Almagest

The library · The mantras

The mantra of Mangala, Mars

the name mantra and the Navagraha Stotram verse for Mangala, Mars

What the tradition reads

The Vedic tradition gives Mangala, Mars, the name mantra Om Mangala Devaya Namah, a form Wikipedia's own account of the deity records, recited on Tuesday, the day the tradition assigns to Mangala exactly as the Western system assigns Tuesday to Mars. The verse from the Navagraha Stotram attributed to Vyasa reads Dharani garbha sambhutam vidyut kanti samaprabham, kumaram shakti hastam tam mangalam pranamamyaham, rendered plainly as a bow to Mangala, born of the womb of the earth, shining with the brilliance of lightning, ever youthful, and holding a spear in hand, a description the tradition reads as fitting a graha it treats as fierce, energetic and ruling war. The tradition prescribes the mantra for whoever stands in a Mars dasha or antardasha, or whose lagna lord is Mars, paired with charity of red lentils, jaggery, red cloth or copper given on a Tuesday, and, where a jyotishi has examined the whole chart, the red coral worn on the ring finger in gold or copper, for a trial period, removed if the trial goes badly. The mantra and verse are recited together, one hundred and eight times on a mala, the thumb moving each bead toward the body and never crossing the head bead at the top of the strand.

The story

Mangala's verse names him born of the womb of the earth, a birth the wider mythology tells two separate ways. Wikipedia's own account of the deity gives a Vaishnava telling in which Vishnu, in his boar incarnation Varaha, rescues the earth goddess Bhumi from the demon Hiranyaksha, recognises her as an aspect of his consort Lakshmi, and from their union Mangala is born, called the auspicious one; the same page also records a separate Shaiva telling in which three drops of Shiva's own sweat, fallen to earth while he sat in meditation on Mount Kailash, became a reddish infant whom Bhumi then raised, naming the child Bhauma, the earth born one. The honest telling keeps both births rather than choosing between them, since both are attested traditions rather than one being a corruption of the other. Mangala's fierce, martial temperament, the tradition holds, follows directly from an origin bound up with a demon's death in one telling and with Shiva's own ascetic power in the other. The Navagraha Stotram's verse to Mangala is recited today both by those whose own Mars is afflicted and in the communal Navagraha shanti rites, a continuing practice Wikipedia's account of the Navagraha system confirms.

Written from

Corpus key mantra:Mars.