Mars Transit Dates: Planetary Movement and Influence
Mars, Mangal, is the commander among the grahas: courage, energy, land and property, brothers, surgery, sport and the will to act. It moves through the zodiac in about two years, spending around forty-five days in each sign, and the moment it crosses into a new sign is its ingress. The table above gives every Mars ingress of the year you choose, to the minute and in your own time zone, with the length of each stay.
Because Mars is slower than the Sun and much slower than the Moon, its sign colours a whole season. A Mars transit through your tenth sign from the Moon can drive a career push for six weeks; through your fourth, it can stir trouble at home for the same stretch. That is why astrologers watch the Mars ingress dates closely.
Why Mars Sometimes Stays in a Sign for Months
About every twenty-six months Mars turns retrograde for roughly ten weeks. Seen from the Earth it slows, stops and moves backwards before turning direct again, and the sign it is in at that time can hold it for five or six months instead of six weeks. A retrograde Mars can even slip back into the sign it has just left; such entries are marked R in the table. Every retrograde period, with its start and end, is on the Mars retrograde dates page.
Mars in Its Exalted, Own and Debility Signs
Mars is exalted in Capricorn, at its highest at twenty-eight degrees, where its energy is disciplined and effective. It owns two signs, Aries and Scorpio, and its moolatrikona is the first twelve degrees of Aries. It is debilitated in Cancer, where its fire meets water and its drive turns into worry and touchiness. The three tables above give the exact dates of every stay in these signs for the year you choose.
Mars Transit and Your Moon Sign (Mangal Gochar)
Read the Mars transit from your Moon sign. Counting your Janma Rashi as the first, Mars gives its best results in the 3rd, 6th and 11th signs: courage, success over rivals and debts, and gains. In the other signs it asks for care, most of all in the 1st, 4th, 8th and 12th, with temper, accidents, property disputes and expenses. Mars also casts its special aspects on the 4th, 7th and 8th signs from wherever it stands, so its transit touches more of the chart than the sign it sits in.
What Mars's present sign means for each Moon sign is in the Mars transit predictions.
How to Use the Mars Transit Dates
The table at the top gives every sign Mars enters in the year you choose, with the entry and exit to the minute and the length of each stay; an R marks an entry made while retrograde. The row for Mars's present sign is marked Now, and the card above shows how much of the present stay is left. Change the zodiac or the city in the strip and the tables update without reloading the page; change the year and that year's own page opens. To see every planet's sign changes together, open the planetary ingress calendar.
Mars's Transits in My Own Chart
My Moon is in Virgo, so the signs that count most for me are Scorpio, Aquarius and Cancer, the 3rd, 6th and 11th from it. When Mars passes through them I plan the work that needs a push, and when it crosses Pisces, the 7th from my Moon, I take more care in dealings with partners. The table above is where I look up those dates at the start of each year.
