MARS: Energy, Passion, Strength, Courage, Independence, Anger and Violence

Like electricity moving from one end of the wire to another, Mars generates the energy we need to achieve our goals.

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You are not a body. Your body is a vehicle, but you are the Driver (The Sun). This “car” is built from the Moon (your emotional mind), Mercury (your intellect) and Venus (your sense perception).  Now, what does this car need before it can go anywhere?

Fuel.

Mars is the fuel. Mars is energy.

PASSION & ENTHUSIASM

Think of energy; think of electricity. Imagine a lightening bolt. It has a target and heads straight for it with fierce speed. Think of the wires in the walls of your room. Flip a switch and electricity races from one end of the wires to the next, till it reaches it’s goal and lights up the room.

That’s what “passion” is!

Passion is singleminded intention to achieve a desired goal.

Mars is the planet of passion.

Energy has to move towards a goal. Passion can’t exist without something to desire, something to be passionate about. Electricity, for example, can’t even exist unless it is moving. Electricity is movement. Passion is movement towards a single goal. Venus is the planet most responsible for establishing the desired goal, Mars creates the energy achieve it.

Energy is a fundamentally useful thing. It gives us enthusiasm, gusto and a “zest for life.” So Mars is a fundamentally useful planet. But energy is also dangerous as Mars is prone to be.

WILLPOWER, STRENGTH & COURAGE

In a wire there is always resistance. Electricity has to compete with this resistance to reach its goal. To succeed in this contest, the electricity requires strength.

When you set your goal on something in life, how often do you find that what you want suddenly drops into your lap like an angel cake on a silver platter? Not very often. Maybe almost never, to be realistic. If you want to get what you want in life, you must be ready to fight against the inevitable “resistance in the wires of destiny.” You need Mars to be on your side.

Our passions always run up against resistance. And when this happens you need what only Mars can give: willpower and strength, which breeds bravery and courage.

INDEPENDENT THINKING

Electricity really is amazing. It is not stupid at all. It instantaneously evaluates every possible path and choses whichever one is the shortest route to its goal. It is not a blind follower at all! At every moment it is making its own choice about which direction is best to take.

Mars gives humans this quality, creating people who “make their own choices” and stand out from the crowd, go their own way, chose their own path, and follow their own rules.

Electrical energy must be able to make split second decisions about which path to follow. Mars, the planet of energy, gives human beings the capacity for independence, independent thought, and quick decision making.

ANGER & VIOLENCE

Though electricity is fascinating and runs our entire world, it is extremely dangerous. Mars is just like that… dangerous. If you stick your finger in the way of a flow of electricity you get electrocuted. Similarly, if you get in the way of Mars, bad things happen.

The first bad thing is anger. Los Angeles rush hour “road rage” comes to mind. A freeway is like an electric wire, and all those cars are like the electricity flowing from home to work and back again. If traffic blocks the flow, anger happens.

When something stands in the way of you getting what you want – anger arises. That’s it. Pretty simple. Pretty dangerous.

This is why Mars is the main planet generating anger.

Sports are a way to divert the energy of Mars into rather harmless and even enjoyable pursuits. Sports involve lots of energy, competition, strength, willpower, bravery, quick decision making, and even a pinch of anger – thus they allow Mars to display his full spectrum within a safe “closed circuit.”

If you think about sports for a second, you’ll see that anger can be used as a positive tool to some extent. It can be a tool to get rid of opponents and opposition. It is not the most graceful tool, but it sometimes works.

When it doesn’t work, though, it is really ugly. Violence happens.

The history of violence looks like this: Passion flows like electricity towards the object it desires. It encounters resistance along the way and fights back against that resistance. The strength to fight against resistance is really the whole purpose of Mars. But what if the resistance is really strong? What if willpower and strength of purpose are not enough to get past it? Then we should try to find another path to our goal, like electricity would seek another wire to the same endpoint. But what if there are no options, or if the options are also beset with serious resistance? In that case willpower has to become even stronger – it becomes what we call “anger.” Anger gives us great strength, but what if even this is not sufficient to pass the obstacles between us and our goal? Well, in that case anger is going to intensify to the next level, violence. In short, we are going to destroy what stands in our way, or be destroyed in the effort.

SUMMARY

Like electricity moving from one end of the wire to another, Mars generates the energy we need to achieve our goals.

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Mars in many ways is the opposite of Venus. Mars and Venus try to deal with the same situation, but do so in opposite ways. The situation is that we exist in a world where we desire things that other people also desire. Venus solution is to cooperate with those people and share. Mars’ solution is to become strong, compete, win, and claim what you desire for your own.

