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 writer Camille 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.