∠ Semi-square

Mercury semi-square Venus

Only a narrow separation is possible between these two, so genuine hard aspects are rare. Where they sit uneasily, the tradition reads a tendency to say the agreeable thing rather than the accurate one.

Angle
45°
Orb used
±2°
Type
Hard
Bodies
☿ ♀

What these two are about together

Mind and value. How thinking and taste inform each other, which the tradition reads as the aspect of style in the broadest sense.

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

Only a narrow separation is possible between these two, so genuine hard aspects are rare. Where they sit uneasily, the tradition reads a tendency to say the agreeable thing rather than the accurate one.

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

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

Venus: Values, attraction and what you find beautiful

Famous charts with mercury semi-square venus

696 of the 13,000 documented charts on this site have it. The 24 best known are below. Every one is computed from that figure’s own birth data, with the source of the birth time stated on their page.

Browse all 13,000 charts

Mercury and Venus at other angles

Mercury and Venus also have a midpoint: the halfway point between them, read as a third place in the chart rather than as an angle between two.

Find this in your own chart

A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Mercury and Venus actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.