Venus semi-square Mars

What these two are about together

Attraction and drive. The classical pairing for desire, and for the difference between wanting something and going after it.

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

Attraction and drive disagree. Traditionally read as wanting what fights back, as a pattern of pursuit and withdrawal, and as friction between affection and appetite.

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

Venus: Values, attraction and what you find beautiful

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Venus and Mars at other angles

• Venus conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Venus semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Venus sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Venus quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Venus square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Venus trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Venus sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Venus quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Venus opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis