Mars Return

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This page is about how often Mars comes back to your natal Mars, and why some returns repeat. A Mars return is the moment moving Mars reaches the exact degree Mars held at your birth: transiting Mars conjunct natal Mars. The natal degree is fixed at one instant and never moves; only the Mars in the sky does.

Mars takes a little under two years to go once round the zodiac, so the short answer to "how often" is "about every two years". The measured answer for one invented birth, over thirty years, is more uneven than that:

• Sixteen returns, all at the same degree. Mars came back to this person's natal Mars at 7°26' Virgo sixteen times between 2000 and 2030.
• Fourteen were a single pass and two came in threes. In 2011 to 2012 and again in 2026 to 2027, Mars crossed the natal degree, turned backward over it, then crossed it a third time.
• The gaps were not all two years. Most first crossings came 1.94 to 1.95 years after the one before, but the two three-pass returns began early, only 1.43 and 1.47 years after the previous return.

Mars is often read as drive, effort, appetite and the way a person goes after what they want. A Mars return is one optional moment for reflecting on that. It causes nothing and predicts nothing.

Educational guide only. Astrologist.com has no transit tool: no transit calendar, return chart or timing report. The free birth chart shows natal positions only, and every date below was computed offline for an invented person.

This guide follows moving Mars against one fixed natal Mars, nothing more. It does not cast a second chart for the moment of the return; that technique is outside this site's method. It is also not about being born with Mars retrograde, which is a natal condition covered in Mars retrograde in the natal chart.

The birth, the fixed degree and the window

The birth was not picked for its Mars returns. It is the invented Antwerp birth already used on Saturn transits to natal Neptune and Jupiter transits to natal Neptune, reused unchanged under a rule fixed before any Mars date was calculated. The only condition checked first was a natal one: Mars had to be moving forward at birth, which it was. The same birth is used on Mars transits to natal Sun.

• Birth: 10:20 on 15 August 1989 in Antwerp, an invented person. Belgian summer time (UT+2) applied, so this is 08:20 UT.
• Natal Mars: unrounded 157.443855° (7°26'37.9" Virgo), moving forward at 0.633° a day. The chart stores 157.44° and displays 7°26' Virgo. This one value is the return target throughout.
• Window: from 1 January 2000, 00:00 UT, up to but not including 1 January 2030, 00:00 UT; ages 10.38 to 40.38. Thirty years was chosen before any return was found, as long enough to hold many Mars cycles.
• Method: Mars comes from the astronomia package's VSOP87B planetary theory, the routine the chart uses, with Universal Time converted to the ephemeris time scale the same way the chart does it. Mars was sampled every hour, each crossing narrowed to under thirty seconds and each turning point solved separately to under a minute. Those are calculation tolerances, not accuracy claims. Dates are UT, and anything after October 2026 is a model projection from the same routine, not a forecast.

Counting rule. Mars's path was followed without resetting at 0° Aries, so the natal degree becomes a new target level on each lap. A return is the set of crossings of one such level made while Mars stays within 30° of it. It is complete when Mars is more than 30° away before the first crossing and after the last. A turning point exactly on the natal degree would be a touch, listed apart from crossings.

Mars's path through the window

Mars started the window at 27°34' Aquarius moving forward and ended it at 14°42' Aquarius, also moving forward. Counted without resets, it travelled 5,747.13°: fifteen full laps plus 347.13°. The lowest point of the path was its start and the highest its end, so no backward loop ever carried it below where it began.

Inside the window Mars turned backward and forward again 14 times, 28 turning points in all. Each backward stretch lasted 60 to 81 days and covered 10.02° to 19.50°. Mars passed this natal degree on sixteen of its laps, and each of those sixteen passes is one return.

Every return in the window

Sixteen returns, twenty crossings, all sixteen complete inside the window. Every single-pass return was a forward crossing, at ages from 11.12 to 39.23. From the first crossing of a three-pass return to its last took 165.7 days in 2011 to 2012 and 165.0 days in 2026 to 2027. That span only measures how long Mars took to cross the same degree three times. It is not an "effect duration", an orb or a season of influence.

Over the whole window the first crossings averaged 1.874 years apart, close to Mars's orbital period of about 1.88 years. The individual gaps ran from 1.433 to 1.949 years. Measured from the last crossing of a three-pass return, the next return came 1.467 years later (2013) and 1.434 years later (2028).

Why two of the returns repeat

Mars repeats a return only when one of its backward loops spans the natal degree: it turns backward somewhere past 7°26' Virgo and turns forward again somewhere before it. Of the 14 loops in the window, two did that:

The other twelve loops sat well away from the natal degree. The nearest misses were the loop of December 2009 to March 2010, which turned backward at 19°41' Leo, still 17.75° short of natal Mars, and the loop of February to May 2029, which turned forward at 24°55' Virgo, 17.49° beyond it. Neither touched the degree, so both nearby returns stayed single.

The early start of each three-pass return comes from the same loop. Mars first reaches the natal degree on its way out to the backward turn, then gives ground inside the loop. Its final forward crossing is the one that sits near the usual spacing: 10 May 2012 came 1.887 years after the 2010 return, and 1 June 2027 1.920 years after the 2025 one.

