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 quarter Moons are the most familiar squares in the sky: at first quarter the Moon is 90° ahead of the Sun, and at last quarter 90° behind it.

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.