Mars
Magic
God of War and the flip side to Venus. Mars Projects outwards and manifests. His energy is active and aggressive. Like the masculine Sun energy, Mars can also manifest your will, your fire, into the world. Also very protective and grounding.
Archetypes[edit]
- Warrior
- Protector
Astrology
[1]Mars is the ruling planet of Aries0 and the traditional or ancient ruling planet of Scorpio and is exalted in Capricorn. Mars is the Roman god of war and bloodshed, whose symbol is a spear and shield. Both the soil of Mars and the hemoglobin of human blood are rich in iron and because of this they share its distinct deep red color. He was second in importance only to Jupiter and Saturn, due to Mars being the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions.
Mars orbits the Sun in 687 days, spending about 57.25 days in each sign of the zodiac. It is also the first planet that orbits outside of Earth's orbit, making it the first planet that does not set along with the Sun. Mars has two permanent polar ice caps. During a pole's winter, it lies in continuous darkness, chilling the surface and causing the deposition of 25–30% of the atmosphere into slabs of CO2 ice (dry ice).
In astrology, Mars is associated with aggression, confrontation, energy, strength, ambition and impulsiveness. Mars governs sports, competitions and physical activities in general. The 1st-century poet Manilius, described the planet as ardent and as the lesser malefic. In medicine, Mars presides over the genitals, the muscular system, the gonads and adrenal glands. It was traditionally held to be hot and excessively dry and rules the choleric humor. It was associated with fever, accidents, trauma, pain and surgery.
In modern astrology, Mars is the primary native ruler of the first house. Traditionally however, Mars ruled both the third and tenth houses, and had its joy in the fifth house. While Venus tends to the overall relationship atmosphere, Mars is the passionate impulse and action, the masculine aspect, discipline, willpower and stamina.
Mars rules over Tuesday and in Romance languages the word for Tuesday often resembles Mars (in Romanian, marți, in Spanish, martes, in French, mardi and in Italian "martedì"). The English "Tuesday" is a modernised form of "Tyr's Day", Tyr being the Germanic analogue to Mars. Dante Alighieri associated Mars with the liberal art of arithmetic. In Chinese astrology, Mars is ruled by the element fire, which is passionate, energetic and adventurous.
Hindu astrology includes Mars (Mangala) in the concept of Nakshatra, Navagraha, and Saptarishi.
Science
[2]Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and the second-smallest planet in the Solar System, larger only than Mercury. In the English language, Mars is named for the Roman god of war. Mars is a terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere and has a crust primarily composed of elements similar to Earth's crust, as well as a core made of iron and nickel. Mars has surface features such as impact craters, valleys, dunes, and polar ice caps. Mars has two small, irregularly shaped moons, Phobos and Deimos.
Some of the most notable surface features on Mars include Olympus Mons, the largest volcano and highest-known mountain in the Solar System, and Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the Solar System. The Borealis basin in the Northern Hemisphere covers approximately 40% of the planet and may be a large impact feature. Days and seasons on Mars are comparable to those of Earth, as the planets have a similar rotation period and tilt of the rotational axis relative to the ecliptic plane. Liquid water on the surface of Mars cannot exist due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% of the atmospheric pressure on Earth. Both of Mars's polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. In the distant past, Mars was likely wetter, and thus possibly more suited for life. It is not known whether life has ever existed on Mars.
Mars has been explored by several uncrewed spacecraft, beginning with Mariner 4 in 1965. NASA's Viking 1 lander transmitted the first images from the Martian surface in 1976. Two countries have successfully deployed rovers on Mars, the United States first doing so with Sojourner in 1997 and China with Zhurong in 2021. There are also planned future missions to Mars, such as a NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return set to happen in 2026, and the Rosalind Franklin rover mission, which was intended to launch in 2018 but was delayed to 2024 at the earliest, with a more likely launch date at 2028.
Mars can be viewed from Earth with the naked eye, as can its reddish coloring. This appearance, due to the iron oxide prevalent on its surface, has led to Mars often being called the Red Planet. It is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, with an apparent magnitude that reaches −2.94, comparable to that of Jupiter and surpassed only by Venus, the Moon and the Sun.[16] Mars has been observed since ancient times. Over the millennia it has been featured in culture and the arts in ways that have reflected humanity's growing knowledge of it.
Moons[edit]
Mars has two relatively small (compared to Earth's) natural moons:
- Phobos (about 22 kilometres (14 mi) in diameter), and
- Deimos (about 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in diameter),
which orbit close to the planet.
The origin of both moons is unclear, although a popular theory states that they were asteroids captured into Martian orbit.