Mars Guiding Planet

You are the sort person who can, through sheer force of will,

accomplish whatever you set out to do. Your best method is to devote

yourself entirely to your goal, and you are seldom satisfied with partial

success. Obstacles and difficulties are best met boldly, with determination

and a massive mobilization of energy. Mars Skill Symbol people often find

success and happiness in the fields of sales, promotion and athletics. But

regardless of their particular vocation, they often reach a high degree of

success through hard work and a knack for the sort of publicity and self-

promotion that marks them as "stand-outs."

As a Mars Skill Symbol type, endurance, productivity, drive, self-

promotion and an ability to get things done are powerful assets. But a

natural tendency toward Martian ruthlessness may undo some of your best

efforts — your worse enemies may be those to whom you have been

insensitive.

As Guiding Planet, Mars bestows one with a keen and uncanny sense

of the "unseen hand" at work behind the scene of any situation, as well as a

natural ability to manipulate political forces and public opinion. It symbolizes

insight into the motives of others, which is more like a gut feeling than a

reasoned-out conclusion, and the ability to see trends in business, politics,

culture and fashion before they become apparent.

John Lennon was born with Mars Oriental, close to Neptune and forming

a close trine to an Aquarian Moon. His force of personality, promotional

abilities, and sense of big social trends about to break forcefully upon the

scene allowed him and his bandmates to rise from humble origins to realize

success of a magnitude never before achieved by a musician group. Another

English rock star to attain international fame and fortune, David

Bowie overcame youthful shyness to attain huge and lasting success

spanning a number of image metamorphoses and shifts of musical style and

direction. A master of self-promotion, Bowie was born with twelfth house

Oriental Mars rising less than one degree before the Sun, with Mercury rising

eight degrees before it.

The birth chart of Lenny Bruce, the very important and highly

controversial comedian of the 1960s, also shows Mars Oriental. In his

instance, Mars Oriental (along with natal Sun) is at the apex of a T-Square,

formed with an exact opposition of Jupiter, first house Capricorn, and Pluto,

seventh house Cancer — a politically volatile and perceptive configuration

which vented itself through the forceful Oriental Mars in the ninth house of

big social issues, the legal system and the media. Through the medium of

comedy as an art, whether performed on stage on through a number of

highly-publicized legal cases, Bruce made it his function to expose and

ridicule the prejudices and injustices that figured so largely in post-WWII

America.

Another ‘60s icon, Janis Joplin was born when Mars was Oriental, rising

thirty-four degrees before the Sun. On stage and in her vocal power, she

released an unmatched personal force, and she rose from obscurity to

international fame overnight not only by the force of personality and will, but

also by a gut feeling about how to ride emergent energies. In her birth-

chart, Mars Oriental forms a tight octile (or semi-square) aspect to Mercury

retrograde and tri-septiles to Uranus and to Pluto. The controversial

approach of social historian and writerCamille Paglia reveals her natal Mars

Oriental. Hard, edgy and not particularly popular among feminists, Paglia’s

Mars forms a square to edgy Uranus and a trine Jupiter.