Mars

What Mars is in you

Mars is drive. How you go after what you want, how you fight, how you handle anger and what makes you feel alive. It is also desire in the physical sense. Where Venus is what you are drawn to, Mars is how you move towards it.

I have found Mars the most useful planet in the chart for explaining a row. Two people can love each other well, their Venus placements getting along fine, and still fight in two completely different languages because one Mars is in Aries and the other is in Cancer. One wants it out in the open, now. The other goes quiet and tidies the kitchen. Neither of them is wrong.

Mars has a bad name in the old books. They call it the lesser malefic, the troublemaker. I do not read it that way. A chart without a working Mars is a person who cannot get out of bed on a hard day. Everyone has Mars. The question is where it points.

The cycle and the retrograde

Mars takes about 687 days to go round the Sun, call it two years, and spends about six or seven weeks in each sign when it is moving normally. About every two years it appears to stop and run backwards for two to two and a half months. That is a retrograde, and it is apparent motion only. Earth, on the faster inside track, overtakes Mars, and from here Mars looks for a while as if it is going the wrong way. Because of the retrograde, Mars can sit in a single sign for the best part of six months or more, and the whole stretch takes on that sign's flavour. My post "Mars in Leo" is about one of those long stays.

A Mars retrograde in the sky is a time when effort does not land the way it usually does. Projects stall, tempers turn inward, old fights come back for a second round. I treat it as a time to finish things rather than start them. If you were born with Mars retrograde, roughly one person in eleven, your drive runs on the inside. You get things done, rarely the loud way. The Transits and Retrogrades page covers how I use a retrograde in a reading.

The signs Mars rules

Mars rules Aries, and before Pluto was found in 1930 it ruled Scorpio as well, so I call it the traditional ruler of Scorpio. In Aries it is Mars out in the open: fast, direct, first. In Scorpio it is Mars underground: patient, strategic, relentless.

The old books say Mars is exalted, at its best, in Capricorn, and uncomfortable in Libra and Taurus, the signs opposite its own, which they call its detriment. They put its fall in Cancer. I take these as weather notes rather than verdicts. A Cancer Mars will defend its family harder than most Aries I have met. It just will not start the fight.

Mars through the signs

In Aries, Mars is at home and already moving. You decide fast, you act fast, and you say what you are angry about while you are still angry. Grievances get aired and resolved. You need something to push against or you go restless. The shadow is the word said in temper that you barely remember and the other person never forgets. The gift is that when you are in the room, things happen.

In Taurus, Mars is slow to start and nearly impossible to stop. Your fuel is security: the home, the steady income, the people you can rely on. You can take provocation for a very long time, which is why your anger shocks people when it arrives. The shadow is the delayed explosion that could have been a conversation months ago. The gift is persistence, which builds the things that last.

In Gemini, Mars fights with words and usually wins. Your drive is thinking, talking, arguing and working out how things fit together. Curiosity gets you moving and boredom stops you. Desire starts in the mind, and you need a partner who can keep up. The shadow is energy spread across ten half finished things, and wit that cuts when you are angry. The gift is giving people the words they could not find for themselves.

In Cancer, Mars acts from feeling. You move when something matters and stall when it does not. You go to the wall for family, home and anyone vulnerable. The old books call this Mars in its fall, and the shadow is passive aggression: the silence, the hint, the withdrawal instead of the plain word. Naming the anger out loud is the work. The gift is a guardian switched on for the people you love.

In Leo, Mars puts its name on the work. You act with your whole self and you own the result, good or bad. You want to be seen doing it, because being seen is how your Mars knows it counted. Anger is announced rather than hidden. The shadow is pride that cannot admit a mistake, and the need for appreciation turning into a demand for it. The gift is effort that people remember.

In Virgo, Mars works in careful, measured streams. You plan, you sequence, you do the job properly rather than quickly. In conflict you dissect rather than flare, which wins debates and exhausts partners who wanted to be heard before they were corrected. The shadow is the thing never quite finished because it is never quite good enough, and criticism leaking onto the people you love. The gift is that what you make is right.

In Libra, Mars acts through other people. Unfairness is what gets you angry, in your own life or anyone else's. The old books call this Mars in its detriment because it will not charge. I call it Mars that gets results nobody has to be beaten for. The shadow is weighing both sides until the moment passes, and keeping the peace until the silence does harm. The gift is outcomes everyone can live with.

In Scorpio, Mars is in its traditional home and working underground. When you commit, you commit completely, and your concentration does not wander off the target. You fight with strategy, patience and knowledge others do not have. Power drives you, in the sense of never being at anyone's mercy. The shadow is turning that power on whoever crossed you, and resentment kept for years. The gift is a commitment that gives all of itself.

In Sagittarius, Mars runs at the horizon. You work hard when you believe in the thing and barely when you do not. You argue your case openly, and you will take a social cost for a principle. Desire is tied to shared adventure, and a relationship that stops exploring goes flat. The shadow is promising more than you deliver, and certainty that tips into preaching. The gift is that your energy is catching.

In Capricorn, Mars is exalted, which means at its most effective. You think in careers rather than jobs and in decades rather than weeks. You do not flare. You position and execute, and in a long contest you outlast the hotheads. The shadow is work crowding out everything else until you arrive at fifty with a full CV and a thin life. The gift is reliability under pressure. When everyone else scatters, you concentrate.

In Aquarius, Mars acts alone and on principle. You do not wait for permission, and you will take the unconventional position before it is safe to. Ideas and causes drive you more than personal gain. The shadow is attachment to your own judgement after the evidence has moved on, and a cool detachment that leaves partners feeling unmet. The gift is being willing to be wrong in public on the way to being right.

In Pisces, Mars follows the current rather than the straight line. You act on intuition and often cannot say why, only that you were called. Compassion drives you. You avoid confrontation, and may dissolve into vagueness or tears rather than argue. Desire wants merging and meaning. The shadow is drifting until the thing that needed doing is past doing, and escape through fantasy or a bottle. The gift is action with soul in it.

Across the traditions

In the tarot, Mars belongs to The Tower, card 16 of the Major Arcana, the lightning that clears away what was never sound. Mars rules Aries and is the traditional ruler of Scorpio, and the Aries and Scorpio pages take each of those signs further. The Vedic Astrology section, when it opens, will give the sidereal view of Mars, where the sign positions differ from the ones used here. The links beside this page take you to all of them.

When you were last properly angry, what did you do with it? That is your Mars.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
Geburah, Severity