Mercury square South Node

What these two are about together

Thinking and what is already known. Associated with fluency in something learned long ago, and with the difference between knowing a subject and still being curious about it.

What a square does

A square is the aspect of friction, and the tradition is unusually consistent that it is also the aspect of development. The two planets are in signs that share a quality but nothing else, so they want the same tempo and completely different things. That is uncomfortable, and it is also what forces the matter to be dealt with rather than left.

How it reads

The familiar answer stops fitting. Read as the moment expertise has to be revised, which the tradition regards as productive.

In practice

Read as demand rather than misfortune. A square is usually where a person has had to build something, precisely because it did not come easily.

What to watch for

Repetition. Squares tend to describe the argument a person keeps having, in different clothes, until something is actually resolved.

The two planets

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

South Node: What comes easily, and what you hide in

Mercury and South Node at other angles

• Mercury conjunction South NodeTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-sextile South NodeThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Mercury semi-square South NodeForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile South NodeSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury quintile South NodeSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Mercury trine South NodeA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate South NodeA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx South NodeA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Mercury opposition South NodeDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis