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Mars As Singleton
Mars is the archetype of the War God, and from Christmas until Valentines Day he was transiting his own coruled sign, Scorpio. For many days during that period, transiting Mars was a singleton, usually as the only Water
sign planet, often as the only Social sign planet. Only when the Moon was in Water or Social sign would Mars not
be a singleton.
We have only to review items in the headlines, both nationally and around the world, for that period to see how a
Mars singleton functions on the mundane level.
It started immediately, the day after Christmas, with the Wakefild, Mass. Office shooting which left seven
people dead.
On January 16th, although Moon was also in Scorpio, a disgruntled and mentally disturbed big rig driver
ploughed his vehicle into the Capital Building in Sacramento, killing himself and causing an estimated $8
million damage to the building. Earthquakes leveled cities in El Salvador and India during this time.
Even the canine species came under Mars influence. One went berserk and horribly mauled and killed a
woman in San Francisco.
In San Jose, a college student was arrested for plotting a Columbine-style attack on DeAnza College.
Another mentally disturbed man was shot and arrested for carrying a gun outside the White House.
A mail bomb killed another college student. Interestingly, all the perpetrators of the violence were males,
including the dog.
Mars symbolizes many things about which there are some very strong social taboos.
Anger, rage, aggression, raw sexual energy (libido), are among them. People are
fascinated by sex and violence, obsessed with speed (both fast moving and the drug), and
competitiveness! What the society tries to suppress comes out from the collective
unconsciousness with a vengeance. Survival issues are exaggerated.
Mars singletons are not unusual in the charts of men imprisoned for violent crimes. And
they are also frequently found in the charts of athletes. Ordinary men may tend to express
excess macho attitudes, or act out in daredevil ways. Women with it may tend to attract
angry, sexual men, although many times these days women do find positive personal outlets for a Mars singleton.
A client has her Mars singleton in Aquarius in the 8th house. She has had many sexual affairs, and her only son is
a movie stuntman who skydives and races motorcycles. She was an officer in the military and stayed active in the
reserves until retirement. She both did her Mars and projected it onto the men in her life.
There has been a general tendency in the past, and it persists in many cultures still, for there to be a remarkable
gender differentiation when Mars is a singleton. It is more of a problem for women than for men. Women tend to
deny, repress, and project it a lot. Women, in general, dislike being assertive, yet fear and hate the angry men
they almost always attract. Men tend to overcompensate as Mr. Macho, super-achiever. They may be highly
competitive in a cut throat way. They have exaggerated ideas of what a man should be, such as having a
permanent erection and seducing every woman who attracts them. They may prefer the company of men, hang
out with the boys.
There is a blood-lust quality about Mars. It is the Viking Berserker archetype. It loves to kill and slay and come out
on top. Survival issues, combative skills, blood are associated with Mars. It rules the penis and substitute penises:
guns, bullets, rockets, missiles. Guns are the sacred artifact for old white men and young gang bangers, in
America males who deep down doubt their psychological potency.
Mars is the inner warrior who is willing to assert, to go after what he wants. He is willing to take risks because he

is always awake and alert to insure survival. A warrior knows he has to act, to assert, to take a risk, and he knows
he cannot control the outcome. When the desire to control comes into the equation, usually prompted by Saturns
fear or Plutos coercion, the Mars expression goes toxic. It is turned inward as depression, or outward as violence.
Both victim and perpetrator of violence suffer from repressing anger and healthy assertion.
Distortions of anger include violence, psychological or physical; blaming and interrogating (means not taking
personal responsibility); vindictiveness and vengeance; passive aggressive behavior including placating,
sarcasm, criticism and temper tantrums. Sadism and punitiveness all involve heavy control issues along with the
pure assertive energy of Mars.
Mars is expressed most easily and naturally in Fire signs who are quick to anger and quick to get over it. Earth
signs tend to displacement of anger. Taurus eats when angry; Virgo gets busy tidying up or criticizing; Capricorn
goes to work, back to the office or to the gym. Water signs are hooked on pain; they tend to cry and act out
dramatically, or get drunk. A man with Mars in Pisces cannot express anger or even healthy assertiveness when
he is sober. He goes to sports bars to watch the game, gets drunk and then gets into fights! Air signs will
rationalize, justify and explain anger, head trip it.
Cardinal signs project anger outward in impulsive or compulsive ways. Fixed signs tend to hold it in, sit on it.
There is a tendency for paranoia and brooding. Mutables displacement is verbal and nervous. They are not sure
what they are angry about. They can get hysterical, or fall apart and loose it.
Mars in a Universal sign may tend to be expressed as outrage at the collective conditions. Mars with Uranus or
Neptune tend to do this too. For example, Ralph Nader with Mars in Pisces opposed Neptune in Virgo has made
a career of outrage at, and fixing up (Virgo), collective problems.
In past articles we looked at charts that had Mars singletons in addition to other singleton planets. These include
the Duke of Windsor and Sigmund Freud from last month; both had Venus as a Singleton, too. President George
W. Bushs chart was given in the Sun Singleton article as an illustration of the singleton as ruler of the MidHeaven. Mars and Venus together are the lover and the artist. The Duke played the archetypal romantic lover.
Sigmund Freud based his career on pioneering psychoanalysis, with an emphasis on sex and libido as the
fundamental drive in life and the source of all neuroses. His Mars falls in the 11th house of like-minded others or
colleagues. He demanded to be first and foremost among them and had violent mental disagreements and breaks
with Jung and Adler when they began to disagree with his ideas.
Carl Jung pioneered analytical psychology. He, too, had a Mars singleton in the same 11th house, only his was in
Sagittarius, a Universal sign. It makes easy aspects, whereas Freuds does not. Jungs influence has persisted
and is more accepted today then Freuds. He was more open in his philosophy. Mars functioned in his
consciousness through prophetic dreams and visions of wars and apocryphal situations. He tuned in on the
world spirit behind World War II.
We can only speculate at this point about what a Mars singleton in Virgo in the 2nd house means in George W.
Bushs chart. Earlier in his life he was interested in sports and seemed to be somewhat reckless in his behavior.
During his administration we may see a lot of focus on military matters such as military spending and updating the
armed services (Virgo ruled). Bush talks assertively about tax changes, but Virgo is the archetype of technical
efficiency and can be very bureaucratic. So his proposed programs may be fought over in congress and picked
apart. Mars in Virgo tends to be the fuss budget and the worry wort. Bush admits he is impatient. There will be
lots of nervous tension over the economy (2nd house), during this administration.
A very interesting Mars singleton is found in former President Richard Nixons chart. It is very peculiar because
although it is a singleton as the only Fire sign planet, it is in a triple conjunction with Mercury at zero Capricorn
and Jupiter at one-degree and forty-minutes. The 29th and 0 degrees are considered powerless. Pluto in the
10th house opposes Mars and the triple conjunction; the Plutonian force dominates the chart and is activated by
Mars. Pluto is also the cork that is the stopper for the closed Yod between Saturn in Taurus sextile Neptune in
Cancer both quincunx the Mars singleton. This is a very crazy making configuration! Nixon had a very dirty mind
and nasty mouth. He projected his own evil (Pluto), onto other people. He is remembered for his dirty tricks and
was nicknamed Tricky Dicky. He vilified his opponents and kept an enemies list. When a total solar eclipse

occurred on his Pluto and opposed his Mars singleton in June of 1974 the jig was up, and all his dirty words
recorded for posterity on tape came back to destroy his presidency. At that time Pluto was on station turning
direct, very powerful, transiting Nixons first house. It squared his Mars and natal Pluto. A very interesting book to
read with the chart at hand is The Arrogance of Power by Anthony Summers. In the last days of the presidency,
Nixon appeared to be totally overshadowed by Pluto. Nixon was drinking, and his mental condition was troubling.
He had been walking the halls in the White House, talking to pictures of former presidents, giving speeches and
talking to the pictures on the wall.'
The Marquis de Sade has his Mars singleton in its own sign Aries in the 5th house where it is intercepted. He
pioneered ideas of self-centered and brutal sexuality. The word sadism is derived from his name. He was
hated and condemned by the Church, and seems to have actively violated its sexual dogma and doctrine. He
spent most of his life in prison for expressing his perverse ideas. The Mars square Venus-Saturn suggests he may
have loathed women and/or been frustrated by them. Traditional values were anathema to him. He wrote brilliant
pornography with shocking stories of depravity. Perhaps a good part of his sexual activity took place in his mind
and was acted out by his pen. (Uranus is also a singleton in the 1st house; so he could hardly help but be a rebel
and shocking to the status quo). The recent movie Quills is a fictionalized biography of the Marquis.
Women with Mars singletons are interesting characters. They stand out in their fields because of their drive,
assertiveness and leadership. They show remarkable ability to pioneer and to survive.
Gertrude Stein with her first house Mars singleton identified herself and her image with the masculine. To quote
Lois Rodden, Stein was a large, heavyset, plain woman, with close-cropped hair and an authoritative, masculine
manner. She presented herself as the classic bull dyke. She was a novelist and playwright, and perhaps more
important was the intellectual and literary leader for an entire generation of artist and writers.
The former tennis star, Chris Evert, has Mars in Pisces (only Universal sign), in the angular 4th house trining a
Scorpio stellium. We certainly would expect to find a high-focus Mars in the chart of a sports luminary, female or
male. She was fiercely and successfully competitive from an early age, and pioneered the powerful two-handed
backhand stroke.
Clara Barton with her two times singleton Mars in Virgo in the 6th house was a pioneer in the field of health and
medicine. She founded the American Red Cross, an appropriate symbol for Mars. She had volunteered as a
battlefield nurse in the Franco-Prussian War and the U.S. Civil War. She once remarked that she had to wring the
blood from her clothes before she retired for the night on the battlefield. She earned the moniker Angel of the
Battlefield.
Eartha Kitts Mars singleton in Capricorn (Mars sign of exaltation), gave her the will to survive a horrible
childhood and rise to the top. She was the daughter of a sharecropper and was orphaned at age six. She grew up
with an aunt in the slums of New York. She had to think on her feet, be mobile, assertive, and street smart to
survive. From a start in abject poverty, she earned a scholarship at age 16 and later became a renowned
nightclub singer, Broadway actress, and recording and television artist.
The above examples show how a Mars singleton in an individual chart can be the mark of a very energetic and
productive life. It can also point to devastating character flaws as in the cases of the Marquis de Sade and Nixon.
Mars is a very powerful force in the psychology, and we have to look to its aspects and sign placement to
determine how positively or negatively it will likely function. However, on the mundane level, it seems to work at
the lowest or most destructive level almost all of the time.
Next we turn our attention to Jupiter: the guru or the fairy godmother, as well as the elitist who commits the sin of
hubris.
Example Charts Used in the Article

About the author:

Eleanor Buckwalter has studied, practiced and taught astrology in Los Altos, CA for more than twenty-five years,
including three years with the late Richard Idemon, a psychological astrologer. Her primary astrological focus of
interest is parent-child relationships and family dynamics.