The Mars dasha

the seven year Mars mahadasha in the Vimshottari sequence

What the tradition reads

In the Vimshottari system, Mars governs a period of seven years, tied with Ketu as the second shortest of the nine, longer only than the Sun's six. Phaladeepika reads a Mars dasha as a period that can bring wealth through fire, through dealings with those in authority, and through fighting and contention of various kinds, alongside an influx of money from more doubtful sources such as administering medicines, falsehood or outright deception. The tradition treats Mars as the significator of courage, of land and property, of siblings and of the native's own capacity for direct action, so a period it governs is read as one of heightened energy and appetite for confrontation rather than of quiet accumulation, its gains won by force, risk or sheer nerve rather than by patient effort. Because the period is short, the tradition reads its effects as quick to arrive and quick to pass, a burst of activity rather than a slow build, with the same heat that wins a advantage in one moment easily tipping into recklessness, injury or dispute in the next if the planet is poorly placed at birth.

The story

Two rival accounts trace Mars, called Mangala or Angaraka, to different origins: in the Vaishnava telling he is born when Vishnu, in his boar form, rescues the earth goddess Bhumi from the depths and unites with her as an aspect of his own consort, the child taking his name, the auspicious one, from that union; in the Shaiva telling he is formed from three drops of sweat that fell from Shiva's forehead, a red skinned, four armed infant that Shiva hands to the earth to raise. Whichever account is followed, Mars is consistently cast as the deity of anger, aggression and war, called Lohita, the red one, for the colour of blood he is said to govern, and given weapons, a trident, a mace, a spear, rather than any instrument of patience. A planet born either from a rescue fought for by force or from the raw heat of a god's own body carries, in the tradition's reading of its dasha, exactly the character its myths give it: energy that acts first and settles its account with the world afterward.

Written from

Corpus key dasha:Mars.