With Mars in the sixth house of a composite chart, the two people will have a sense of work to be done together. Robert Hand puts it in those terms, and the phrase carries the whole placement.
The sixth is the house of work, and in a composite it signifies the duties and responsibilities the two must fulfil through the relationship. Mars there supplies the drive to meet them.
What This Placement Describes
The basic principle of Mars, in Hand's account, is the ego drive, the energy by which a person sustains a sense of being an individual toward the world and toward others. In a composite chart it signifies the ability to create an environment where both people can express themselves fully without threatening each other. Some conflict is inevitable and should not be suppressed, but the ego drives have to be basically compatible or nothing can be accomplished.
The composite sixth house refers to the duties and responsibilities a relationship must fulfil. Hand notes that all relationships have obligations and in most cases these are not harmful. They become a problem only when they are the major element, leaving no room for the self expression ruled by the fifth. In a business relationship a strong sixth is not a great problem, since there are tasks to be done and obligations to be met. He describes the house as emphasising the needful aspect of work rather than the self expressive aspect.
Mars in that setting is energy with a job attached. The relationship has something to accomplish and the drive to accomplish it.
How It Tends To Play Out
Hand states a requirement here more firmly than in most placements. If the two do not feel they are accomplishing something fairly concrete by being together, this will be a disruptive problem. Enjoying each other, or feeling that they are both growing through the relationship, is not usually enough to satisfy the demands of this placement. There is work to be done.
That is a real description of what the relationship needs rather than a warning. The two are able to produce something jointly, and doing so is what keeps the energy in good order.
He rates the placement least problematical in a business or professional association where work is the sole object. Even there, though, he adds a condition: the two must enjoy being together, so that the work becomes a form of self expression as well as a duty.
The Opposite House
Hand's paired house rule comes from the mechanics of the composite. Two midpoints exist for any pair of planets, and although the nearer one is used, the farther one keeps some effect, an effect that increases as the two natal positions approach opposition. So a sixth house Mars should also be read through the twelfth, and where the two natal Mars positions are near opposition, reading both is essential rather than optional.
The twelfth house is repressed thought and unconsciously motivated action. Hand's reading of Mars there calls it absolutely imperative that the two understand exactly what they want from the relationship and from each other, and he suggests writing an agreement out. Read as an axis, the sixth is the explicit obligation and the twelfth is the unstated expectation. The two ends make the same demand from opposite directions, which is that what the relationship requires of each person be brought into the open where it can be looked at.
Hand gives no threshold for when the second reading takes over and no method for blending the two. Both stand.
Where It Gets Difficult
Hand names the difficulty and says it applies to all planets in the sixth house of a composite. The sense of duty will often overwhelm the feelings of joy and pleasure that should be present in a relationship. The two may begin to regard the relationship as a burden, a set of tasks, rather than something to be enjoyed for its own sake.
He calls that a deadening point of view and says it is particularly difficult in a sexual relationship. That is the specific cost here: Mars carries sexual energy as well as the ego drive, and where the whole relationship is framed as obligation, that energy gets framed the same way.
His general remark on the house makes the same case at a wider scale. In a personal relationship, which is supposed to be a voluntary and natural expression of each person's self, a dutiful attitude can ultimately weaken the bond. He also names the circumstance in which the placement is straightforwardly an advantage, which is where the situation genuinely calls for work to be done, and says that making good use of these energies requires approaching even a personal relationship from a strong sense of personal duty.
The house sets the issue. Whether the work is energising or grinding is described by the aspects to Mars, which is a separate question.
Recommended Reading
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- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter nine.
- Robert Hand, Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relationships (1975), chapter four, on the composite sixth house and the paired house rule.
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Next: Composite Chart Placements and How to Read a Composite Chart.