Mars

Mars is the lesser malefic, the planet of severance. In a birth chart he describes heat, courage, anger, desire that moves toward a target, the cut that separates one thing from another, and the will to begin a contest. Malefic, in the traditional vocabulary, does not mean evil. It means the planet works by division, effort, and sometimes harm. A chart needs Mars. Without a principle of cutting, nothing can choose, defend, or start.

He rules two signs, and the traditional scheme is the one this library leads with. In Aries, cardinal fire, Mars is in a domicile of open heat: the first move, the ram, the fight that happens in daylight. In Scorpio, fixed water, he is in a domicile of strategy: endurance, privacy, and a will that does not need a witness. Modern astrology often hands Scorpio to Pluto and leaves Aries to Mars. Both dialects exist. If you are learning the older craft, Mars still has the two houses of the sky. If you are reading a modern book, notice which ruler it assumes before you mix the sentences.

He is exalted in Capricorn, classically near 28 degrees. The hot planet is an honored guest in cardinal earth, where force can be disciplined into a long climb and a controlled ambition. He is in detriment in Libra and in Taurus, opposite his domiciles. Libra is trying to level a scale. Taurus is trying to keep a store. Neither weather loves a blade. He is in fall in Cancer, opposite the exaltation, where protective water blunts the charge. Mars in fall can still protect. Protection is often how the fall finds a dignified job.

In the joys, Mars rejoices in the sixth house, the place of labor, toil, and the body's vulnerabilities in the old topic lists. The joy is a house preference for effort, not a medical statement. The natural houses of his signs are the first, Aries and the helm, and the eighth, Scorpio and the sealed, shared room. Mars in the first is conspicuous. Mars in the eighth is harder to see and just as consequential.

Sect: Mars belongs to the night sect. In a night chart his malefic quality is tempered. He can act with more composure, more in accord with the nocturnal team. In a day chart he is out of sect, and the traditional warning is that his cutting runs hotter and with less cooperation from the chart's softer planets. Sect does not make a day-chart Mars a villain. It tells you to look for a channel: a craft, a contest with rules, a duty that can use the heat.

Mars retrogrades for a long stretch every couple of years. The apparent reversal turns the blade inward or backward over ground already crossed: effort reviewed, anger re-met, a goal that needs a truer name. A natal retrograde Mars often describes a will that works by reconsideration, or a courage that does not look like the forward charge. It is not a lack of will.

Read the sign first, because Aries Mars and Scorpio Mars are both at home and they are not interchangeable. Then the house, then the aspects. Mars square Saturn is a famous friction of heat and limit. Mars trine Jupiter is a heat that finds a horizon. Give him one line about what this chart is willing to cut, defend, or begin. For the open domicile, read Aries. For the private domicile, read Scorpio. For the disciplined guest room, read Capricorn.