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Mars square Saturn

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

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mars square Saturn is read as drive meeting a duty that will not simply let it run: sources describe a feeling that desires are denied or blocked, the wish to act and the sense that action must first be justified, timed and controlled pulling against each other. Between two charts, one person's Mars square another's Saturn is read among the pairing's more problematic contacts: Saturn can subtly undermine Mars's confidence through criticism and disapproval, sources say, Mars initially trying to regain Saturn's favor before becoming angry and rebellious, a dynamic that turns energy sapping for both partners if the discordant pattern is allowed to escalate unchecked.

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. Cronus and Ares meet here as two kinds of hard force set against each other, the old king's calculating self-preservation against the young war god's blunt, immediate action; it was Gaia, not Cronus, who fashioned the sickle and urged her children to move against Uranus, Cronus only the one son among them willing to lie in ambush when the moment came, while Wikipedia's own page on Mars says his Greek counterpart Ares was often treated with contempt and revulsion in Greek literature, viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force next to Mars's own function of securing peace. The square reads as that older, colder strategy blocking the younger god's straightforward charge, a contest the myths never quite let either side win outright.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Saturn:square.