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 is
Half Earth's diameter. Mars has Olympus Mons, the Solar System's largest volcano, and Valles Marineris, its largest known canyon 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 astrologers have read Mars
- Traditional significations
- War, iron and fire, surgery, anger, courage, sudden action, separation
- Modern natal shorthand
- Drive, assertion, desire, how you act and fight
AsterNym’s interpretation
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
Traditional domicile ruler of Aries and Scorpio. If either Aries or Scorpio is your rising sign, Mars is your chart ruler, the planet a traditional reading treats as standing for you. AsterNym uses the traditional ruler for chart-ruler and dignity calculations and displays any common modern association separately.
| Domicile | Aries · Scorpio |
|---|---|
| Exaltation | Capricorn |
| Detriment | Taurus · Libra |
| Fall | Cancer |
Traditional essential dignity is a symbolic astrological framework, not a measure of astronomical strength or a judgement that a placement is good or bad.
The metal of Mars
Iron Fe
Iron became associated with Mars in the standard alchemical system. Its use in weapons and tools provides an intuitive metaphor for force directed toward conflict or work.
AsterNym reads it as: Force with a use: strength that means something when it is pointed at work instead of at people.
The other chart bodies
Where is Mars in your chart?
Its zodiac position comes from the body's calculated astronomical longitude. Its house is derived from your local birth horizon using AsterNym's declared Whole Sign house system.