The Extended Transit of Mars in Gemini

Why this will be one of the most significant transits in 2024 and 2025

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Get ready! One of the most significant planetary events of 2024 and 2025 will happen soon.

We are about to experience the extended transit of Mars in Gemini. This transit will take place from August 26 to October 20, 2024. 

Mars will also return to this sign in January. Specifically, it will transit in Gemini from January 20 to April 2, 2025. During this period, Mars will be retrograde from January 20 to February 23. 

In this article, I will explain the general impact of this transit on your life and the world at large. If you would like a more personalized analysis, I have written a sign-by-sign guide to this event that is available to my paid subscribers, titled How the Extended Mars Transit in Gemini Will Change Your Life.

The Importance of Mars in Vedic Astrology

According to Vedic Astrology, Mars is known as “Bhumi Karaka,” the indicator of the Earth. Mars rules over all things that come from the Earth, such as financial assets and property. Mars represents the fire energy needed to manifest our desires. As an assertive planet, Mars requires action and provides energy wherever it is located in an astrological chart.

Mars is the planet of vitality, stamina, courage, strength of character, supremacy, intelligence, fortitude, logic, and precision. Wherever Mars is transiting by sign and house will be areas of conflict and challenge, where we have to work hard and take a stand in order to solve problems, seek security, and defend what is important to us. Mars usually acts quickly and sometimes by force.

The Mars Transit in Gemini: Why This is a Noteworthy Event

Mars normally spends only about one-and-a-half to two months in each sign transit. However, about every 26 months, Mars retrogrades and spends a much longer time than usual in one sign, as it will during this transit in Gemini. When a planet transits for a lengthy period in one sign, it emphasizes matters related to the astrological sign and house that it occupies. This suggests that certain concerns that we will experience during this upcoming transit may remain unresolved until early April of 2025.

What We Might Expect During This Transit

Mars in Gemini is in the sign of his enemy, Mercury. This weakens some of the power of Mars, meaning that its qualities may not be readily expressed. In some cases, this can result in respiratory or nervous diseases; neck, arm, hand, or shoulder problems; communication breakdowns, impatience, a lack of focus and completion, educational challenges; and restlessness, anger, irritation, violence, anxiety, and insomnia.

If Mars is transiting in a strong house position in your horoscope, and if your Mars energy is innately balanced and strong, then it may express the more constructive qualities of its Gemini placement. These include the capacity for logical and analytical thought, a mechanical orientation, strategic action, the enjoyment of travel, a strong impulse to learn and share knowledge, musical and literary interests, and a taste for elegance.

Tracking the Speed of Mars: An Important Influence to Consider

Mars has been transiting in accelerated motion for the past 15 months. It will continue to move quickly for another month until late September. When Mars is transiting faster than average, it tends to apply a forceful, willful, scorching, and agitated quality to whatever it is influencing in the astrological chart.

This is especially true when Mars is transiting in its more unfavorable signs like Gemini. In the Brihat Samhita, Sage Varahamahira says that when Mars enters a new sign in accelerated motion (known as atichara), which it will do on August 26, it can indicate fires.

Mars will slow down and travel at a reduced speed (slower than average) from late September 2024 until June 2025. During these eight months, some of the more positive indications of Mars may have an opportunity to develop in a more solid, balanced, and productive way.

What you will experience with this transit depends on the thrust of your whole horoscope, your planetary cycles, the house transiting Mars occupies, and aspects it makes to your natal chart planets and cusps. To really get a grasp on what’s ahead for you with this transit, you would need to have an astrological consultation.

How the Mars Transit Might Impact the United States Birth Chart

As Mars transits in Gemini, it will traverse its own natal position at zero degrees of Gemini in the Seventh House of the United States birth chart. It will also transit over a stellium of planets located in this house. Specifically, it will transit over Venus, Jupiter, and the Sun.

The Seventh House is known as a maraka house in Vedic Astrology, indicating potential issues with public health, safety, disasters, property matters (including real estate concerns or loss of property), loss of life, poverty, or general misfortune. 

The stellium being activated by the transit of Mars signifies potential for intense and heavy karmic events, including bad storms, wars, international disputes, heightened crime, and danger or attacks from known enemies.

I looked back to some of the previous times when Mars was in an extended transit in Gemini. Here is a brief list of some of my findings:

• September 11, 1992: Hurricane Iniki struck Kauai, and Maui and Oahu also received damage from storm surge and winds. This was the first recorded hurricane to make a direct landing on a Hawaiian island in modern times. Iniki caused billions of dollars worth of damage and seven deaths. This made Iniki, at the time, the costliest natural disaster in Hawaii, and the third-costliest in the United States.

• September 1992: The Somalia Intervention began. This was a United States-led military operation that began with an international humanitarian and peacekeeping effort in Somalia. The United States sent 28,000 troops to Somalia when retrograde Mars transited back into Gemini in December 1992. The intervention culminated in the Battle of Mogadishu in the fall of 1993, in which there was a significant loss of life.

• November 10, 1975: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a Great Lakes freighter, sank in Lake Superior during a storm, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 souls.

  

• November 29, 1975: A 7.7 magnitude earthquake occurred on the Big Island of Hawaii. The shock affected several other Hawaiian Islands and resulted in multiple injuries and a few deaths, and significant property damage. The event generated a large tsunami (47 feet high) on the Big Island, which was detected in California, Alaska, Japan, and several Pacific islands. It changed the shoreline along the southern part of the Big Island by at least 12 feet. Interestingly, Mars was transiting near the same degree of Gemini (around five degrees) that it was transiting when Hurricane Iniki struck. This degree is conjoined the fixed star Betelgeuse, which has the nature of Mars and Mercury combined (a combination that can indicate storms and seismic eruptions).

• April 17, 1961: The Bay of Pigs debacle occurred when 1,400 Cuban exiles under the direction of the CIA launched what became a failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. According to the JFKLibrary.org, “The ultimate goal was the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States.”

• February 14, 1929: The shocking and highly publicized Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre occurred in Chicago, when the infamous racketeer Al Capone lined up and gunned down seven associates of rival gangster George “Bugs” Moran. This and other gangland killings came to symbolize the violence of the Prohibition era in Chicago.

• January 30, 1835: Andrew Jackson became the first United States president to experience an assassination attempt at the United States Capitol Building when attacker Richard Lawrence misfired two times, and Jackson was uninjured.

  

As you can see, there is a past pattern of political unrest and some upheaval during Mars’ transits through Gemini. There have also been major storms, maritime accidents, and natural disasters especially involving flooding.

Given this historical pattern, you might want to be extra cautious during this transit. If you feel uneasy or stressed, you might benefit from chanting the Maha Mritunjaya mantra especially on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I love this version on YouTube by Rajshri Soul.

I also advise you to remember that although Mars can be challenging or unsettling, its strength is a very important part of life. This is the planet that gives us the courage to face our fears and the energy to fulfill our desires. You can make it through this transit by embracing your inner warrior and staying strong! 

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Please note that this and all my other forecasts are based on the sidereal zodiac used in both Vedic and Western sidereal astrology, not the tropical system used by most Western and a small number of Vedic astrologers. All the astrological charts that I work with and share are calculated according to the sidereal zodiac and Lahiri Ayanamsa.