A few days ago, I was asked by a consultee to analyse their birth chart. The moment I opened it, I was struck by the overwhelming strength of its Oikodespotes. It is rare to come across a horoscope in which a single planet concentrates so much authority and radiates such a decisive influence over a person’s life. This piece arises from that impression, focusing on the role of Mars as the chart’s central axis, leaving aside other elements.
I. Sun, Moon and the Ascendant Ruled by Mars
The reading began with the three pillars of being: the Sun, the Moon, and the Ascendant. It is a New Moon birth in Scorpio, which means that both luminaries dwell in that same sign. The Ascendant, in turn, rises in Aries. This creates a pure alignment with the natural zodiacal order: Aries on the first house, Taurus on the second, and so on, which reinforces the internal coherence of the chart. More crucially, it establishes Martian dominion over the three principles of existence: the Sun (Spirit and consciousness), the Moon (soul and fortune), and the Ascendant (body and form).
In this configuration, Scorpio occupies the eighth house, the realm of death, loss, and symbolic regeneration. The sign feels at home here, but the house itself is demanding, connected to grief, transformation, and karmic weight. The conjunction of Sun and Moon, separating by only two degrees, shows that the native was born just after the novilunium, within one of the most severe bounds of Scorpio, the Saturnine one, which governs the last five degrees of the sign. Within a Martian domain (the nocturnal malefic), both luminaries fall under the authority of the diurnal malefic Saturn, imprinting a mark of tension, endurance, and spiritual constraint. It even replicates the day of birth (Saturday ruled by Saturn) and the hour of the same birth (Mars).
Because this is a diurnal chart, the Sun is peregrine and without essential dignity, but in sect, preserving some measure of Spiritual clarity and steadiness. The Moon, however, is profoundly afflicted: in her fall in the fixed waters of Scorpio, out of sect, and congealed within the Saturnine bound. It is a Moon labouring through extreme dense emotional matter, navigating the subterranean depths where the psyche must be continually purified against somber compulsions.
The Ascendant lies at 17 degrees Aries, cardinal Fire sign also ruled by Mars, but situated within the Mercurial bound. The combination is striking: an instinctive, pioneering impulse expressed through intellect, language, and movement. It speaks of someone whose will ignites quickly and yet seeks articulation through words. A mind that fights by thinking, transforming the inner emotional conflict into burning discourse, even if there is a strong opposition between Mars and Mercury here.
There is also a revealing detail: the dodekatemoria (D12) of the Ascendant falls in Scorpio, degree 1, making it doubly martial: Aries by sign, Scorpio by subdivision. This reinforces the axis of iron and will, uniting the outer Mars of impulse with the inner Mars of transmutation. The body is born to act and to regenerate, as it can be a soldier and a surgeon, called to fight outwardly and to purify within.
It is a chart in which the element of Water reigns unequivocally, but not the living and maternal Water of Cancer, nor the vast and dissolving one of Pisces. It is the Fixed Water of Scorpio, the Martial Water that does coagulates instead of flowing. It is humid, dense, and tinged with iron, like blood gathered before battle. It represents emotion in its most intense and subterranean form, the instinct of fusion transformed into hidden power.
According to the doctrine of the four humours of Empedocles, this predominance endows the constitution with a phlegmatic nature: cold and moist, introspective, silent, resistant to change. The vital energy moves in slow spirals, accumulating impressions and memories in the depths of the soul. It is the Water that feels to the very limit and, by doing so.
II. Venus, Pluto and The Two Most Important Hermetic Lots Also Ruled by Mars
When observing the chart as a whole, we notice that, beside the Sun and the Moon, there are also Venus and Pluto in Scorpio, forming a stellium of four bodies. Venus is here in in her zodiacal exile, wounded in the very heart of the Martial domain. It is the principle of Aphrodite imprisoned in the waters of Ares. And, to make matters worse, she is out of sect. Desire is not easily governed, moved by subterranean intensities and an instinct for possession, and control. In Scorpio and in the eighth house, Venus tends to seek union through total fusion, which inevitably leads her into the shadowed realms of jealousy, passion, and emotional power.
Her essential state is severe: Venus is positioned almost at the anaretic degree of Scorpio, a terminal and saturated point of the sign, ruled by Saturn, the planet of limitation and sorrow. She is a Venus wounded in living flesh, about to abandon the Martial realm but still without the serenity of Sagittarian rebirth. Out of sect, pressed by both malefics and combust within two separating degrees from the Sun, she appears exhausted, consumed by solar light that steals her radiance and voice. Her separating conjunction with the Moon, also fallen and out of sect, deepens the image of two feminine forces devoured by the combined weight of Mars and Saturn. Aphrodite and Selene united in exile, both unwillingly serving the design of Mars. Rarely could Venus be found in a worse condition: exiled, combust, afflicted, and stripped of her grace, her sweetness turned into endurance.
In the calculation of the Arabic Parts, both the Lot of Spirit (Pars Spiritus, solar) and the Lot of Fortune (Tyche, lunar) fall in Aries, precisely upon the axis of the Ascendant. The first lies two degrees before the rising line, the second two degrees after, both within the Mercurial bound. This configuration unites body, soul, and destiny in a single focus of cardinal Fire, creating a point of fusion between what one is, what one experiences, and what one is meant to accomplish. There is a profound unity between will, fortune, and consciousness, a life that tends to move by direct impulse, leaving little distance between intention and action.
But this powerful trio stands under pressure from a square cast by Saturn in sect, positioned in the tenth house. The diurnal malefic, although orderly and lucid in its solar domain, exerts here a weight of responsibility and gravity. The square between Saturn and the Aries axis forms a field of constant tension: martial fire meets Saturnine ice, will collides with duty. It is a configuration that imposes severe trials, delays, burden, obstacles and moral demands, yet also forges discipline and character. Also, the body feels the clock ticking constantly and is aggravated by it. There is a constant sense of duty, obligation, but the square presses the bones and health of a rising Aries.
Mars hence governs the Sun, the Moon, the Ascendant, Venus, Pluto, the Lot of Spirit, and the Lot of Fortune. It is remarkable. He is the one who shapes destiny and tests the will, leading the native through experiences that demand courage and determination. Even the Mercurial bounds touching the Ascendant and both Lots do not soften the tone, as they merely lend to war the art of strategy, and to action the power of the word. This is a Mars who thinks before he strikes, who sharpens the tongue like a blade and learns to wage battle with discernment.
III. The Debilitated Condition of Mars
And now, inevitably, we arrive at the analysis of Mars himself.
At first glance, one could expect this Mars to lighten the sombre and saturated tone of the nativity. But this hope was swiftly undone. Situated peregrine and turned retrograde in the mutable Air of Gemini, Mars is deprived of essential dignities, without triplicity rulership, and, as this is a diurnal chart, out of sect as well. It is therefore a martial energy without orientation. A ruminative, mental, restless force, a war waged within the mind itself. In the Tarot, the Egyptian decan of Mars in Gemini corresponds to the 9 of Swords: mental torment, loops of fear, anxiety, and the excess of lucidity. It is the blade of sleepless vigilance, of an intelligence devouring itself through repetition.
Placed in the third house, Mars acts upon daily life, small decisions, and the way thought becomes gesture. The third is the House of the Goddess, of the Logos in the vicinities, of words that shape the immediate world. His presence here introduces tension into communication, routine, and the exchange of ideas, where impulse often overrides listening. More gravely, it exerts a direct influence upon the Scorpionic stellium of the eighth house.
The geometric condition of Mars is problematic. Being in the third house, it forms no Pythagorean aspect to the eighth, revealing a governor blind to his own domain. This symbolic blindness deepens the sense of disconnection between will and transformation. If Scorpio already represents compulsion and descent into psychic underworlds, a retrograde and out-of-sect Mars in Gemini only intensifies the dispersal of vital energy and the multiplication of obsessions. When not sublimated, this position may manifest as nervous exhaustion, chronic anxiety, or crises of purpose, the force of Mars scattered across too many targets.
But there is a point of relief. The exact degree of Mars (the 9º of Gemini) belongs to the Jupiterian bound. And, in this chart, Jupiter is strongly dignified: in Leo, a fixed Fire sign; ruler by triplicity; in a favourable house (the fifth); in diurnal motion and in sect. This influence tempers, to some extent, the corrosive nature of the nocturnal malefic, offering a nobler channel of expression through luminous intellect and creative speech.
In terms of aspects, however, the picture is stark. Mars, ruling so much of this chart, paradoxically forms only one aspect. And not an easy one. It stands in perfect opposition to Mercury, peregrine and out of sect in Sagittarius, in the ninth house. This is not merely a clash between two planets, but a war between Mars and its own ruler, since Mercury exerts domain over the mutable Air of Gemini. The governor and the guest face each other across the zodiac, creating a field of mental tension and inner contradiction. It is a violent confrontation between the House of the Goddess (human speech) and the House of God (higher intellect); between the principle of severance and the one of understanding; immediate action and distant vision.
Being exact, this opposition is intense and directly impacts the Mercurial bound of the first house, where lie the Ascendant, the Lot of Spirit, and the Lot of Fortune. The tension between Mars and Mercury marks the very heart of the chart, kindling the eternal struggle between thought and action, between the word that analyses and the will that strikes. It is, in short, the mind in arms against its own commander.
IV. The Integration of this Mars
The consultee must first recognise and name this enormous inner force, bringing it into consciousness as one who holds a blade by its edge. Mars cannot ever be seen as an enemy, but a power without direction; and, while it remains blind and turned inward, it will continue to consume itself. It is essential that this energy find a specific focus, a legitimate target, so that it does not scatter itself in mental battles or invisible wars.
The symbolism of the 9 of Swords is, in this sense, precious. It corresponds to Yesod in Yetzirah, the lunar plane of imagination that generates psychic forms and images. The mind, saturated with fear, creates illusory enemies, and the Geminian Mars, eager to react, hurls its battle-axe against phantoms of its own making. This is the most delicate point of the chart: a martial force which, finding no enemy outside itself, turns upon its own psychic body. It is the sword that cuts the mirror instead of passing through the veil.
To integrate Mars means learning to deal with shadows and psychic karmas. It is to recognise fears, name them, and reclaim mastery over the inner narrative. The warlike energy needs daily direction: clear tasks, tangible objectives, disciplined movement. The third house demands that the struggle become word, that impulse be translated into conscious gesture. When Mars is channelled into lucid action, through work, writing, craft, service, or study, inner chaos transforms into creative strength.
Mars is, after all, the great Oikodespotes of this chart: the lord of iron, the shaper of destiny. But it is a debilitated, ruminating Mars, caught between impulse and fear. The spiritual work of the consultee lies in aligning it with the double seal of Aries, i.e., the Ascendant and the Lots of Fortune and Spirit, the point where body, fortune, and Divine Will converge in the same sign and bound. When the strength of Mars joins the clarity of Spirit, iron ceases to wound and begins to forge. The inner warrior finds his axis: combat becomes mission, and scattered energy gathers into a single, just, and luminous strike.
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