What Mars Represents in Your Birth Chart

Introduction

What does Mars represent in our birth chart? Let’s start from the basics. Mars represents our courage, our fighting ability, this inner competitiveness and the strength, physical and mental strength, to stand up to issues we believe in.

This warrior-like side, this aggression and this passion come from Mars. You’d find lawyers, politicians, soldiers and those in sports would have a strong Mars influence in their charts.

Courage, Enterprise and the Builder

Equally, Mars is all about doing things independently and therefore this enterprising nature that we all have: we want to venture out and start a business, for example. So entrepreneurship is linked to Mars too.

Mars is considered to be the son of goddess Bhumi, and Bhumi is known to be the planet Earth. So Mars is depicted as the builder of planet Earth. All careers linked to town planning, architecture and the entire manufacturing sector are therefore linked to Mars too.

Mars is also known to bestow upon us this harshness. We get impulsive, excessively competitive at times and uncompromising too. It also drives our desire for intimacy. So it has various shades, but one of the main qualities that Mars can bestow on the native is courage.

Mars, Saturn and Resilience

I wouldn’t say Mars bestows upon us perseverance and resilience. I think that’s a bit more of a Saturn-like quality. If a person has Mars and Saturn together in a strong position in their chart, it would be very difficult to defeat that person. I can give you one example right away.

Muhammad Ali, if you look into his chart, has Mars and Saturn together in the tenth house. So with Mars comes this fighting ability, this competitiveness, passion and aggression to move ahead. There’s a mission that needs to be accomplished, and Mars is excellent at that. With Saturn comes resilience to keep fighting and fighting.

Bear Grylls: Mars as a Practical Guide

How does this Martian energy manifest? It manifests in different ways depending on the Nakshatra it occupies in your chart. Let’s take a few examples.

Bear Grylls’s work is centered around survival in extreme conditions. That is what his life has all been about. So he’s offering us a practical guide on how to survive under extreme conditions. Why am I using the term guide? Let’s have a look into his chart.

We don’t have his time of birth, and we don’t need it because Mars’s position is not going to change in a day’s time. He has Mars in his chart in the constellation of Pushya.

A Pushya native is meant to play the role of Lord Brihaspati in our society. So the individual is likely to be a teacher, mentor, trainer and educator of some kind.

Ardra, Wildlife and Purva Ashadha Optimism

But why wildlife, you might wonder? Pushya as a constellation is ruled by Saturn, and Saturn in his chart is in Ardra. Ardra is strongly linked to wildlife, given the mythology linked to it. So we see that his Martian energy, his bravery, is being expressed in wildlife because Mars is occupying the Nakshatra ruled by Saturn and Saturn is in Ardra.

When you analyze any planetary position, you must take into account the Nakshatra and the Nakshatra ruler’s position. You must not forget the sign either. Mars in his chart falls in the sign of Cancer, and Cancer is ruled by Moon. Moon in his chart is in Purva Ashadha.

I think when you are doing something as extreme as he does, you need a sense of optimism that, you know what, I’ll be okay. We are going on this adventure; we’ll find a way to survive. That optimism, in my view, comes from Purva Ashadha. So this is how Mars’s energy is manifesting in his story.

Bhagat Singh: Mars with a Larger Goal

I’ll take another example: Bhagat Singh from Punjab, India, the revolutionary leader known to have fasted for more than 100 days in prison for his cause. In his case, I find Mars in his chart in the constellation of Uttara Ashadha.

There is some confusion over whether he was born on 27 September or 28 September. I checked his chart for both dates, and Mars remained in this sign and the constellation of Uttara Ashadha. The Nakshatra is more important.

If you go through the mythology of Uttara Ashadha, it’s all about coming together in large numbers and taking on a huge cause, like challenging the entire setup, the entire government. That’s what he did. He was challenging the British Raj in India.

Therefore, in his case, this Martian energy had a bigger purpose, a bigger goal—a larger goal, should I say. There was freedom, and that’s what he fought for. If you look at the sign position in his chart, that’s Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, and Jupiter is exalted in Pushya.

So his fight, no matter how big and impractical it might seem to an average person, was driven by good reasons because Jupiter in his chart is in Pushya. Then we look into the Nakshatra ruler: Sun in his chart is in the constellation of Hasta. That’s a sign that he can be an inspirational figure, and he did turn out to be an inspirational figure for many.

What I also found interesting in his chart is that Ketu is in the constellation of Uttara Ashadha. That, to me, is a sign that perhaps in his previous life too, he was fighting a battle of a similar sort in scale. Perhaps he was carrying forward that work in the life that he lived.

Witold Pilecki: Mars, Loyalty and Resistance

The other example I’d like to take is of Witold Pilecki. I sincerely apologize if I have mispronounced his name. His life story is more important. He’s a Polish soldier who volunteered to be captured by the German forces. He knew this path was going to lead him to Auschwitz, the prison camp.

He launched a resistance movement in the camp and managed to escape it. So his story is extraordinary. He was ready to take on the toughest battle one could have taken, given what we know about what happened in World War II.

What was the reason behind his bravery? Mars in his chart is in the constellation of Magha. A Magha-like individual is very likely to remain loyal in the service of the king. Here, the king represents the government. He was part of the Polish armed forces. He was loyal to that.

Krittika: A Breeding Ground for Warriors

If you study Mars’s position further, it falls in the sign of Leo, ruled by Sun. Sun in his chart is in Krittika. In fact, he also has Mercury, Venus and Ketu there in the constellation of Krittika. Magha’s final ruler is Ketu, and Ketu is in Krittika. So his entire life was Krittika-linked.

You have started from Mars. When looking into the position it occupied, in this case Magha, you find that Magha is ruled by Ketu and Ketu is in Krittika. You also have to take into account what Krittika is all about.

Krittika is ruled by Kartikeya. He’s described as the commander of the celestial army. I’ve seen many times, in my experience of reading charts, that a Krittika native could have a career in the armed forces, and they are known for bravery.

Krittika is also ruled by Lord Agni, and therefore I believe his fight would have been on principle. That was his life story. So in his case, this Martian energy manifested in the environment of Krittika. Krittika is a breeding ground for warriors.

Through these examples, you can see how these Martian qualities we are all gifted with manifest differently when Mars falls in different Nakshatras.