Almagest

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Mars square Mars

the transiting Mars's periodic pass in square to its own natal place, or one person's Mars square another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Mars square itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit, at the point in Mars's own orbit where its transiting place squares its natal one. Cafe Astrology's own transit page reads this pass, together with the opposition, as a likely sense of frustration, a feeling of being out of step with one's own natural rhythm. Between two charts, one person's Mars square another's is read, together with the opposition and quincunx, as an inherent lack of understanding of one another's basic impulses and instincts, a friction sources name among the harder Mars-Mars contacts to simply talk through.

The story

A square is ninety degrees, a quarter of the circle, one of the four configurations Ptolemy names; Ptolemy's own chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs calls the opposition and quartile discordant, formed between signs of different natures and sexes, while Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect describes the square, in its own words, as creating a strong and usable tension, a turning point where an important decision needs to be made that involves an opportunity at a cost. Mars carried more than one face among the Romans: Mars Gradivus, the Strider, is the war god in his marching, campaigning aspect, while Mars Quirinus names the same god as protector of citizens and guarantor of peace, a title also merged with the deified Romulus. Meeting himself, Mars meets the gap between these two offices, the one who marches to war and the one who guards the city he marches out from. Set at this harder angle, the strider and the guardian pull against each other outright, the wish to act meeting the wish to protect what acting might put at risk, neither office willing to yield the field.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Mars:square.