Mars

In the Medicine Wheel Sun is fire and Sun is in the East, which also means Spirit, your inner power and inspiration.
In astrology Sun is the Heart, the center of a being like the Sun is the center of our solar system.

Thinking like this I don’t know weather I should put Sun in the East or in the center of the Medicine Wheel. But “they” have Sun in the East.

In astrology Sun is the steady fire that keeps everything warm and alive with it´s regular movement that we can trust.
It is the stove, the warm heart of the house and in old Russia the kitchen was God´s corner.

Mars

Mars is also fire, but it is the ignition, the starting key, the match, the spark, the lightning. It is the sudden kick that makes you set off in full speed or start a fight. Mars makes you turned on to something and makes you act. Quickly or slowly, it depends on the sign.

You cannot have a fire in the stove if you have not started the fire. But in the old times they probably did not start fires as often as we do (if we have a stove).
It can be difficult to start a fire in darkness without matches or a lighter. I think that they preferred to keep a fire going all the time, even if it was just a small fire. So that little fire, which was kept alive, was a litte piece of God and a necessary substitute for the Sun during the black night.
And the oil tree was a divine tree. Jonah in the Bible took shelter under an oil tree and not under a kurbits.That tree gives you shelter in the day (against the sun) and light in the night, so it could be seen as a helping hand from God. A part of  the heating system.

Mars is fire on the level of our instincts of hunt, sex, desire and defence, but also of activity. Mars is fire but can act with any element, so Mars + Earth will make physical labour or physical fight, while it with Wind can start a furious discussion between two people who defend their opinions as if they defended their lives.
Mars + Water is more difficult, maybe just oversensitivity in the form of hot waves ebbing and flowing with passive aggressiveness to create romance, love and babies or poetry and music. Or maybe it just creates an inner, emotional nervousness with no outlet.

Maybe we can see Mars as a servant of Sun, the general who wins the war for the king who gets something to shine on. And Jupiter is teaching the king how to shine in harmony with the higher Light.
You also have your inner general, king and teacher, your Mars, Sun and Jupiter. If Mars makes you keep high speed and focus with your career you will then get a position where you can shine and hopefully Jupiter is involved in a good way.

I would like to say that Mars is dopamin, which gives you an instant boost of energy just from having experienced a certain trigger.

You get instant energy even if you have not eaten anything because the liver releases sugar into the blood. Suddenly you feel like Superman and your thoughts work extremely quick and you can focus on something like an eagle or a hawk.
Suddenly you are full of enthusiasm, energy, will-power and motivation and if the energy gets high enough you also know that what you see is the Truth.
No person in the world can make you believe that you are wrong. You know what you see!

The sight is like the zoom lens of the camera. You can clearly see what others cannot see and if you tell them about it, they do not know what you are talking about.

If you continue for a while you will be said to have megalomania, especially if you tell people that your destiny is to become a new Jesus.
A year later you may not even understand what that was about.

In nature such a kick should not just be mental and it should not last very long, maybe just ten minutes.
A wolf or a lion is not running in full speed all the time. They walk slowly (burning fat which gives a slow metabolism) until they are almost sure that they can catch the victim. Then they run in full speed and the metabolism changes to use sugar. It is usually a short fight before dinner.

This speed is very fun (for the hunter!) and it can also give you supernormal abilities with a supermind and fantastic inspiration. The artist is in his own heaven.

People have always made up methods to create this high energy level, but in the temples and ceremonies the adepts had to train a long time to know how to handle such a high energy, because an overuse can make you sick. That´s why they say that you can get sick from the practice of religion.
But it is not a disease or a real sickness - it is just a misuse of natural energy and the nervous system has got programmed in the wrong way. Many ceremonies have the purpose of creating high energy and high focus.

But it is not “religion” that is the cause of such an unbalance - it is high energy. Religion just tries to teach people how to handle it in the right way. 

We can read about Mars, but why not go inside and look at it directly? What turns you on and how do you react and why?
What makes you creative and what makes you angry?
What do you want to create? Food, furniture, paintings, music or poetry? Or just a safe bank account?

Not all people get ups and downs like that. We can also have the slow, steady energy with working in the same way every day. But that is also Mars, maybe in Taurus or Capricorn.