♂ Mars

Mars is the warrior of the chart. It governs drive, desire and action.

Mars at a glance

• ArchetypeThe Warrior
• Governsdrive, desire and action
• RulesAries (traditionally Scorpio)
• Cycleabout 2 years
• Keywordsdrive, desire, courage, anger
• In the bodythe muscles, blood and head

What Mars means

Mars is what you do about it. Drive, appetite, the willingness to make somebody uncomfortable, and the particular way you go after a thing you want.

It is the first planet outside the Earth's orbit, and so the first that can be anywhere at all relative to your Sun. Mercury and Venus are always nearby; Mars can be on the far side of the chart, which is why it so often reads as the part of a person that argues with the rest of them.

Anger lives here and so does courage, and the sign will not tell you which one you were given. It tells you the manner of it.

When Mars is the hard part

Mars is the placement people are least willing to own. It is far easier to describe somebody else's than your own, and a chart that has been read to you flatteringly has usually gone quiet at exactly this point.

And drive with no direction is only friction. Mars says how you push. It has nothing to say about what is worth pushing.

Its cycle, and the ages it lands on

About two years through the zodiac, so a Mars return comes round roughly every 22 months: often enough to notice, rarely enough that most people never think to mark it.

It turns retrograde about every 26 months, for two to three months at a time, and it is the most watchable retrograde of them all because Mars brightens noticeably as we approach and fades again as we pull away.

Can you see it?

Genuinely red, and the colour is visible with your eyes alone. It is the only planet whose colour is obvious without a telescope.

Its brightness swings further than any other planet's, because our distance from it changes enormously. At a close opposition it outshines Jupiter. At its furthest it is an unremarkable orange star you would walk past.

What retrograde actually is

Every 26 months or so, for two or three months, and this is the one where the geometry is easiest to see for yourself. Mars brightens as we come up behind it, appears to loop backwards while we pass, then dims as we leave it behind.

The loop is an effect of our own motion, not of Mars changing its mind. Plotting it from a few weeks of naked-eye observations against a star chart is a genuinely good afternoon.

Mars also touches

conflict, sport, ambition, iron, the fight, raw physical energy.

A question to sit with

What are you angry about, and what would it move you to do?