Mars

Meaning

Mars, the red planet, is the fourth from the Sun and the first beyond the Earth’s orbit, so unlike Mercury and Venus it can stand anywhere in the zodiac, opposite the Sun included. Every 26 months or so the Earth overtakes it, and for about ten weeks it moves backwards through the signs.

It stands for drive, desire and assertion: how someone goes after what they want, competes, sets limits and handles anger and conflict. It is also the courage to begin, and the energy that protects and gets things done.

Tradition calls it the lesser malefic, because heat and sharpness can wound, and places it in the night sect, where its fire is tempered. It rules Aries and Scorpio and is exalted in Capricorn; its detriment is Libra and Taurus, its fall Cancer. Modern astrologers give Scorpio to Pluto and keep Mars for Aries; with Scorpio rising, Ulune names both as chart rulers.

Its gifts are courage, decisiveness, stamina and frankness. Its difficulties are impatience, anger that flares or turns inward, and the habit of treating every exchange as a contest.

In practice

• Its sign describes the style of action: Mars in Aries strikes first, in Taurus moves slowly and does not stop, in Libra acts through negotiation.
• Its house shows where energy and competition go: in the 6th, into work and training; in the 10th, into ambition.
• Sect matters: tradition finds Mars easier to live with in a night chart and harder to handle by day.
• With Venus, Mars describes desire and attraction, in one chart and between two.
• Retrograde for about ten weeks every two years or so; around one person in ten is born with it, often read as drive worked through inwardly first, then used with strategy.

Across traditions

• Chinese astronomy calls it 火星 Huǒxīng, the Fire star; its older name, Yínghuò, means roughly the glowing deceiver.
• Indian astrology names it Mangala and exalts it in Capricorn, as Western astrology does.
• Human Design makes Mars the place where someone matures: its gate is a theme lived clumsily at first, then grown into.

Origin and history

Babylon linked the planet to Nergal, a god of war, plague and the underworld. The Greeks called it Pyroeis, “the fiery one”, and gave it to Ares. Ptolemy describes Mars as drying and burning, Vettius Valens ties it to force, soldiers and daring, and William Lilly lists among its people soldiers, surgeons and smiths. The Roman god gave his name to the day dies Martis, the French mardi, and his metal is iron. Mars’s awkward orbit also led Johannes Kepler, working from Tycho Brahe’s observations, to elliptical orbits in his Astronomia nova of 1609.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes Mars from the Swiss Ephemeris (DE441): its apparent position seen from the centre of the Earth, in the tropical zodiac. It is marked retrograde when its daily motion runs backwards, stationary within about three days of a station, and swift or slow against its mean motion of about 31′ a day.

Mars is in sect in a night chart. Its essential dignities are scored in Lilly’s points, and Ulune lists two midpoints that involve it, Venus–Mars and Mars–Saturn. The calendar dates its stations, sign changes and exact transits to a birth chart.

Correspondences