Mars Returns
So there I was, just twenty-three months old and the King of the World. I had a pair of doting giants trained to meet my every need. One whimper and I instantly became the center of the universe. But trouble was brewing in paradise and I knew it. My mother had entered her second trimester, pregnant with The Interloper: my sister Jan was on the way and my kingdom would soon be ripped in half.
Right on schedule, Mars was returning to where it was on the day I was born. I was embattled and ready to kill somebody if only my body were coordinated enough to pull it off. Welcome to the infamous “Terrible Twos.”
In broad terms, Mars takes twenty-six months to return to a given zodiacal degree – just over two years in other words. Due to several factors, the cycle is somewhat variable. One of those factors is that, in common with the rest of the planets, Mars’ orbit is elliptical – it speeds up when it’s closer to the Sun and slows down as it gets further away. Ditto for Earth, of course – and we’re watching Mars from our own careening planet, so our perspective is always shifting. Because of retrograde motion, sometimes Mars makes not one but three conjunctions to its natal position. All of those wild cards complicate the timing. It’s a mess, but say twenty-six months, give or take two or three months, and your timing of Mars returns will be more or less on target. My own first Mars return, for one example, occurred after only twenty-three months and ten days. The bottom line is that you have to look it up.
Another bottom line is that since Mars Returns happen every couple of years, they are not rare events. In the course of a long life, you’ll experience forty or fifty of them. That’s significant because generally speaking the more frequently something happens, the less pivotal it is astrologically. Saturn returns, for example, are a big deal – you only get two or three of them in a given lifetime and they alter you forever. Mars returns are not nearly as life-shaping, but they still merit mindfulness.
In this little essay, I want to share some of what I’ve learned about them – after all, I’ve now experienced forty-two of them, with my forty-third coming up late this January.
THOSE TERRIBLE TWOS
That first Mars return is a doozy. Google “terrible twos” and you’ll be reading about them into the wee hours. Preparing parents for that awkward period in a child’s development has become a cottage industry. Strip away the hype that seems to go with almost everything on the Internet, and you’ll get to the essence of the phenomenon: kids turn two and they are hell on wheels for a while. They throw tantrums. They are defiant. Their emotions are stormy and they’re never satisfied. Their favorite word becomes a loud, angry “No!”
Understandably, all of this can lead parents into wistful “too late” reflections on the advantages of birth control.
Still, at that first Mars return, a child is learning how to say no – and imagine the life that would lie before anyone who had no ability to utter that magical word. With that thought, we get our first hint about the evolutionary, developmental meaning of Mars returns in general.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING NEGATIVE
Some astrologers persist in calling Mars a “malefic” planet. To me, this is simply the triumph of tradition over common sense, modern psychology, and human experience. Where would we all be without Mars? What if we couldn’t defend ourselves? What if we lacked all courage and passion? What if there were nothing – and no one – for which we would willingly risk our lives? What if we could never say “no?”
When Mars returns to its natal position it is time to stand up for something. There’s a good chance it’s an opportunity to stand up for yourself – or perhaps to fail to do that if you happen to miss the point of the lesson. There’s an expression in Spanish – viva yo! It means “hooray for me” and it’s an excellent mantra during any Mars return. The door is open for you to claim some expanded territory in your life. To do that, you don’t have to wish anyone ill – there’s a huge difference between revelling in a victory and revelling in someone else's defeat. Sometimes you need a win. There’s no shame in claiming it, so be brave and go for it.
Is it “bad behavior” to assert yourself? Is it “negative” to claim something better for yourself? While most of us would disagree, it’s helpful to remember that we may be asserting ourselves or claiming something in opposition to someone else’s desires or intentions. From that person’s perspective, we may very well appear to be operating under a “negative” influence. Mars is inherently competitive and in almost all competitive situations, there are other people involved. If you do well with a Mars return, not all of them will be smiling.
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Sometimes there are two dogs and one bone. When that kind of existential situation looms on your radar screen, there’s a good chance that Mars is looming too.
As they say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. Often with successful responses to Mars returns, we’ll see a victory. What we tend not to see are the faces of the people who coveted that same victory. We often don’t see the faces of the people whose positions deteriorated as a result of our breakthrough.
Again, seeking to harm others is never the point – we just have to reflect on how eggs feel about omelets.
IN PRACTICE
Let me give you a few examples of Mars returns from real life. In preparing to write this essay, out of laziness I started by Googling for some good Mars return stories. There were many articles describing them in principle, but strangely I could find no examples. Maybe I didn’t dig deeply enough. An hour poking around my own chart files soon remedied that problem. As usual, I simply choose a few interesting, public figures at random. Ten minutes of research on each of them instantly yielded a bumper crop of good illustrations of Mars returns in action, with no failures or exceptions at all. Mars returns are a robust, reliable technique. They won’t fail you either.
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Singer and composer Billie Eilish experienced a Mars return on December 28, 2016. On November 18, 2016, her breakthrough hit Ocean Eyes was officially released as the lead single of her debut EP Don't Smile at Me. For Eilish, the rest is history.
