□ Square
Mercury 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
- 90°
- Orb used
- ±5°
- 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 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
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 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
Venus: Values, attraction and what you find beautiful
Mercury and Venus at other angles
- Mercury conjunction VenusTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-sextile VenusThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mercury semi-square VenusForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile VenusSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile VenusSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury trine VenusA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury sesquiquadrate VenusA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Mercury quincunx VenusA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Mercury opposition VenusDirectly 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 Venus actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.