Venus sesquiquadrate 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 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

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 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

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 semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• 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 quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Venus opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis