Which planet is responsible for anger in Vedic astrology?

Mars is the planet Vedic astrology holds responsible for anger: the Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra, a centuries-old Sanskrit text, names it the significator, the planet that stands for a thing, of anger and valor in one breath^17.18. Notice what shares that line with your temper, because the book treats the heat and the nerve as one planet's business.

Still, Mars is a single piece of your chart. Your Moon, the planets sitting beside Mars and the years you've reached can change how that heat reads, and your free personal reading puts them together in one page written about you.

What the text says: Mars carries anger and valor together

You said the thing in the meeting. Your hands were shaking in the car afterward, and part of you was glad you said it. Up to the section marked as ours, we're reporting the book, and we say so when a reading is our own. If the terms are new, the basics start from zero.

The two words in that opening line are krodha, anger, and parakrama, valor. Mars also governs courage and vitality^3.1, and when the planets are seated as a court it holds the commander's post^3.3. Its portrait gives it cruel, red eyes, a restless body and a pitta constitution, and calls it irascible, krodhi^3.14.

Today that can read as the friend who is first to shout and first to stand up for you. That's our reading of a job description, though. These lines describe the planet. None of them says that a person with Mars in some strong or weak spot has a bad temper.

Is a strong Mars an angry Mars?

Maybe you've been told you have "a lot of Mars" and you've taken it as a diagnosis of your temper. In Mars's own years, the long stretch your timeline gives it, the strong version reads as winning and the anger never comes up.

Mars in a pillar house (the 1st, 4th, 7th or 10th), or strong in the 3rd, reads gain of wealth through valor, victory in battle and enemies destroyed^36.26. Prosperity of spouse and children and royal honor follow, with happiness at the start of those years and hardship to be declared at their end^36.27.

All of this is an old book's reading, offered for reflection, and it can't forecast your marriage or your account balance. If your anger ever frightens you or someone near you, a doctor or counselor is the right call, and nothing on this page is a reason to wait.

The hard version asks for a lot at once: Mars debilitated and in a difficult house (the 6th, 8th or 12th), without kind strength, joined with harsh planets (the malefics) and looked at by them. Then those years are a giver of misfortune^36.28. Even there, the verse names no temper.

You may also want the angry sign. We read every line in our search for the book's anger words, and none of them rests on the sign Mars is in. So "Mars in Aries is the angriest" isn't from this text.

Where does a temper show up in your chart?

If it isn't Mars's sign, where does the book put a person's temper? A blow-up that comes from your home life feels different from one that starts at work, and these lines are sorted in much the same way, by house.

One house carries the word in its name. The 6th is called, among other names, illness, wound, enemy, breaking, krodha (anger), greed and envy^50.3.

The plainest test sits in the lines on house rulers. Each house has a ruler, the planet that owns the sign on it (our guide to house lords shows how to find them). Eight of these lines mention temper, and each says more than this. We kept the part about anger and what travels with it:

The last row is the only one that goes the other way. Today, "a thief" can mean someone who takes what isn't theirs, and "eyes red with anger" hardly needs translating. Several rows pair the temper with money or spirit, and several with something worse.

What does it mean when a planet is called wrathful?

Think of the colleague who is fine alone and tense the moment the boss walks in. The book has a name for a planet in that spot. Joined with the Sun, any planet is called kopi, wrathful^26.8.

The name is easy to check, and the result is hard. In the years of such a planet, the reading is manifold sinful conduct, the loss of learning, wealth, wife, sons and kin, distress through children and disease of the eyes^26.17. Today that can look like years when what you've built comes apart and you behave worse than you'd like. Eye trouble is for a doctor.

There's a surprise in that line: for all the state's name, its result doesn't mention your temper. The planet is the angry one, and the reading is about what you lose. Our search turned up nothing that softens this reading for its own case.

Is it your anger, or someone else's?

If you've ever had a boss turn on you for no reason you could find, you've met the other half of what these words mean.

Among the book's uses of kopa, many are rajakopa, the wrath of the ruler, aimed at you. We counted at least ten, and several of them sit in the years of the Sun.

A Sun that is debilitated, in the 6th, 8th or 12th house, weak, joined with harsh planets or with Rahu or Ketu, or joined with the rulers of those three houses^36.7, reads great affliction in its years, the ruler's displeasure, travel abroad and loss of wealth through punishment^36.8.

Inside the Sun's years, Ketu's season reads bodily affliction, mental distress, loss of wealth, the ruler's wrath and trouble from your own kin^37.75. Venus's season reads the same wrath, with mental distress and loss of sons, wife and wealth, when Venus is without strength in the 6th, 8th or 12th from the Sun^37.86.

Today that ruler can be a manager, a landlord or a licensing office. So if a stretch of your life feels full of anger, it's worth asking whose it is.

What about Rahu, Ketu, Saturn and the Moon?

You may have heard one of these named when someone explained a short fuse. Each gets a plain answer here.

Saturn's portrait calls it lazy and lame, with no word on anger^3.18. Rahu's calls it fearsome and intelligent^3.19. The Moon's is sweet-spoken and restless^3.13. Ketu's clearest line in our search is the Sun-years season above, and that anger belongs to the ruler.

One family of lines does give named planets a temper: the activity states, found by a long sum that starts from a planet's lunar mansion^26.45. Rahu in its arriving state reads always wrathful, without intellect or wealth^26.141. Mars asleep reads wrathful, deceitful and without intellect or wealth^26.88. You can't check these by eye.

Which Mars is yours? Four things to look at

A free Vedic chart will answer most of these. Western astrology points to Mars for temper too, so the planet won't surprise you; the rows and the Sun check are what this text adds. Don't be surprised if Mars changes sign from your Western chart, since the sidereal and tropical zodiacs start counting from different places.

1. Mars's strength. Exalted, it has its full auspicious strength; in its root sign, three quarters; in its own sign, half; in a friend's sign, a quarter^3.51. A neutral's sign leaves an eighth. In an enemy's sign, debilitated or combust (too near the Sun), it has none of that auspicious strength^3.52. To find the signs, use the exalted and debilitated planets table and our page on planet friends and enemies.
2. Its house. In a pillar house, or strong in the 3rd, Mars's years read gain through valor^36.26. Our page on Mars in the 11th house shows one placement read in full.
3. The rulers. Find the rulers of your 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th and 12th, then look for your row in the table. The kindest one is the 9th's ruler in your 4th or 10th, free of wrath^18.68.
4. The Sun. Does any planet share a sign with your Sun? We read that as "joined," which makes that planet the wrathful one^26.8. And if you're in your Sun's years with a debilitated or weak Sun, the ruler's displeasure is the line to read^36.8.

That's four answers about one feeling, and they can disagree. Your free personal reading doesn't stop at the temper. It takes in the rest of the chart and writes about you as one person.

A practical thought from us: what was the anger defending?

This section is our own, and the book gives no advice of this kind. What we take from that one line, anger next to valor, is a question to ask afterward: what were you trying to protect? Sometimes there's a real answer, and the line that got crossed deserves a calmer conversation the next morning.

Sometimes there isn't one, and you were only tired, hungry or embarrassed. Keeping a note for a few weeks of what set you off, and what it was protecting, tends to show which kind you're having. Anything that frightens the people around you is past the point of notes.

Questions to sit with

• When has your temper done you a favor, and what did it cost?
• Whose anger do you still carry from a boss, a parent or a landlord?
• What do you defend fastest, and does it need that much defending?
• Who gets to see you angry, and who never does?

Anger and Mars: short answers