∠ Semi-square
Sun semi-square Saturn
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
- Angle
- 45°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♄
What these two are about together
Identity and limit. The pair the tradition associates most strongly with authority, with fathers, and with the difference between what you are and what you have proved.
What a semi-square does
A semi-square is exactly half a square, and the tradition reads it as the same kind of friction at a smaller scale. Where a square describes a conflict that has to be dealt with, a semi-square describes the sort of persistent low-grade annoyance that never quite forces the issue and never quite goes away either.
How it reads
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
In practice
Read as irritation rather than demand. Kepler took the minor hard aspects seriously and much of the tradition since has treated them as real but secondary, which is the reading this site uses.
What to watch for
Accumulation. One semi-square is a footnote. Several of them to the same planet is the tradition's picture of somebody worn down by things too small to name.
The two planets
Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming
Saturn: Limit, structure and what has to be earned
Sun and Saturn at other angles
- Sun conjunction SaturnTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile SaturnThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun sextile SaturnSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile SaturnSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun square SaturnNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine SaturnA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate SaturnA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx SaturnA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition SaturnDirectly 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 Sun and Saturn actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.