The Mars symbol

Shield and spear

The shape is simple: a round shield with a spear or arrow thrust out from it. The reading is old and consistent, since the glyph keeps the two pieces of a soldier's kit in the form of two strokes. Some references also link the shape to an abbreviation of a Greek name for the planet, written in manuscripts and slowly redrawn as an arrow. Either way, the picture the glyph gives is of a point aimed at something.

It is the counterpart of the Venus glyph in a plain sense: both use a circle for the self, but one attaches a cross of matter and the other a pointed line of action.

From the glyph to the planet's role in a chart

1. 1. Aim

   The arrow points outward and upward, so the glyph is the standard picture of drive directed at a goal, which is how astrologers describe Mars in a chart: where energy goes and how it is spent.

2. 2. Edge

   The arrowhead is a cutting edge, and the tradition ties it to courage, assertion and also anger. Mars was ranked a malefic in the older texts because the same sharpness can wound.

3. 3. Iron

   The metal paired with Mars is iron, the material of weapons and tools, hard, strong and capable of both building and cutting.

Mars facts that sit beside the symbol

Mars retrograde and the 26 month rhythm

Mars normally spends six to eight weeks in a sign, but around a retrograde it can stay for as long as half a year, which is why a Mars sign can feel like a season. Because Mars is slow compared with Venus and Mercury, it appears to turn backward only about once every 26 months, for around 2 months at a time. That is much rarer than the three or four Mercury retrogrades a year, and astrologers read it as a longer, quieter pause in momentum. The same 779.9 day figure is the interval between oppositions, so Mars is retrograde when it is near opposition and at its brightest.

Why a red planet got a warrior's sign

Mars is the first planet beyond Earth, and it looks red to the naked eye, a colour that comes from iron oxide in its soil. The ancient observers had no way to know that, but the red light, the steady pace and the long pauses made it the natural planet for blood and war. The tradition ranked it the lesser malefic, with Saturn the greater, and for the same reason gave it iron as its metal.

Modern astrologers keep the symbol and soften the reading: Mars is the planet of will and initiative, and the tradition's own word for a well placed Mars is courage.

Writing the sign as text

• Unicode names it MALE SIGN, U+2642 (♂︎).
• Biology uses the same character, a borrowing from the eighteenth century that has no bearing on how astrology reads the planet.
• To avoid an emoji style on phones and some browsers, add U+FE0E after it.
• In HTML you can write ♂ to produce it.