Moon and Mars: what the aspect between them says about you

What an aspect is in the birth chart

An aspect is the distance between two pieces of the chart, measured in degrees — and that is what says whether they work together, ignore each other or fight. The previous series describe each piece on its own: the planet in the sign, the planet in the house. This one describes what happens between two of them.

There are five distances that tradition calls the major aspects: the conjunction (0°), the sextile (60°), the square (90°), the trine (120°) and the opposition (180°). Each has its own way of putting two pieces in contact, and none of them is good or bad — what exists is what each one charges and what each one delivers.

And there is the number almost no text gives: the orb. Two pieces at exactly 90° form a square; at 97°, they form nothing. This blog uses 6 degrees for the major aspects, and outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. That is why an aspect is not found out from the date: it needs the calculated chart.

And there is a reading order that changes everything, and that almost no site respects: the aspect comes last. It describes the relationship between two pieces, and there is no reading the relationship without knowing both. Whoever arrives here without having read each piece in the sign and in the house is reading the conversation without knowing who is speaking.

What Moon and Mars mean together

The aspect between Moon and Mars says what your emotion does when it is crossed. The Moon is the emotional reaction; Mars is the impulse to act. In contact, the two settle something that shows up in every quarrel: the interval between feeling and reacting — and whether it exists.

It is the aspect of emotional courage and the one of the explosion, and they are the same piece. The person with Moon and Mars in contact defends whoever she loves without thinking twice, and is the same one who says in the heat what she spends years repairing.

And here is what hardly any text writes down: an aspect is a RELATIONSHIP, and not one more piece. It does not add a trait to your chart — it says how two traits that are already there get along with each other. In this pair both pieces move: the Moon thirteen degrees a day, Mars half a degree. The aspect changes within hours, and without the hour of birth it is guesswork.

It is worth giving the number before any reading, because without it there is no aspect: this blog uses a 6-degree orb for the major aspects. Outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. And the orb needs the calculated chart — and here that decides the whole reading, because it is the Moon that runs, and it crosses an aspect in less than a day.

The conjunction of Moon and Mars

The conjunction joins emotion and action: this person reacts the same instant she feels. There is an immediate courage in her that others admire and a short fuse that others fear. She protects whoever she loves without calculating, and cannot fake a calm she does not have.

The cost is the absence of an interval. Between what she feels and what she does nothing fits — neither the second thought, nor the missing information, nor the chance to ask.

The easy aspects: sextile and trine of Moon and Mars

The sextile and the trine leave emotion and action talking: the person reacts well with no effort. She gets annoyed and settles it, without accumulating. It is the combination that produces people who are easy to argue with, because the quarrel has a beginning, a middle and an end on the same day.

The cost is not having learned to hold back. In an environment that demands months of patience — a long negotiation, an illness in the family —, this person does not have the repertoire of someone who had to learn to wait.

The tense aspects: square and opposition of Moon and Mars

The square and the opposition set emotion against action — and it is from that fight that people who know how to quarrel well come. The person accumulates and explodes, or explodes and withdraws. The irritation arrives before the reason, and there is usually an old story of anger that could not be said at the moment it happened.

The fix is physical and it is dull for being so simple: giving the body a destination. Sport, manual work, anything that spends Mars — because the energy that does not come out through the body comes out through the mouth, and always at the wrong person.

How the aspect between Moon and Mars shows up day to day

It shows up in the time between this person feeling something and reacting to it. They are concrete signs, the kind one recognizes in one's own week — and they hold for any of this pair's aspects, because the subject is the same and what changes is the friction:

• reacts before finishing understanding
• defends whoever she loves without calculating the cost
• accumulates small irritation until it becomes big
• cannot fake a calm she does not have
• sleeps badly when there is unfinished business
• regrets the tone, and almost never the content

Notice what this list does not say. It does not say the person is explosive or quarrelsome — two labels this pair carries that describe the extreme, not the aspect. It says that between feeling and reacting there is an interval, and in her it is short.

The easy aspect has a cost, and the tense one has a gift

This is the inversion most texts do not make, and it holds for every pair: what runs with no friction was never tested, and what bothers is what produces. The trine between Moon and Mars delivers the result with no effort — and for that reason the person usually does not build the muscle, and finds that out on the day the ease is not enough. And the square delivers the opposite: a person who had to learn to hold back, and who for that reason knows how to quarrel without destroying.

In this pair the inversion shows up in the third decade: whoever has the easy aspect never revised her own way of reacting, and whoever has the tense one revised it several times. The Shelly Method reads every archetype through four faces — the light, the shadow, the excess and the deficiency —, and in an aspect they get distributed between the two pieces: almost always one of them is in excess and the other in deficiency, and the fix goes through the weak side.

How Moon and Mars evolve over time

It matures when the body gains a regular destination — and not when the person learns to control herself. It is the most physical correction of the whole series, and the most reliable: whoever spends Mars on the body stops spending it on people.

Maturity here is not feeling less. It is the person telling apart the reaction that protects from the one that only discharges — and it is that distinction that turns a short fuse into courage.

No honest text gives an exact age for this: the arc depends on the whole chart.

What the aspect between Moon and Mars does not say about you

It says how those two pieces get along, and not who you are. A tense aspect between Moon and Mars makes nobody aggressive: it shortens the interval between feeling and acting, which is a problem of time and has a fix.

Which signs and which houses the two fell in changes everything: a Moon in Taurus with Mars in Aquarius in a square is someone who holds a great deal and breaks all at once; a Moon in Aries with Mars in Cancer is the opposite. See The Moon in the 12 signs and Mars in the 12 signs, which describe each piece on its own — and that is the reading that comes before this one.

A limit said out loud, because it is part of reading seriously: none of this is prediction. Astrology describes a tendency and gives vocabulary for what the person already lives — it does not replace your work or your decisions.

Frequently asked questions about Moon and Mars in the chart