□ Square
Sun square Mars
Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.
- Angle
- 90°
- Orb used
- ±5°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♂
What these two are about together
Identity and drive. What you are becoming, and the force you are willing to use to get there. The tradition treats this as the pair that decides whether somebody acts on their own behalf.
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
Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.
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
Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Sun and Mars at other angles
- Sun conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition MarsDirectly 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 Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.