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Albert Einstein had a Mars return on December 23, 1933. He delivered a speech on the importance of academic freedom at the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 3, 1933. Throughout his talk he was “wildly cheered” according to the London Times. On October 7th, he returned to the United States and began teaching at Princeton University, having taken good care of himself Mars-fashion by fleeing Nazi Germany before Fascist hell broke completely loose.
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Einstein’s “miracle year” – 1905 – saw him publishing four groundbreaking papers including the Special Theory of Relativity. He had a Mars return in November of that year.
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Astronaut, fighter pilot, and later United States senator John Glenn experienced a Mars return on August 4,1998. On October 29th of that year, at age seventy-seven, he flew on Space Shuttle Discovery's STS-95 mission. That made him the oldest person ever to actually orbit the Earth. Courage!
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On October 13, 2021, at age ninety, William Shatner – Captain James T. Kirk of Star Trek fame – became the oldest person ever to fly in space, although his flight was only a ten-minute sub-orbital journey. He’d had a Mars return a few months earlier, on June 8, 2021.
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On June 1,1960, Jane Goodall had a Mars return – and on July 14, 1960, she arrived at the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to begin her groundbreaking work “humanizing” the chimpanzees – or perhaps creating a more “monkeyfied” perspective on all of us humans.
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Mars can be scary! How else can anyone learn courage? A classic example is author Salman Rushdie. In response to his novel, The Satanic Verses, on February 14, 1989 a fatwa calling for his death was issued against him by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Rushdie was only ten days away from his Mars Return, which happened on February 24th.
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Finally, Mars can be extremely physical. I can think of few better examples of that fact than one provided for us by actor Margot Robbie. To succeed in her brilliant, profoundly compassionate portrayal of disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding in the film I, Tonya, she basically had to learn the highly athletic art of figure skating. Throughout the shoot, she had to be constantly monitored for a herniated disc in her neck to make sure that it was safe for her to continue. Primary filming started in late January 2017. Robbie experienced a Mars return on February 27, 2017.
These are just a few examples. If my own experience in researching this essay is any indication, with just a little effort, you could very easily find many more. Even better, look at your own life – if you’re old enough to be reading these words, you’ve already had two or three Mars returns yourself.
Do note that as our examples demonstrate, the actual day of a Mars return doesn’t jump out – as with most transits, things happen “on or around” the dates of exactitude. Astrology holds its clearest mirror before developments in our inner worlds – that’s where the real action is happening. Outer events are what we see, but they are secondary.
BACK TO THE TERRIBLE TWOS
As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, at my own first Mars return, my mom was pregnant with my sister. In all honesty, I have no memory of that time – I was only two years old. My opening lines in this essay were all conjectural. I can only assume that it was a hard time for me, not to mention for my long-suffering mother and father.
Child psychologists often talk about the “terrible twos” in terms of a child’s frustration regarding communication – they know what they want, but they don’t yet know how to express it. Real language skills come later. Another reason that they are frustrated is that they are feeling a strong impulse toward independence, and yet as rug rats their mobility – and their options – are very limited.
Those child psychologists make many helpful recommendations. Give your child as many choices as possible. Try not to say “no” any more than you truly have to. Talk, talk, talk with your child because talking teaches language and communication skills. That’s all good advice. What astrology adds is of course the specific message of the child’s natal Mars – what he or she most needs. With an Air sign Mars, communication will be central. With Mars in a Fire sign, the need for physical freedom looms large, as do positive outlets for aggression. Water signs? Emotional expression and connection. Earth? Control, territory, and “being right.”
Most deeply, the astrological message is that the first Mars return in particular – those “terrible twos” – plays a pivotal role in every human being’s development. That is when we learn how to say no, how to defend our independence, and how to express our needs – insistently, if necessary. Anyone who lacks those skills will face a difficult life. To a significant degree, our experiences at our first Mars return set the tone for success in all of that. Age two is when we are laying the foundation for claiming those essential rights. This is another example of how evolutionary astrology can add focus, precision, and accurate timing to basic psychological theory.
I like to imagine a beleaguered parent of a raging two-year-old reading these words and perhaps gathering a bit of patience, wisdom, and perspective from them.
FINALLY, A THANK YOU
I want to thank my faithful Spanish reader, Luis Gonzalez Serra, for inviting me to write about Mars returns. Like many astrologers, I tend to focus on the cycles of the slower-moving planets – Jupiter on out. Mars returns are not as important, but they can still represent significant turning points in life. A knowledge of them is a helpful tool for any counseling astrologer – or anyone living an astrologically-examined life.
So, thank you, Luis. And if any of you reading these words have other essay topics to suggest, please let me know at forrestastrology@gmail.com. I do have to set limits on personal responses to email questions, but if anything comes to mind that might be meaningful to a broader audience, please feel free to let me know and I’ll add it to my list.