No turning point fell on the natal degree. The nearest was the backward turn of 10 January 2027, 2.99° past it, so there are no touches. At the window's start Mars was 170.13° from natal Mars and at the end 157.26°, so no return was cut off at either edge.

If the birth time were unknown

The Antwerp calendar date runs from 22:00 UT on 14 August up to, but not including, 22:00 UT on 15 August 1989. Over that interval natal Mars rose from 157.171156° to a limiting value of 157.804600° at 24:00, a span of 0.633°, steadily forward and without a wrap; at 23:59 it was 157.804160°.

Every Mars turning point in the window, and Mars's positions at the window's start and end, were compared with that whole span on every lap. The nearest turning point was the backward turn of 10 January 2027, whose level lies 2.62° above the span; the window edges lie 169.77° and 156.90° away. Nothing falls inside the span, so no birth time on that date changes the number of returns or their pattern.

Separately, the returns were recomputed at 145 sampled times (every ten minutes from 00:00 to 23:50 local time, plus 23:59). All 145 gave the same sixteen returns with the same directions. The crossing dates moved by 0.99 to 2.61 days across those samples, most of all for crossings next to the two loops, where Mars moves slowly. Those are spreads at the sampled times, not proven limits. With no birth time entered, the chart anchors Mars at local noon and shows no houses.

Rounding, and a second ephemeris

Using the stored 157.44° instead of the unrounded value moved the crossings by 0.14 to 0.38 hours, with no change of date or count. The displayed 7°26' Virgo, read back as 157.4333°, moved them by 0.40 to 1.03 hours, again with no date or count change. A displayed 7°26' Virgo stands for any value from 157.428° up to just under 157.445°, and the nearest turning-point level is 2.98° from that range.

The Swiss Ephemeris, an independent ephemeris, was used only as a check and never to produce the numbers above. It places natal Mars 0.07 arc-seconds above the chart's value. At all 20 crossings Swiss Mars sat within 0.35 arc-seconds of the chart's target, and solving each crossing again with Swiss Mars moved it by at most 0.003 hours, whether the target came from the chart's natal Mars or from Swiss's. The 28 turning points agreed within 0.07 arc-seconds and 0.011 hours. These are differences measured for this example, not guarantees of accuracy.

Possible themes at a Mars return

If you use them at all, weigh these beside natal Mars's sign, its aspects and, with a dependable birth time, its house. They are reflection prompts, not results:

• A single pass. A checkpoint for how you currently put effort into things: what you go after, how directly, and what you avoid.
• A three-pass return. Some astrologers treat the forward, backward and forward crossings as a chance to revisit the same question over several months rather than at one moment.
• The gaps between returns. A two-year rhythm can be a convenient interval for reviewing habits of drive and rest, if that is useful to you.

These are interpretive patterns, not destiny. Nothing here forecasts or explains an event, and none of it says a Mars return brings conflict, accidents, success, or any health, money, work or relationship outcome.

For how natal Mars itself reads, start with what Mars signs mean. For moving Mars passing through the houses rather than returning to a natal point, see Mars transits through the houses. Why Mars goes backward at all, and how that is tied to the Sun, is explained in retrograde planets and the Sun. The slower return of Jupiter, with its near-regular twelve-year spacing, is in the Jupiter return, and the same moving Mars measured against a fixed natal Sun is in Mars transits to natal Sun.

Working it out for your own chart

1. Read natal Mars from the free birth chart and write it as one longitude from 0° Aries. A displayed minute stands for a small range, not one exact value.
2. Choose a window before you look. In a Tropical ephemeris, follow Mars through it, loops included and without resetting at 0° Aries, and mark each lap's crossing of your natal degree.
3. List every crossing with its direction. Crossings of one level while Mars stays within 30° of it form one return; note any return that began before the window or has not closed by its end.
4. For each backward loop, note the degree where Mars turns backward and the degree where it turns forward. Your natal Mars lies between them only when that return will have three crossings.
5. If the birth time is unknown, take natal Mars over the whole birth date and check whether any turning point, or the window's start or end, falls inside that span. Mars moves about half a degree or more a day, so this check matters more than it does for slow planets.

About the checks behind these numbers: Mars carries no date limit in the free chart. The repository compares it with Swiss at noon on every day from 25 December 1919 to 8 January 2061 and pairs every turning point. In the run for this batch the largest daily difference was 2.22 arc-seconds (root mean square 0.31), and all 132 Mars turning points were paired, the worst 0.012 hours apart. The test limits are 0.05° (with a tighter 8 arc-second check) and 0.025 hours. Those compare noon positions and turning points; they are not transit-date accuracy figures, and none of that coverage turns a projected date into a prediction.

A manual method is in how to read transits without a transit tool. Ask the Astrologist can talk through natal Mars, or return dates you have found yourself; it does not calculate transit dates.

Related articles

• Mars Transits to Natal Sun
• Mars Transits Through the Houses (same mover, house ingresses rather than a natal point)
• Jupiter Return (another planet's return)
• Mars Retrograde in the Natal Chart (a natal condition, not a transit)
• Retrograde Planets and the Sun
• What Mars Signs Mean
• Life-Cycle Transits Overview
• Reading Transits Without a Tool
• Mars Opposition Mars (the opposite point of the same Mars cycle)
• Venus Return (the same return idea for a faster planet)
• Solar Return Date (when the Sun comes back to its natal degree; timing only)