A past return

Your Mars Return

A renewal of will, drive, and what you're willing to fight for.

Exact on July 22, 1970.

At age 33.9.

The cycle it opened ran about 1.9 years, from July 22, 1970 until the next Mars Return on July 2, 1972.

Your 19th Mars Return arrived in July of 1970, marking a fresh two-year cycle of drive and assertion, a moment to see where your fighting spirit would turn next and what you’d be willing to defend or pursue.

The return chart rose under Libra, giving this whole cycle a diplomatic, relational tone. You weren’t moving alone. Your Mars itself landed in the 11th house, the realm of friendships, groups, and shared aspirations, which meant your energy that cycle concentrated there, your push was social, collaborative, perhaps idealistic. You were likely channeling your force through people and causes larger than yourself, building or defending something collective. The return Moon in Pisces, 6th house, colored the emotional weather with sensitivity and service; this wasn’t a brutal or purely self-interested cycle. There was compassion in your effort, even if the work itself felt nebulous or healing-focused.

The wider sky held something steadying and reconciling. Saturn was exactly supporting your natal Saturn, a moment of maturity, of settling into real responsibility rather than testing limits. Chiron, retrograde, was harmonizing with both your natal Rising and Descendant, suggesting this was a time when old wounds around identity and relationship began to soften, when you could teach others from what you’d survived. And Jupiter pressing your natal Pluto added intensity to transformation, power shifting, perhaps, or a deep reckoning with what you truly wanted.

This was likely a time of channeling ambition into service, of learning that your strength could be gentle, that fighting for others’ dreams could matter as much as your own. That lesson probably still holds.

About The Mars Return

Your Mars Return happens every ~2 years and renews your fighting spirit. The return chart frames what you'll push on, where you'll spend your drive, and which fights you'll pick or refuse for the next cycle. Many Mars returns coincide with periods of action, ambition, or necessary confrontation.

The Return Chart, At A Glance

This is the chart of the return itself: the whole sky at the moment your Mars came back to the spot it held at birth. It describes the cycle that opens, not you as a person, and the birth chart underneath it does not change. That cycle runs from July 22, 1970 to July 2, 1972, about 1.9 years.

Cast for the return moment, relocated to El Paso.

Rising: Aries Sets the tone of the whole cycle: how this stretch of time tends to go about things. In any chart, Rising is your outward manner and first impression; the mask and lens through which you meet the world; Aries is adventurous, energetic, courageous; the 1st house is self, appearance, first impressions.
The returning Mars: 5th house creativity, romance, children The part of life this whole cycle works through, where Mars does its work for the next round. In any chart, Mars is desire, courage, initiative, how you assert or pursue what you want; Leo is confident, generous, creative.
Moon: Pisces · 12th house The emotional weather of the cycle: what it will tend to feel like from the inside. In any chart, Moon is emotional needs, instinctual responses, habits, your feeling of safety; Pisces is empathetic, artistic, compassionate; the 12th house is spirituality, secrets, the subconscious.
Sun: Cancer · 4th house Where the cycle's light falls, and what it wants recognised. In any chart, Sun is core identity, will, vitality, the drive to express your essence; Cancer is emotional, caring, intuitive; the 4th house is home, family, roots.
Midheaven: Capricorn What the cycle pushes forward in public: the part other people will see. In any chart, Midheaven is your public reputation, career calling, and the face you show to authority and the world at large; Capricorn is disciplined, responsible, ambitious; the 10th house is career, reputation, authority.

How this sits with your own chart. A return chart is laid over a birth chart, never swapped for it. Your Mars is still in Leo, exactly where it was at birth, and that is what makes this a return at all. What is new is the frame around it: cast for this moment, that same Mars falls in the 5th house (creativity, romance, children), so that is the part of life this cycle asks about. Everything in your birth chart stays as it is; this chart only says what the cycle ahead does with it.

The Wider Sky Then

The slow, life-shaping transits active at this return, the backdrop the reading reads against.

transiting Saturn sextile your natal Saturn · 0.2° Saturn tightens, tests, and asks what is built to last, offering an opening, if it gets taken, landing on your Saturn. Saturn is structure, discipline, boundaries, lessons that mature over time and sits in your 4th house, Home, Family, Roots. Saturn, the one making the contact, is structure, discipline, boundaries, lessons that mature over time.
transiting Chiron ℞ trine your natal Rising · 0.3° Chiron presses on the old wound so it can teach, in easy flow, so it helps more than it demands, landing on your Rising. Rising is your outward manner and first impression; the mask and lens through which you meet the world and sits in your 1st house, Self, Appearance, First Impressions. Chiron, the one making the contact, is the tender wound that becomes wisdom; where you heal others through your own vulnerability.
transiting Chiron ℞ sextile your natal Descendant · 0.3° Chiron presses on the old wound so it can teach, offering an opening, if it gets taken, landing on your Descendant. Descendant is the qualities you seek and attract in partners; the mirror of your relational self and sits in your 7th house, Partnerships, Marriage, One-on-One Relationships. Chiron, the one making the contact, is the tender wound that becomes wisdom; where you heal others through your own vulnerability.
transiting Jupiter square your natal Pluto · 0.4° Jupiter opens things up and asks for more room, at friction, the kind that forces a change rather than inviting one, landing on your Pluto. Pluto is power, purification, shadow work, deep cycles of ending and renewal and sits in your 8th house, Intimacy, Transformation, Shared Resources. Jupiter, the one making the contact, is growth, faith, opportunity, the beliefs that broaden your horizons.