PlanetMarsOther Names
Ares (Greek), Mars (Roman), Tyr (Norse), Indra (Vedic, warrior-king aspect), Kartikeya/Skanda (Hindu), Ogun (Yoruba), Hachiman (Shinto war god), Nergal (Mesopotamian), Anhur (Egyptian), Macha/Morrígan (Celtic war goddesses), Tezcatlipoca (Aztec—in his warrior/conflict aspect), Tu/Ku (Polynesian war god), Perun (Slavic, thunder/war), Vahagn (Armenian), Guan Yu/Guan Di (Chinese, god of war and righteousness), Sekhmet (Egyptian, in her wrathful warrior aspect), Durga (Hindu, the warrior goddess who destroys evil)
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Translations:
High Church:
Wers (wers-)
Sanskrit:
इन्द्र (Indra)
Church Runes:
War corresponds to Mars, Ares in the Greek tradition, whom the Spartans worshipped as the patron of their entire civilisation, and whom the Romans elevated to the father of Romulus and Remus, making him the divine ancestor of Rome itself. In Norse mythology he is Tyr, the one-handed god of justice and combat who sacrificed his sword hand to bind the great wolf Fenrir, demonstrating that true martial courage is inseparable from sacrifice and honour. In Hinduism, War is Kartikeya (Skanda), the god of war and commander of the divine armies, but also finds expression in the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna instructs Arjuna that righteous struggle is a sacred duty, that to refuse the fight is itself a form of violence against one's own dharma. In the Daoist tradition, the interplay of yin and yang is itself a form of cosmic war: the perpetual push and pull of opposing forces whose struggle generates harmony. The Japanese concept of bushido, the Chinese concept of wuwei applied to martial arts, the Celtic glorification of the warrior-poet, across traditions, the principle is the same: that life without struggle is not peace but stagnation, and that the capacity for violence, mastered and directed, is one of the foundations of a noble life.
War is not actually war. It is the universal principle of struggle and grit, competition and violence. People long for peace, but if there was only peace, nature would have no harmony, it would just be stasis without meaning. In a way, War is very similar to Sex: they are both intimate, they bring things together in the great dance that makes up the push and pull of nature, but in inverted ways. Sex generates by bringing differences together; War generates by setting differences against each other and seeing what survives.
Heraclitus, Fragment 80: "One must know that war is common, and justice is strife, and that all things come into being through strife and necessity."
Consider the intimacy of rivals in sport and how they push each other to greater and greater lengths. Consider the way two great powers on the world stage shift and change each other and push all of humanity forward through their competition. Like Sex, War is generative, even if it may at times be unpleasant or destructive. The forest needs fire to clear the deadwood and release the seeds. The immune system needs infection to grow strong. The mind needs resistance to develop clarity. Without War, without struggle, there is no growth, only comfortable, slowly calcifying decay.
Hávamál, Stanza 16 (Sayings of the High One—Odin): "A cowardly man thinks he will ever live, if warfare he avoids; but old age will give him no peace, though spears may spare him."
It is easy for people to live spineless lives where they are pushed around and preyed upon by everyone around them. War is the antidote. It is the feeling of respecting and wishing to carve one's own place in nature instead of letting the rest of the world determine where you belong. To exercise one's will and see it play out is perhaps the greatest pleasure one can experience. Peace and conflict are not opposing forces we must choose from and ally with, they are polarities, and as with all polarities, harmony can only ever exist through the interplay of the two. Tyranny must be met with rebellion, ignorance slaughtered by truth, calcification decayed by time, and life doomed to death.
There has never been a single happy soul in human history who rejected cyclical struggle and discarded their will. You are not a bloodthirsty animal. You are not a high-minded pacifist. You are both. You must be both in turn, abide by them in turn, let them dance together, let them sing in harmony. That is the only way to be free. That is what it means to be human.
Bhagavad Gita 11.33 (Krishna to Arjuna): "Therefore, get up and attain glory. Conquer your enemies and enjoy a prosperous kingdom. These warriors are already put to death by My arrangement, and you, O Arjuna, can be but an instrument in the fight."
Mars the planet is red, the colour of blood, of iron, of the soil after battle. It sits just outside Earth's orbit, the first step outward from Freedom into the wider solar system, and this is fitting. War is the first energy we encounter when we step beyond the comfort of our own middle ground and begin to engage with the world as it truly is: contested, alive, and demanding of us that we show up and fight for what matters.