Mars semi-square South Node

What these two are about together

Action and what is already known. Associated with the reflex a person reaches for under pressure, and with whether that reflex still serves them.

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

The reflex misfires. Read as the familiar response producing a result it did not used to, which the tradition treats as information.

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

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

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

Mars and South Node at other angles

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