How do you feel about where you are going in life and how you go through life? Mars in our chart signifies our drive, which includes our sex drive and our need to succeed. Mars in its purist form is like a fast, sleek and sexy race car: there is a goal to the race and this car has the ability to make it to the end. Of course, how well your race car looks and performs depends upon where we find your natal Mars and what relationships it shares with other celestial bodies.
Carrying the vehicular metaphor further, think of the following possibilities of what Mars might look or feel like in the different signs:
- A sexy red Ferrari with a hair trigger accelerator and loud engine when Mars is in Aries
- Mars is a luxurious heavy sedan when in Taurus
- Gemini makes Mars a zippy convertible
- Mars in Cancer would prefer a good big station wagon for the whole family
- Leo might dress Mars up into a stately Bentley, Maybach or Rolls Royce
- A properly maintained and impeccable car in the latest style when Mars visits Virgo
- When in Libra, Mars can be considered a motorcycle with the side car, able to split off at any moment. Or simply a really beautiful car and an old beater.
- The Batmobile is what Mars might drive when traversing Scorpio
- When in already fast four legged Sagittarius, Mars might have speedy flames coming from the exhaust pipes!
- In Capricorn Mars would be a good likely luxury oriented dependable four-wheel drive truck to scale the mountain or and a luxury car to show others he has arrived
- Mars would drive a dirigible through Aquarius, or maybe a hot air balloon
- A nuclear submarine able to plumb any depths would help Mars navigate through Pisces
Don’t take each of these as literal absolutes as our individual Mars function will act differently for each of us depending upon our charts. Play with the ideas presented, think of the archetype, see where Mars falls in your birth chart and how you keep your vehicle –which is the metaphor for your body, drive in life as well as your actual (and therefore not so metaphorical) vehicle. Your Mars drive will be further affected by the house in which Mars is found and its aspects with other celestial bodies.
Michel Gauquelin, a French psychologist and statistician, found athletic prominence when Mars is found in certain key sections of the chart. This is known as the “Mars Effect”. In his ground breaking book L’Influence des asters (the influence of the stars, 1955), Michel reveals research which shows a statistically significant number of prominent athletes were born with Mars rising or culminating in their charts. This lead me to do research for my book, Astrological Mavericks: Do you have what it takes to change the world? which looks at the ways in which planets on the angles act in a wholly different manner than other planets.
Mars is more consistent in how it plays out in these positions than what has been found with other planets (such as Jupiter, which, while considered a benefic planet, can expand good things and difficult times equally). Maybe the intense, fire red energy of Mars affects us earthlings more directly because we are significantly closer to it than any other planet except for Venus. Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus makes a lot of sense when you consider that these are the two closest planets on either side of Earth; they give us our first planetary boundaries outside of Earth’s orbit. These planets show us how each of us plays with our own masculine and feminine sides.
What is your Mars Effect? How do you experience the various drives in your life and how do you make your life happen? Do you see a correlation between your Mars and your actual vehicle or your drive in life? Astrology is about asking the questions of yourself to uncover more of the truths of who you are. Being conscious and aware of how your Mars affects your life is key to understanding how you will interact in relationships, career, play and so many other aspects in life. I welcome you to explore . . ..
Wishing you a most wonderful and original drive,
Michael