Mars is the planet of force, the masculine drive for moving forward and battling our way through surroundings. Therefore, located in the 10th house which is responsible for one’s establishment and reputation, it affects everything associated with the individual’s social image. Professional roles and their fulfillments, career orientation and honor are just some of the subjects that are ruled by the 10th house in a person’s life. Also, it represents authority figures and thus, anything that has to do with governmental services is depicted in it. The dominant parent can be observed through the 10th house condition, as he has been leading the native as a role model in the first steps of his life. In general, both people and organizations that have power over a person, and the way that he exercises it on others are shown in this celestial area of the chart.
Having Mars in the 10th house gives a life orientated towards personal success and achievements in one’s career. Nevertheless, it by no means grants success by itself. Mars as a personal planet shows the direction towards which effort is being made; it is the aspects with other planets that shows whether success is to be reached or the efforts will be mostly vain. The condition of generational planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) and their aspects to Mars have a big role, for they are the ones opening the gates to successful recognition from the masses.
Mars in the 10th house drives the native to fight and struggle for respect through all of his life. This, along with the martial characteristics of the planet, can guide someone to choose a military career. Indeed, this placement can make a native strive to recognition through raising his rank, which can also appear to many people that have Aries on the cusp of their 10th house and important celestial bodies inside. If Mars is not well-aspected, it can bring disputes with other military staff and unhealthy competition. One should be very careful not to indulge in behind-the-scenes activities in his working place, as there is a high possibility of being discovered and disgraced.
On the other hand, the raw energy that the planet enforces on 10th house matters gives a lot of enthusiasm to the native, strengthening his will to fulfill his goals. In a woman’s horoscope, it can bring a manly approach to career matters, making her more powerful than men in her surroundings, in promoting ideas and enforcing decisions. The person has the need to do the things their own way, granting strong feelings of success when their ideas are implemented. On the other hand, failure is for them a sharp knife that would hurt them more than it would hurt any other average person. Failures can have aggression as an effect, a pattern which is likely to have passed from the dominant parent, especially if Mars is poorly afflicted. It makes the individual prone to resign from his profession if his honor is at stake, or if he takes some failures very personally.
As Mars rules physical power, athletics as a profession is strongly connected with it. Mars is the ruler of all jobs with uniforms too, thus being responsible for careers in the police and for doctors, especially those who are of chirurgical background. We should not forget that knives, sharp instruments, and generally everything involving metal, their use, and their transformation are under the influence of the red planet. A lot of important surgeons have Mars in the 10th house. The presence of Scorpio on the house cusp or adverse aspects from Pluto to Mars can create a person who actually takes pleasure from using knives, even from inflicting pain on others. This does not mean though that he would not be a good professional. The adverse aspects show conflicts and emotional separation from the dominant parent in the young ages and can manifest accordingly in his vocation. Mars being in Taurus or Libra is an indicator of moral scandal, and natives with this placement should concentrate in keeping their ethics and strategies clean in their profession.
All these apply even stronger when Mars in the 10th house is near the Midheaven; then power can become an obsession. Sometimes it is wiser for the native to work alone and not in a group, in order to avoid conflicts and aggression. Another pattern that is frequently observed, is that the placement can bring success in quite young years, which is indeed common in careers like the military or sports. A negative impact that Mars frequently has when in the 10th is few good human relations with people, mostly because the native himself tries to dominate his surroundings and is prone to be competitive.
The most problematic aspects that can occur are squares, oppositions, and conjunctions with Saturn, Uranus or Pluto. People with such kind of placements can have problems with the government, troubles through their aggression and violent behavior, and should exercise techniques for reducing their anger and channel it elsewhere. By strengthening the difficult natal positions with handling their violent outbreaks, they can harmonize all 10th house issues and also heal the remnants of conflicts with their parent.
In sports, this position can signify the athlete who is not a team player, influencing adversely his acceptance from others even if he is better than them in physical terms. The lesson needed is to understand that unless he harmonizes his activity with the rest of the team, the difficult aspects that might exist will be triggered, leading to a lack of balance in other fields of his life too. The native has a strong urge to show off his body and physical abilities and should be careful not to overdo that. On the other hand, Mars in the 10th house indeed gives good body characteristics and performances, especially when the Ascendant falls in Aries.
Under no circumstances should such a native exercise physical abuse towards his family members. He might have experienced it himself and have it as a normal recorded way of acting in his mind’s patterns, but this is his chance of stopping the loop. In case he succeeds to push his aggressiveness towards constructive actions, the rewards from life will be generous. And for him, they would matter even more, because they would be highly connected with 10th house issues, exactly the ones that he is all his life striving for.
Each planets have a different effect on you, depending on which house and sign they reside in. In order to find out where they are located in your natal chart, you can use our free birth chart generator. Also, examine the aspects that they form with other planets in your chart. You will understand a lot more about the detailed role that they have in your horoscope.