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A planetary meditation for Mars

a planetary meditation practice addressed to Mars

What the tradition reads

The Western planetary tradition treats a meditation to Mars as an appeal for courage, decisive action and the strength to stand firm, worked in Mars's own hour, the first hour after sunrise on a Tuesday, dressed in red or another fiery colour, with sandalwood burning if it can be had, sandalwood being one of the odoriferous woods Agrippa's own chapter on planetary fumes gives to Mars. The tradition reads Mars as a planet of raw force that must be aimed rather than released, and warns that Mars unchecked, taken as license for aggression or cruelty, is no part of a rightly worked practice; a Mars meditation asks for the courage to act, not for victory over another person, and never for harm to fall on anyone. The Vedic remedial tradition reads the same working through Mangala, also called Kuja, and prescribes it most often for whoever stands in a Mars dasha or whose lagna lord is Mars: the name mantra recited on Tuesdays, charity of red lentils or red cloth given on the same day, and, where a jyotishi has examined the whole chart and prescribed it, red coral worn on the ring finger, for a trial period, removed if the trial does not go well. Both traditions read the practice as training force to serve a purpose rather than to spend itself.

The story

The sixty fifth hymn in the standard Orphic sequence addresses Mars under his Greek name Ares, calling him magnanimous, unconquered and boisterous, rejoicing in darts and bloody wars, yet closing not with praise of war but with a plea that he stay furious contests and avenging strife, yield instead to lovely Venus and to Bacchus, and exchange the labours of arms for the labours of the field; the hymn's own instructions name frankincense as its proper fumigation. Thomas Taylor's English translation of the whole collection, made at the close of the eighteenth century, remains the version most commonly read. The Vedic tradition's parallel verse, from the Navagraha Stotram attributed to Vyasa, calls Mangala born of the womb of the earth and bright as lightning, a martial figure the wider mythology traces, in one telling recorded on his own Wikipedia page, to Vishnu's rescue of the earth goddess Bhumi from a demon, and in another to three drops of Shiva's own sweat. Two unrelated hymns, Greek and Sanskrit, each address the same fierce planet and each end by asking that its force be turned toward peace rather than spent in war.

The practice

1. Begin with the blessing of the room, cleaning the space, setting out salted water and an unlit lamp, and asking the One who made the lights that the place be clean, quiet and kept. 2. Sit in Mars's own hour, the first hour after sunrise on a Tuesday, with red or another fiery colour set out and sandalwood burning if available. 3. Breathe in for four counts, hold for four, out for four, hold for four, twelve rounds, letting the body settle. 4. Say the address aloud: in the name of the One who made the lights, turn to the light of Mars, and to its angel or deva, asking for courage and the strength to act, and that it be given in the light and harm no one and ask nothing against anyone's will. 5. Recite the mantra, Om Mangala Devaya Namah, one hundred and eight times on a mala, or read the Orphic hymn to Mars slowly three times instead. 6. For the sitting, picture a single clear task and the will to begin it, without picturing any person to be overcome or defeated; the tradition holds that Mars rightly used has no target but the work itself. 7. Sit for five to twenty minutes, then give thanks, put out the lamp, and begin that one task before the day is over.

Written from

Corpus key practice:Mars.