⚼ Sesquiquadrate
Mercury sesquiquadrate Venus
Only a narrow separation is possible between these two, so genuine hard aspects are rare. Where they sit uneasily, the tradition reads a tendency to say the agreeable thing rather than the accurate one.
- Angle
- 135°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☿ ♀
What these two are about together
Mind and value. How thinking and taste inform each other, which the tradition reads as the aspect of style in the broadest sense.
What a sesquiquadrate does
A sesquiquadrate is a square plus a semi-square, and it is read as the same family of friction arriving later and more awkwardly. The tradition associates it with tension that surfaces after the fact: the consequence of something already done, rather than the pressure to do it.
How it reads
Only a narrow separation is possible between these two, so genuine hard aspects are rare. Where they sit uneasily, the tradition reads a tendency to say the agreeable thing rather than the accurate one.
In practice
Read as an aftermath. Where a square describes an argument in progress, a sesquiquadrate more often describes the clearing up, and the discovery that the matter was not as settled as it looked.
What to watch for
Treating it as a square. It is genuinely weaker, and a chart read as though every minor hard aspect carried full weight becomes a list of problems nobody recognises.
The two planets
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
Venus: Values, attraction and what you find beautiful
Mercury and Venus at other angles
- Mercury conjunction VenusTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-sextile VenusThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mercury semi-square VenusForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile VenusSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile VenusSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury square VenusNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Mercury trine VenusA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury quincunx VenusA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Mercury opposition VenusDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Mercury and Venus actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.