Square

What it means

Friction, and the kind that forces a decision. A square is read as the tense aspect that gets things done, because the two bodies want incompatible things.

The geometry of the square

A square divides the circle by four, and four squares draw a square inside the zodiac. Signs a square apart are three signs from each other: Aries and Cancer, Taurus and Leo, Gemini and Virgo. They always share a modality, both cardinal, both fixed or both mutable, and they always differ in element, fire or air against earth or water. Two signs that start, hold or change things the same way from different natures are the whole basis of the reading.

The fourth and tenth houses stand square to the rising sign by sign count. The four angles of a chart are often drawn as a cross, but in unequal house systems the ascendant and midheaven are rarely exactly 90° apart, so that cross is not usually a true square.

How the square is read

The tradition reads a square as tension that asks for action: two planets pulling in directions that cannot both be followed at once, so one gives way or a third course is found. Modern writers often call it the aspect of growth through effort. Between fast planets it is read as a conflict felt in everyday life. The Moon square Mercury is read as feelings and reasoning that keep interrupting each other, and Venus square Mars as a push and pull between closeness and independence.

With a slow planet the square is read as a longer-running pressure. The Sun square Saturn is read as a strong sense of obligation and self-criticism, often matched by staying power; Mars square Uranus as impatience with restraint. Some pairs can never be square at all: Mercury and Venus stay too close to the Sun, so no chart has the Sun square Mercury or the Sun square Venus.

Orb, applying and separating

This site allows 7° for a square between planets and 9° when the Sun or the Moon is involved, and 6° between two charts on the compatibility page. An applying square, with the faster planet still closing on 90°, is read as pressure building; a separating one as pressure already met. The orb also sets how long a square lasts: a day or so when the Moon makes it, and weeks or months between two slow planets.

Where you meet a square

In a birth chart squares are drawn in the warm red of the hard aspects. Two planets opposite each other with a third square to both make a T-square, and four planets in two crossing oppositions a grand cross; both are on the aspect patterns page. On the transits page a moving planet square a natal one is read as a stretch when that part of the chart is under pressure, and Saturn squares its own birth position near the ages of seven, twenty-two, thirty-seven and fifty-one. In synastry a square between two people is read as friction that keeps things lively and asks both to adjust.

Common confusions

Square does not mean bad. The tradition calls it hard in the sense of demanding, and many astrologers read a chart with no squares at all as short of push. Sign counting misleads here too: 28° Gemini and 1° Libra are 93° apart, a square by degree between two air signs that are really a trine apart, so the usual clash of elements is missing. That out-of-sign square still counts, but it is read as less typical of the aspect.

A square worked out

The Moon at 11° Leo and Mars at 15° Scorpio are 94° apart, 4° past exact and well inside the orb: a square between two fixed signs, fire against water. Venus at 3° Aquarius and Saturn at 25° Aries are 82° apart, 8° short of the angle and outside the 7° allowed between planets, so the chart draws no line. With the Sun or the Moon in Venus’s place the 9° orb would take it in, though Aquarius and Aries are sextile signs and the square would be out of sign.

Two squares in every cycle

Any two planets square each other twice between one conjunction and the next. The first comes as the faster one pulls a quarter of the circle ahead, and is called the opening or waxing square; the second comes with a quarter still to go, the closing or waning square. Modern writers often read the first as pressure to build something and the second as pressure to revise it. The Moon shows both every month, at first quarter about seven days after the new Moon and at last quarter about twenty-two, each within orb for about a day and a half.

The Sun draws the same figure over a year. The two equinoxes and the two solstices fall at 0° of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, each square to the next, so the four seasons begin a square apart.

Why the square is called hard

Older authors gave the square the nature of Mars. Counted from Cancer and Leo, the signs of the Moon and the Sun, the signs Mars rules in the traditional scheme, Aries and Scorpio, stand a square away. Ptolemy gave a second reason, taken from the signs themselves: a square always joins a sign he counted as masculine, fire or air, with one he counted as feminine, earth or water, whereas a trine or a sextile joins two of the same kind.