence in a man.
Note that Mars is least prominent in the charts of writers, artists and musicians, according to Gauquelin research. They found that Mars was most prominent when placed in the ‘warrior’ quadrant of the chart: the rising quadrant: house 12 to MC in western astrology, but of course, an issue in their research is that many of the 12th house Mars would have been 1st House in the Vedic birth chart.
Mars as a God, a Refraction of the divine:
Mars is also known as Mangala, Kartika (or Kartikeya) or Kuja, or Skanda.
Mars is a most strong malefic. He can be as strong as Saturn, but his effects are acute, whereas Saturn’s are long-lasting.
Mars in the Astrology Birth Chart:
First, Mars in your Vedic Astrology:
Mars rules the Vedic signs Aries and Scorpio. Mars in Vedic Aries will be proud.
Mars is most exalted at 28 Vedic Capricorn,
Mars is most deeply Fallen at 28 Vedic Cancer.
Mars is Mulatrikona 0 – 12 deg Vedic Aries.
Mars rules three of the 27 Nakshatras (the Nakshatras are the wonderful and powerfully declarative 27 Lunar Sign zodiac of vedic Astrology), as follows:
Nakshatra Spans Vedic Signs:
Nakshatra 5: Mrigashira 23°20′ Taurus to 6°40′ Gemini
Nakshatra 14: Chitra 23°40′ Virgo to 6°40′ Libra
Nakshatra 23: Dhanistha 23°20′ Capricorn to 6°40′ Aquarius
Mars most effective House placement is the 10th House.
Mars performs well if it is placed in one of the Upachaya (growing) Houses: It is good when a malefic (Rahu, Ketu, the Sun, Saturn and Mars) is placed in the 3rd 6th 10th or 11th House. Malefics in these houses are favourable for all matters pertaining to that house, except if it concerns people.
These houses are called the upachaya houses. Planets placed in these houses will be able to function better as time passes. The 10th. and the 11th. houses are the best upachaya houses.
In terms of aspects, Mars is best Aspected with Jupiter: Mars can bring great achievements for law and truth.
Aspected with Saturn, Mars: there’s real conflict of opposite: Go now versus stop and prepare, or if in a more enlightened chart: discipline and the capacity for great accomplishment (or a bit of both).
Mars in Western your Astrology:
In addition to consideration of the Sign Mars occupies and rules, and the House he occupies, plus aspects to Mars in your western astrology birth chart, I also teach western psychodynamic astrology which assess the impact on our psychology of the chart aspect shapes and sub-personalities in our birth chart, the relationship of Mars to the Nodes of the Moon for Evolutionary Astrology or past life implications.
Mars in Mythology
It is important to read about these deeply-ancient life and death wisdom concepts, not as dry written reports, but as fuel for you to build your own appearance of Mars as a God, a refraction of the divine, plus fuel also for you to build up your own clear appearance of Mars in your chart:
See how Mars gives positively to your life
Learn what about Mars that you need to heal
and assess how overall you can heal using your picture of Mars.
It is actually really effective to build up this novelistic depiction, which in Tantra is called ‘clear appearance’. I did a University-based five-year field study of spiritual forms new to the modern West. I studied how in Tibetan Buddhism and in Hinduism, ‘clear appearance’ is essential to develop if we are to be able to work with the energy of a god, and to be able to call in the god into our consciousness when needed.
Ares, the Greek God of War
Aries was the daughter of Hera and he represents the physical or violent and untamed aspect of war. although he embodied the physical valour necessary for success in war, he was a dangerous force, “overwhelming, insatiable in battle, destructive, and man-slaughtering. His sons are Phobos (Fear) and Demos (Terror) who are the Moons of the planet Mars. His sister Enyo (Discord) accompanied him on his war chariot.
In the Iliad, Zeus tells him that he is the god most hateful to him.
An association with Ares endows places and objects with a savage, dangerous, or militarized quality. Aries value as a war god is placed in doubt.
He had numerous love affairs and abundant offspring, but as the lover of Aphrodite (who was wife to the smith god Hephaestus) he was a laughing stock. The union of Ares and Aphrodite created the gods Eros, Anteros, Phobos, Deimos, Harmonia and Adrestia.
Athena, sister of Aries and daughter of Zeus, functions as Goddess of intelligence, strategy and generalship. The Greeks were ambivalent toward Ares: Ares was on the losing side, while Athena, often depicted in Greek art as holding Nike (Victory) in her hand, and she rather than Aries favoured the triumphant Greeks.
Mars is the Roman equivalent of Aries, and he by contrast was the patron deity of the Roman Empire and second only to Jupiter.
Nergal, the Babylonian God of War was also the God of the Noonday Sun who scorched the earth and burned the skin. Again, there’s the Mars-Sun-Aries link. But he also invaded the realm of the dead and deposed Erishkigal, then ruled alongside her like Pluto and Persephone. So he spans the Sun in the Heavens and the Underworld, as the Sun does in its daily motion: Aries and Scorpio!!!!! Scorpio is our underworld fears and phobias, as contrasted to the light of day.
Kartikeya: In vedic mythology, Kartikeya was conceived to be the needed a Demon-slayer. He was born of the seed of Shiva upon the waters, nourished by the seven wives of the seven Rishis of the Pleiades to slay a terrorising demon. So, here again, we have the oceanic aspect, sexuality and war.
I hope this exploration of Mars and his territory in your chart and your life has been useful.
To find out much more about his Karma and his effects in your life, and the way he will manifest, and how you need to manage his energy, you are welcome to have one of my worldwide astrology readings which always combine Vedic astrology with Western astrology: www.starwheelastrology.com.
And for the option of engaging in an exceptionally wide range of worldwide healing modalities, see: www.maggiepashley.com