of parents, captivities, ruination of women, abortion, sexual inter-
course, weddings, taking away of good things, lies, situations void of
hope, violent thefts, piracy, plunderings, breaches of friends, anger,
combat, reproaches, enemies, lawsuits. It introduces violent murders
and cuts and bloodshed, attacks of fever, ulcerations, pustules, inflam-
mations, imprisonment, tortures, manliness, perjury, wandering,
excelling at villainy, those who gain their ends through fire or iron,
handicraftsman, workers in hard materials. It makes leaders and mili-
tary campaigns and generals, warriors, supremacy, the hunt, the chase,
falls from heights or from quadrupeds, weak vision, apoplexy. Of the
parts of the body, it is lord of the head, rump, genitals; of the inner
parts, it is lord of the blood, spermatic ducts, bile, excretion of feces,
the hind-parts, walking backward, falling on one’s back; it also has that
which is hard and severe. It is lord of the essence iron and order,
clothes because of Aries, and wine and pulse. It is of the nocturnal sect,
red with respect to color, pungent with respect to taste.
Robert Schmidt has extracted from all of the planetary significations a primary
principle representing the basic nature of each of the planets. He says Mars represents
the principle of separation and severance in a birth chart. Thus Mars’s association
with impulsiveness or pioneering tendencies are derived from the planet’s desire to
separate from others; the same may be said of competitive behaviors as one might find
in sports, for example. The severing principle is also fundamental in Mars’s use of
sharp cutting objects and why he is perhaps associated with weaponry and armor,
which cuts one off from one’s enemy.
Modern astrology, with its emphasis on inner psychological dynamics, focuses
more on Mars’s correlation with the impulse to act and react. Psychological astrologers
point to the planet’s representation of one’s need to assert, to initiate, to vitalize, to
act, to do, to endeavor, to survive. Behaviors characterized as aggressive, self-assertive,
enterprising, independent, combative, ambitious, etc., are derived from these basic
inner drives. When other factors in the chart point in this direction, these behaviors
often make use of Mars-ruled situations or objects such as: new births, enterprises or
projects, competitions, accidents, permanent departures and exiles, divorce, mechani-
cal work, fights, operations, sexual acts, etc.
Some of the most conclusive (although not without its detractors) statistical
work involving the confirmation of astronomical correlations with human affairs have
centered on the planet Mars. In the 1950s French statistician and psychologist Michel
Gauquelin began his studies that attempted to demonstrate—under the rules laid
down by science—that the planets could be significantly (statistically) correlated with
certain professions. While the results showed a statistical correlation between eleven
professions and five planets, the statistical effect shown by Mars in the charts of sports
champions was by far the greatest. This has been coined the Gauquelin Mars effect in
the astrological literature and has yet to be refuted—although many have tried.
Gauquelin’s work also showed that the positions of the planets just past culminating
and just past rising had the greatest strength in producing the professional patterns
demonstrated.Mars
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