Learn · The six aspects
The square
A square is friction that turns into effort, and effort that builds most of what you have: two planets a quarter of the circle apart, pulling in different directions.
There is one place where you had to work harder than everyone around you, and it is where you are now best. Nobody handed you the skill; you were made to earn it by a part of you that would not go along with another part. That is a square.
Two bodies 90° apart are in signs of one modality, cardinal with cardinal, fixed with fixed, mutable with mutable, and so want the same kind of thing in incompatible ways. The tradition rated it hard. It is the working aspect, the one that does most of the building, because nothing gets built without something to push against.
In your chart
A square is 90° with 7° of allowance, or 9° for the Sun or Moon, and the chart records how far from exact it falls. Red on the wheel; a small square in the grid. A square to the Sun or Moon is tension in identity or in feeling, and a square to an angle is friction in how you present and where you are headed. The tightest squares are what drives the chart, and the analysis names them as the places where the most has been built.
From a real analysis
In her chart: Mars square Neptune · close at 2.4°
You want to act now, and you also want the act to mean something large. Your Mars rushes and your Neptune blurs the target, so on some days you charge hard at a goal that has gone foggy halfway there. Mars is strong in its own sign too: give it something it can touch, finish and tick off, and the fog stops mattering.
Themes
A square is a problem that becomes a skill. Moon square Saturn is feeling that was managed early and, later, a rare steadiness. Mercury square Mars is a quick, combative mind that learns to argue well. Venus square Pluto is attraction that is intense before it is comfortable. The modality gives the flavour: cardinal squares push, fixed squares dig in, mutable squares scatter.
The edge of the square is friction that is never worked through. The same argument is had with the same person for years, and the pattern repeats because it is easier than solving it. Squares reward the person who asks what they are actually up against.
Shapes with squares
Two squares to both ends of an opposition form a T-square, with the squaring body at the apex. Four squares and two oppositions form a grand cross.
How the analysis treats it
You will find each square in the grid with its orb, and both bodies’ chapters discuss it. What the analysis looks at is the place where the two push against each other, and what that pressure has made you good at.
Your chart records how close to exact each aspect is, so the analysis can give a close one more weight than a loose one.
Sources: every position and date here comes from NASA JPL’s DE440 ephemeris and is checked against NASA’s JPL Horizons. How it is checked.
The squares in your chart
Your chart lists every square between your planets, and the two parts of you each one joins. Free, and it takes a minute.