□ Square
Mercury square Mars
Thought and drive collide. Traditionally read as arguing for its own sake, as impatience with slower thinkers, and as saying the true thing in the most damaging available way.
- Angle
- 90°
- Orb used
- ±5°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☿ ♂
What these two are about together
Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.
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
Thought and drive collide. Traditionally read as arguing for its own sake, as impatience with slower thinkers, and as saying the true thing in the most damaging available way.
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
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Mercury and Mars at other angles
- Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Mercury quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Mercury 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 Mercury and Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.