Almagest

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Mars square Jupiter

Mars square Jupiter, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mars square Jupiter is read, together with the opposition, as impulsiveness and insatiable desire caught at a friction making angle: Cafe Astrology's natal reading names a daring nature that takes on challenges readily but rarely pauses to reflect, cautioning that "when you don't learn from your mistakes, you repeat them." Rushing through experience is named as the square's particular risk, one the source ties to a haughty attitude and to being accident prone, and its usual counsel is to slow down before the next undertaking rather than after it has already gone wrong. Between two charts, one person's Mars square another's Jupiter is read, together with the opposition, as "spirited, animated, and exciting," though the same friction the natal square carries builds into resentment over time, the Jupiter person reading the Mars person as lacking principle and the Mars person reading the Jupiter person as overly theoretical.

The story

A square sets two bodies at the quadrate distance from each other, three signs or ninety degrees apart; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs names it, together with the opposition, discordant, since the signs it joins are, in his words, of different natures and sexes. Mars is named, on the Roman tradition's own terms, Jupiter's son, born in the more usual account of Jupiter and Juno together; Wikipedia's page for Jupiter lists Mars among his children without elaborating further. At this friction making angle, sovereignty's patience and force's haste are read as working against each other's timing rather than as a single line of descent moving smoothly from father to son.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Jupiter:square.