Tuesday, Mangalavara

a birth falling on a Tuesday

What the tradition reads

Tuesday, Mangalavara or Bhaumvasare, is the third of the seven varas, ruled by Mangala, Mars, whose own name is also given as the day's deity. Astrosurkhiyan's tradition assigns the day the quality of tamas, unlike the sattva given to Sunday and Monday, and calls it a day of material things, suited to work that requires aggression, building or physical exercise, while warning against beginning anything new on the day and advising particular care with travel, if travel cannot be avoided at all. The same rule of planetary succession Wikipedia's article gives for every vara, working through the hora sequence of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon, places Mars third among the seven day lords, fixing Tuesday's name and character alike to the planet the tradition elsewhere reads as the most overtly forceful of the classical seven.

The story

Mangala's own birth is told two ways in the tradition Wikipedia records. In the Vaishnava account, Vishnu, having taken the form of the boar Varaha to rescue the earth goddess Bhumi from the demon Hiranyaksha, recognises her as an aspect of his own consort Lakshmi and unites with her, and Mangala, whose name itself means the auspicious one, is born of that union. The Shaiva account instead has three drops of Shiva's own sweat fall to earth and grow into a red skinned, four armed infant, whom Shiva hands to Bhumi to raise as her own. Either way Mangala grows into a deity of anger, aggression and war, carrying a trident, mace, lotus and spear, and despite a name that promises good fortune the tradition itself calls the planet malefic. A day named for a god born of the earth herself, yet marked from birth for battle rather than peace, fits Mangalavara's reading as a day for the body's own force, building, striving and physical labour, rather than for anything meant to begin gently.

Written from

Corpus key vara:Tuesday.