Almagest

The library · The aspects

The Sun conjunct Mars

the Sun conjunct Mars, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart the Sun conjunct Mars fuses identity with the tradition's most aggressive planet: Ptolemy names Mars malefic for its excess of dryness, so the will described by the Sun takes on a courage and a directness that can run hot without much warning. The tradition describes people who carry a real presence, hard to be indifferent toward, confident even before they have earned the confidence, and drawn to compete, whether in sport, business or simple argument, since the two masculine planets standing together rarely leave much room for passivity. Without an outlet, the same energy is read as turning toward bullying; with one, it produces people whose courage other people notice early. Between two charts, one person's Sun conjunct another's Mars is read, in general terms, as a contact that highlights action and physical attraction between the pair. Sources note that where the underlying chemistry runs difficult, this same charge can produce a passionate relationship thick with conflict, the two people provoking each other into confrontation as readily as into desire.

The story

A conjunction sets two bodies at, or close to, the same degree, with no real angular distance between them; Ptolemy's own chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs measures the opposition, trine, square and sextile by the number of degrees separating two positions, yet Wikipedia's summary counts the conjunction among the five traditional major aspects sometimes called Ptolemaic, and reports that conjunctions are said to be the most powerful aspects, because they mutually intensify the effects of the involved planets. Mars, in the Roman telling, was never quite the god of naked destruction Greek Ares tended to be; he was also an agricultural guardian, directing his energies toward conditions that let crops grow and warding off whatever natural force threatened them, and he was Jupiter and Juno's son, credited by one telling with having been produced from Juno alone through Flora's intervention, a birth that ties him to plant life as much as to war. A Sun fused with a planet holding both faces at once takes on Mars's whole range: the will to defend and grow something, not only the will to fight.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Sun:Mars:conjunction.