Chart body
Mars
How you act, want and fight.
In a birth chart, Mars describes your drive — how you act, assert, desire and fight.
What it actually is
Half Earth's diameter, with the largest volcano and the deepest canyon in the solar system. It orbits in 687 days, and its rusty colour is iron oxide.
In a chart: Six to seven weeks in a sign, longer when retrograde.
How Mars is read
At its best
Clean want. Being able to say what you are going for and go, without a committee and without apologising for having an appetite.
The difficult end
Force where a sentence would do. Or the opposite: anger driven underground where it turns into resentment and lateness.
What to do with it
Aim it. Mars is not a problem to be managed; it is fuel that needs a direction.
What Mars rules
Traditionally Mars rules Aries and Scorpio. If one of those is your rising sign, Mars is your chart ruler — the planet a traditional reading treats as standing for you.
The metal of Mars
Iron Fe
Iron made weapons and ploughs alike, so it went to Mars. Read as force with a use — strength that means something when it is pointed at work rather than at people.
The other chart bodies
Where is Mars in your chart?
Its sign says how it acts; its house says where in your life it acts. Both come from real positions at your birth moment.