Mars is the energy without which you can’t get what you want. Energy meets resistance and so Mars develops the strength, willpower, courage and quick independent thinking  to overcome that resistance. If that doesn’t work, Mars will resort to anger and, finally, violence and warfare.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

© 2010 Vic DiCara, All Rights Reserved

Psychology of Vedic Astrology

Psychology is the study of the inner modes of a person’s experience of life. Vedic Wisdom identifies three different modes of psychology:

1. Sattva – The primary characteristic of this mode is clarity. This mode influences people to think clearly and calmly, “level headed”. It enables us to experience life more objectively, seeing things for what they are.
2. Rajas - The primary characteristic here is passion. Passion colors the clarity of the previous mode, sattva. “See the world through rose colored glasses.” This popular saying points to a person whose emotions influence the way they experience life. Rajas is not objective or level headed, it is passionate and ambitious. It lacks patience, but has tons of drive and power. It is the fuel of creativity.
3. Tamas - When the coloration becomes very thick, it becomes a cloud and creates darkness, the keyword to describe this psychological mode. This is the psychological night. It brings calmness and sleep. Relaxation. It is slow, but deep and heavy. It is very strong, so when it becomes linked with anger, destruction occurs.

I feel it is very important to eradicate the implied value judgements from the outset. May people who acquaint themselves with these Vedic psychological principles assume that clarity is better than passion, and darkness is worst of all. This is wrong.

All the modes have their important uses. Without tamas you could not sleep, for example, and you would die. Without Rajas you would not wake up in the morning. Without sattva you would just chase your passions everywhere, leading to tears in the mode of darkness. So you see, all three modes are interdependent. A lot like “Rock, Paper, Scissors” – each of the three has it’s uses as well as it’s faults.

That said, we have to acknowledge that Sattva is the ideal leader of the other modes. When a person allows the mode of clarity to lead and direct their passions and their relaxations, then this person truly enjoys long term happiness and success.

These three psychological modes almost never exist in a pure and pristine form. You rarely if ever will encounter anyone or anything which is purely and exclusively in any one of these three modes. Rather you will find infinite blends of the three. The color theory is very helpful to consider here. Think of Sattva as yellow, Rajas as red, and Tamas as Blue. These are the three primary colors. Combination of these three in different proportions results in the infinite colors of the spectrum.

Every individual you meet, every situation you are in, is a unique blend of these three primary colors – creating a unique experience in the spectrum of life.

Implications

Much like how vedic medicine (Ayurveda) defines “health” as a balance between the three principles – circulation (Vata), metabolism (Pitta), and structure (Kapha) – similarly vedic psychology defines “mental health” as the proper balance between the three modes: clarity, passion, and darkness.

However what is very important to achieve psychological health is to allow sattva - the mode of clarity – to take the role of leadership and guidance in your life. Your clear thinking will give proper direction to both your desires to succeed and your desires to relax. To put it succinctly, proper “balance” is not sustained until the mode of clarity is allowed to direct the other two modes.

It is a long, enjoyable, and gradual process for a person to learn to give his or her sattva the steering wheel. The vedic psychologist acts as a guide for this.

A vedic psychologist will assess the modality of a persons’s psyche. They will determine the current combinations of the three modes, and identifying that, will advise the individual which modes are out of balance with the other modes. Each individual will have a somewhat unique way of achieving the balance – and this is where the psychologist becomes a true artist.

Additional Reading

To benefit from vedic psychology, your psychologist must very deeply understand the three modes and their implications and connections. To give such understanding here in a single article is beyond the scope here. But I will point you towards the 14th Chapter of the Bhagavad Gita as an excellent starting point.

Assesment

There are various means of assessing the inherent balance or imbalance in a persons’s psyche. Vedic medicine is very linked to vedic astrology, and so to is vedic psychology. We utilize astrology as both a diagnostic tool as well as a guide to the appropriate therapeutics.

Each planet and sign has a psychological mode. By “sign” we mean the 12 zodiac signs everyone is familiar with – Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc. But we also mean the 27 signs of the lunar zodiac, with which most modern westerners are not acquainted. I will list them here.

