What's happening
Mars retrogrades roughly every twenty-six months for about ten weeks. Like Mercury and Venus, Mars does not truly reverse — the retrograde is a perspective effect caused by Earth's faster orbit overtaking Mars on the inside track. From our vantage, his apparent ecliptic longitude decreases until he stations direct again.
Mars is a personal planet, but its retrograde is long enough — more than two months — that the tradition treats it with more weight than Mercury's shorter cycle. It is the longest retrograde of any of the personal planets.
The tradition
Mars is the principle of drive, initiative, anger, desire, courage, and the willingness to act. Classical astrology sometimes called him the lesser malefic, but the modern reading is more careful: Mars is neither good nor bad, but he is the planet of edges, and his retrograde is a review of how you use them.
The tradition reads Mars retrograde as a pointed check-in with the question of force. Where is your anger aimed? What are you actually fighting for? What projects have you been running on adrenaline instead of design? Classical readings consistently warn against launching wars, fights, major efforts, or new initiatives under Mars retrograde — not out of superstition, but because the planet of action is temporarily misaligned, and the choices made with a misfiring compass tend to be the ones that have to be redone later.
How to work with it
Finish, revisit, and reassess rather than launch. Mars retrograde is unusually good weather for returning to a project, training regimen, or conflict that was abandoned before it was resolved — the work you know you walked away from before you should have.
It is less good weather for starting something whose success depends on speed, momentum, or confrontation. The ten weeks tend to reward patience and punish the heat that would otherwise make a disagreement into a fight.
The shadow is suppressed anger turning inward, or displaced anger breaking out where it does not belong. Mars retrograde is the moment to notice both and to ask the honest question underneath.
The simple rule
Ask what you are actually fighting for, and whether it still deserves the fight. Mars retrograde is the long interview with your own drive.