As the planets revolve around Sun, Earth passes in-between Mars and Sun at regular intervals of over 2 years. At that time, Mars and Earth lie nearly in a straight line with respect to the Sun. Such encounter would take place on 18/19 December 2007, when Mars will be at a distance of about 54.8 million miles from Earth.
The closest encounter in the recent times took place on 27 August 2003, when the distance between the two planets was about 34.7 million miles.Thereafter,such an event occurred two years ago on 7 November 2005, when the distance was about 43.2 millions miles. Mars would be in the sign Gemini. Its stay in that sign is from 17 September 2007 till 28 April 2008 and in that sign it will be in retrogression from 16 November 2007 to 31 January 2008.
When this phenomenon takes place, Mars, a strong malefic due its being in retrogression, is expected to give adverse effect to countries and persons, whose ascendants fall in the signs Virgo and Capricorn Sagittarius and Gemini. The effect of placement of Mars in Gemini, in particular, would be rise in prices of cotton, jaggery, cotton, thread, salt, oil, mustard, copper, old, red chillies, and other red-colored things. But the prices would not go very high, due to the aspect of the benefic Jupiter. But red-colored items would generally be costly. However, Silver will rule cheap.
Some of the important countries falling under Gemini are USA, West of England, Belgium, and Canada, Wales, Tripoli, Lower Egypt, North East Coast of Africa and Armenia and cities are London, San Francisco, Plymouth, Melbourne, Versailles and Nuremburg.
For India, whose ascendant is Virgo, due to the aspect of Mars, some border skirmishes and cold war tendencies would continue to exist between India and Pakistan, but in view of the aspect of Jupiter ,it won't be very serious. Further there may not be any major internal strife barring some normal adverse occurrences. While the prices of major cereals like rice and wheat will not be affected, the commodities/metals indicated earlier will take a riding.