Planets and Signs

The agents of clarity (sattva) are

• The Sun, Moon and Jupiter
• Cancer, Leo, Sagittarius and Pisces
• The dvi-svabhava (dual) natured signs – Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces. (Thus Sagittarius and Pisces are thoroughly sattvic, while Gemini and Virgo are partially so)

The agents of passion (rajas) are

• Venus and Mercury
• Aries, Taurus, Libra, & Scorpio
• The chara (cardinal) natured signs – Aries, Cancer, Libra & Capricorn (thus Aries and Libra are thoroughly rajasic while Cancer and Capricorn have this quality blended with another)

The agents of darkness (tamas) are

• Saturn, Mars and the two Nodes (Rahu & Ketu)
• Gemini, Virgo, Capricorn, and Aquarius
• The sthira (fixed) natured signs – Taurus, Leo, Scorpio & Aquarius (thus Aquarius is purely tamasic while the others are hybrids)

Lunar Signs

The modes of the lunar signs are more detailed and rich. Each lunar sign has three layers of modality. The deepest layer describes the core interest of the sign, the middle layer describes the flavor of that interest, and the outer layer describe how it visibly acts.

The first 9 nakshatras (lunar mansions) – the ones falling within Aries to Cancer – all have passion as their root interest. They want to create! The next 9, falling between Leo and Scorpio, all have darkness as their core interest. They want depth and strength. The final 9, falling between Sagittarius and Pisces, all have clarity as their root interest. They want to understand things for what they really are.

Within each group of 9 are subdivisions of 3. The first 3 have passion as their second layer, flavoring the way they pursue their core interest. The next three have darkness, and the final three have clarity.

Finally, each lunar mansion has it’s own modality on it’s outermost layer. The pattern repreats starting at the first lunar mansion with passion, the next being dark on it’s outer layer, the third being clear. And so on through all 27.

How to Interpret

You should evaluate two factors:

1. The Ascendant (this means including the condition of the Ascendant Lord)
2. The Moon

Obviously, the Ascendant will describe the psychological modalities which tangibly manifest themselves in the natives practical world – their habits of eating, sleeping, being clean, being punctual, etc. etc. The Moon, on the other hand will describe the modalities which affect the way the patient thinks and feels.

First asses the Lunar Mansions, because they are so rich in information all by themselves. My ascendant is in Uttara-Ashada. This lunar mansion is sattva at the core, rajas in the flavor, and sattva in it’s manifest expression. As you would expect I am very concerned with having a tidy, neat, orderly living environment – I live according to schedules and checklists, etc. And I do it all with a passionate flavor.

The the Lord of my Ascendant is in the lunar mansion called Krittika. This one is rajasic in it’s core and flavor, but sattvic in its outer way of going about things. So you find a rather pure blend of clarity in my outer layers. So you know that I go about my daily practicalities in a most methodical and organized fashion. The flavor of it all (2nd layer) is purely passionate – so you know I am very passionate about it. I get disturbed and upset when my organization and clarity is infringed upon. My root nature is a blend of sattva & rajas – so from this you can safely infer that the reason why I am passionate about being organized, etc. is because I feel that it will help me fulfill my passions to know things clearly for what they really are.

Looking at my Moon – she is in Rohini – which is a lunar mansion that is rajasic at its core, tamasic in flavor and rajasic again in how it appears on the surface. Sure enough my mind is very creative and passionate – and I have a sort of dark, deep, and inflexible flavor about it. Because it is rajasic on the outer level as well as the inner level it is obvious to people that I am passionate emotionally and creatively, and that is just the obvious way my mind works.

Other Techniques

As you see, merely consulting the lunar mansions alone gives you a whole lot of very accurate information. But if you are good at astrology you can go further. Here is an outline.

1. What are the signs that the Ascendant occupies, in the birth chart, in the navamsha, and in the drekkan? Consider the modal nature of those signs.
2. What planets conjoin the Ascendant in the first house – what modalities to they contribute?
3. What planets aspect the Ascendant, and how strongly to they do so? Consider the modal nature of those planets
4. What planets are in the 10th House?
5. In the 4th House?

Weight these with descending strength, moderately.

Repeat the process for the Ascendant Lord (for simplicity you can omit steps 4 and 5 here) – blend the two together, the values you have ascertained for the Ascendant and the values you ascertained for the Ascendant Lord.

Repeat the process, all 5 steps, for the Moon. (So step 4 means, what planets are in the 10th sign from the Moon? etc.)

Consider the scores you arrive at in this way alongside what the lunar mansions told you on their own.

Now you have a good psychological profile for the person whose chart you are evaluating. This is where the science sort of fades out and the art and skill fades in – now you need to help the person achieve their optimal balance based on what you have just assessed as their psychological starting point.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com