□ Square
Sun square Saturn
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
- Angle
- 90°
- Orb used
- ±5°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♄
What these two are about together
Identity and limit. The pair the tradition associates most strongly with authority, with fathers, and with the difference between what you are and what you have proved.
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
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
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
Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming
Saturn: Limit, structure and what has to be earned
Sun and Saturn at other angles
- Sun conjunction SaturnTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile SaturnThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square SaturnForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile SaturnSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile SaturnSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun trine SaturnA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate SaturnA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx SaturnA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition SaturnDirectly 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 Sun and Saturn actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.