A past return

Your Mars Return

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

Exact on September 01, 2013.

At age 77.0.

The cycle it opened ran about 1.9 years, from September 1, 2013 until the next Mars Return on August 12, 2015.

This was your 44th Mars Return, a renewal of your fighting spirit at a moment when the wider sky was asking you to rebuild something fundamental about how you connect and communicate.

The return chart rose in Virgo, setting a careful, analytical tone for the cycle ahead. Your Mars itself landed in the 12th house, which meant this wasn’t a period of outward conquest or visible battles. Instead, your drive turned inward, toward the subconscious, toward hidden work, toward spiritual or psychological territory. You were likely fighting battles no one else could see: wrestling with old patterns, processing what lay beneath the surface, perhaps working through therapy or solitude or creative work done in private. The return Moon in Cancer through the 11th house colored this with a tender, protective quality; your emotional weather was about belonging and loyalty, even as your Mars worked in shadow. You may have felt pulled between wanting to retreat and needing your people close.

The era’s astrology deepened this inward turn. Transiting Neptune opposed your natal Venus (retrograde) at the same moment, a dissolving of certainties around love and value, which often demands spiritual reckoning. Yet transiting Pluto harmonized with your natal Uranus (retrograde), suggesting that beneath the fog, real transformation was possible. And the North Node touched your Mercury (retrograde), even as Chiron opposed it: this was a time of learning to speak differently, to heal old wounds in how you express yourself.

This chapter likely taught you that strength isn’t always visible. The quietest fights often reshape us most completely.

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 September 1, 2013 to August 12, 2015, about 1.9 years.

Cast for the return moment, relocated to El Paso.

Rising: Pisces 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; Pisces is empathetic, artistic, compassionate; the 1st house is self, appearance, first impressions.
The returning Mars: 6th house work, service, health 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: Cancer · 5th 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; Cancer is emotional, caring, intuitive; the 5th house is creativity, romance, children.
Sun: Virgo · 7th 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; Virgo is analytical, helpful, hardworking; the 7th house is partnerships, marriage, one-on-one relationships.
Midheaven: Sagittarius 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; Sagittarius is optimistic, honest, adventurous; 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 6th house (work, service, health), 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 North Node ℞ sextile your natal Mercury · 0.1° North Node pulls toward the growth edge, offering an opening, if it gets taken, landing on your Mercury. Mercury is thinking, learning, communication style, how you process information and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. North Node, the one making the contact, is your evolutionary pull and the qualities you are stretching toward in this life.
transiting Neptune ℞ opposition your natal Venus · 0.2° Neptune blurs the edges and softens certainty, facing it from across the chart, a push-pull that asks for balance, landing on your Venus. Venus is affection, aesthetics, values, attraction, how you give and receive harmony and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. Neptune, the one making the contact, is imagination, ideals, permeability, where reality blurs with vision.
transiting Pluto ℞ trine your natal Uranus · 0.5° Pluto strips a thing back to what it really is, in easy flow, so it helps more than it demands, landing on your Uranus. Uranus is change, originality, awakening, where you seek freedom from limits and sits in your 5th house, Creativity, Romance, Children. Pluto, the one making the contact, is power, purification, shadow work, deep cycles of ending and renewal.
transiting Chiron ℞ opposition your natal Mercury · 0.8° Chiron presses on the old wound so it can teach, facing it from across the chart, a push-pull that asks for balance, landing on your Mercury. Mercury is thinking, learning, communication style, how you process information and sits in your 9th house, Philosophy, Higher Education, Travel. Chiron, the one making the contact, is the tender wound that becomes wisdom; where you heal others through your own vulnerability.