What the sources claim for it
Force. The authority under which something is broken or fought for.
History
Where does Mars come from?
The sign is normally read as a shield and spear, and the planet takes iron, Tuesday, and every operation involving conflict, force, courage and destruction. Its pentacles in the Key of Solomon are the ones concerned with war, with terror, and with the ruin of enemies.
The modern gender use is an eighteenth-century development: Linnaeus adopted the planetary signs of Mars and Venus as botanical shorthand for male and female, and biology has used them ever since. It is a good example of a symbol being borrowed for its convenience as a mark rather than for anything it meant.
2 figures
Who is it attached to?
Figures who carry it
An attribute rather than a signature — held, worn or associated in the texts and the images.
Afterwards
What did it turn into?
Astronomical notation, the alchemical sign for iron, and — from Linnaeus onward — the standard biological sign for male.
Which texts describe it?
Oldest first, with what each one does with the mark. A mark described in a Bronze Age incantation and a mark first drawn in a seventeenth-century manuscript are different kinds of claim, whatever the shape has in common.
The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis)
Anonymous; ed. S. L. MacGregor Mathers · 15th-16th c. · Latin and Italian
Pentacles of Mars for war and for the terror of enemies, made in iron.
Read The Key of Solomon (Clavicula Salomonis) in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · Wikimedia file page
The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer
Francis Barrett · 1801 · English
Reproduced with the martial figures in Barrett's plates.
Read The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Unknown author · Wikimedia file page
Nearby
Related marks
Saturn
The scythe. Slowest planet, heaviest metal, and the authority a grimoire invokes for work involving binding, decay and the dead.
Jupiter
A stylised Greek zeta for Zeus. The sign of increase, favour and judgment in one's favour — the grimoires' preferred authority for asking.
The Sun
A circle with a point at its centre — the oldest form in the set, and the one the alchemists used for gold without further explanation.
Venus
Copper, Friday, and every operation to do with love and favour — the counterpart to Mars in the grimoires long before it was in biology.
Mercury
A caduceus drawn as a glyph — the one sign in the set that names a metal, a planet and a god that all behave the same way.
The Moon
A crescent, silver, Monday — the planetary authority for anything involving dreams, water, change and things done at night.