Mars As Your Ascendant Ruler
There are some lesser known facts that one must face if their ascendant falls in signs of Aries and Scorpio, this defining Mars to be their chart’s ruler and their own representative for a lifetime. First house in Scorpio will have an additional story of Pluto to turn to and embrace, but Mars will still represent the primal connection to the material world these people were born in. While it is often discussed that the energetic nature of these signs leads to numerous proactive choices, sometimes aggressive, sometimes passive, of acceptance of karma as a foundation to work from, sports, muscles, hungriness and sexuality, this is rarely explained through practical issues and things that one had to face while growing up. When life is governed by Mars, this planet is put in focus to detail, emphasizing all stories that ancestors left to its instinctive, fiery and possibly angry sides.
What We Absorb
Since Mars is in charge of our first chakra and its unforgiving physical nature, it is automatically set as the foundation for our body and physiology, as well as our immune system and primal boundaries we learn to set along the way. As babies and little children, little Martians will embrace certain behaviors and mechanisms as “normal”, this typically involving their relationship to their own body and its needs. From one extreme to the other, with this being their primal theme, they will either keep their focus on bodily needs no matter the emotional interaction at hand (or lack of it), or deflect on their own body, taking away its significance as an attempt of loyal love to different family members. The first option usually comes with the nature of Aries while the second comes with Scorpio, although with Mars, we will inevitably see them intertwining and showing both sides to the story.
Depending on Mars’ aspects and dignity as well as its disposition and ruler, we will be able to put things to perspective, see what the main issue is, what the rewards are, and how one can use their physical position throughout this incarnation. For example, if Mars is deeply challenged by Saturn (especially if Saturn’s is weak in Aries or Leo), we will see imbalance in care for the baby’s physiology. Parents might be taking it for granted or become overprotective. Some form of loose responsibility exists in caregivers or grandparents that involves physical bruises, high fevers, subjection to food and different things that the body isn’t ready to defend itself from, etc. Typically, if a child has a deep challenge of Mars, responsibility fails to the point where one is physically endangered. Even if this doesn’t show as your typical aggressive and abusive behavior, it is always the lack of sense, unconscious of the little one’s physical limitations and needs.
To deal with the error, the child takes full responsibility when it should really remain angry, as its existence and survival depend on it and there seems to be no other way. Still, the anger remains as unresolved bubbling emotion below the surface as a constant humming noise, and its level depends on the level of abuse taken. A baby cannot explain that they aren’t supposed to “push through” a rash, a fever or forcefully develop their immune response in surroundings that are toxic and too much to bear for a small, unprotected body. Just as the baby cannot walk out the door to spend a day in nature, protected less than it is forced to be. The child then learns to treat Self in an unproductive way, typically forcing themselves over physical limits out of loyalty, or building other defense mechanisms in their own physiology, becoming weaker than they need to be, sickish, constantly bruised and unable to withstand “the real world”.
The overprotective extreme that keeps the child tied to forced food choices although they might need something else, to a sterile home, without the sense of touch with dirt, plants, and Nature itself results in similar issues. It becomes a deeply rooted Martian lack of diversity and width, leaving one hungry of fruits of the world and eventually food, money, sexual contact, or any other material thing in life. This separates one from reality and once again – it either makes them too weak to withstand “the real world” or angry and in resistance to healthy choices, leading to self-destructive mechanisms that unconsciously affect their habits every day.
To Mend
As with all natal ascendant positions, the answer is found in the seventh house and its ruler. In this case it is defined by the role of Venus from Libra or Taurus, speaking of fine balance that needs to be created. Gratitude is the key, and so are beauty and flexibility needed in one’s life. Positive aspects are to be used to their maximum, as they show where the level of control for the physical world is strongest and where one can heal themselves and protect themselves from things that are over their limits. Still, the main issue here comes down to fine balance between energy invested in one’s physical strength and energy invested in protection from influences of the outer world. The process of strengthening up and making room for Self often requires solitude and separation from energetic fields of others until balance is restored and a person gets in touch with their feel for their own needs.
Since the matter of personal needs for food, water and all sorts of bodily functions is at stake, healthy change of habits makes special impact on their entire circumstantial world and could easily make them vulnerable to ties with ancestors that they are trying to remain loyal to. This will reflect in broken relationships that come just as they start exercising, tense conflicts and loss of love in others just as they stop smoking or consuming alcohol, while really showing separation from ancestral views and beliefs that haven’t been healthy in the first place. This is exactly where faith as the exact opposite of the material, touchable spheres of reality kicks in to test one with its greatest force. We must undoubtedly have faith in our feel of Self in order to succeed in our endeavors to make our body happier. If we lack information that we have the right to have our physical, instinctive, primal and sexual needs met, we will have to break some walls and barriers of faith in Self to take back our natural rights in this world. Losing distorted beliefs along the way seems to be a small price to pay for the circumstances that we’ll have a chance to build as we cleanse, feed our needs, becoming stronger and healthier by choice.