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The Sun square Mars

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

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart the Sun square Mars is read as an unmistakable competitiveness with a distinctly "me first" edge: Ptolemy names both the square and Mars itself discordant, one for its angle and the other for its excess of dryness, so the tradition treats the strain here as doubled rather than softened. Natives generate abundant energy that is genuinely difficult to direct, especially young, when the fighter's persona shows up first as a simple bundle of restlessness; the sign involved shapes the exact flavor, cardinal signs toward impulsiveness, fixed signs toward willfulness, mutable signs toward a restless impatience, but in every case these people learn, over time, to meet challenges head on rather than avoid them. Between two charts, one person's Sun square another's Mars is read as belonging to Mars's more difficult synastry register: sources describe such contacts, in general terms, as producing a passionate relationship thick with conflict, the same charge that draws the pair together also provoking real friction, since a square, unlike the sextile's cooperative energy, asks nothing of either side but confrontation.

The story

A square sets two bodies ninety degrees apart, a quarter of the circle; 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, a strong and unavoidably felt tension. Mars, in Roman religion, was not the purely destructive figure Greek Ares often was; he doubled as an agricultural guardian, directing his force toward conditions that let crops grow as much as toward war, and he was Jupiter and Juno's son, one telling crediting his birth to Juno alone through Flora's intervention, tying him to plant life as well as to combat. A Sun squared by a planet this forceful is pressed to act before it has fully decided how, the friction less a verdict on the will than a demand that it finally choose a direction.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Sun:Mars:square.