Are squares bad in astrology?

Tradition calls them hard, which means effortful, and that is the honest word. A square describes two of a person's own aims crossing, and the friction is real. It is also where most of what a person works at comes from, and a chart with no square at all is unusual.

How far apart are planets in a square?

90 degrees, a quarter of the circle, which places the two planets three signs apart. This site allows 7 degrees either side in a birth chart, and 3 when the planet making it is a slow one in transit. A square 2 degrees from exact reads more sharply than one at 7, and both count.

How does a square differ from an opposition?

Both are hard aspects. In a square the two aims cross inside the person and the friction shows as a habit; in an opposition the two sit at opposite ends, 180 degrees, and the person is apt to see one end in someone else first and swing between them. The square is a conflict of wants; the opposition is a conflict of position.

Astrology basics · The five aspects

What a square means in astrology: two planets at 90 degrees

A square is a right angle between two planets: 90 degrees of the zodiac, which sets them three signs apart. Of the hard aspects of tradition it is the one most people have heard of. In the chart, both planets want something, and the two wants are the person's own; the friction between them shows as a habit the person can be seen repeating.

Exact angle: 90 degrees
Natal orb: 7 degrees
Transit orb: 3 degrees
Daily orb: Moon within 7 degrees, the others within 1
Hard or soft: Hard

A quarter turn of the zodiac

Planets are placed on the zodiac by longitude, 0 to 360 degrees, and an aspect is the difference between two of those longitudes. At 90 the pair are square: a right angle, as the word says, three signs apart in signs of the same modality, cardinal with cardinal, fixed with fixed, mutable with mutable, which is part of why they pull. The orb is the allowance around the exact angle. For a natal square this site gives 7 degrees, so planets anywhere from 83 to 97 degrees apart count.

Two wants in one person

Each planet in a square is a function with its own aim, and the aims cross. Neither is an enemy; the person is both of them, and cannot drop one to satisfy the other. What shows is friction, and friction repeated becomes a habit: the thing the person does every time the two collide, which is often, because they live in the same person. A square is where a chart generates effort, and the effort has a shape that repeats.

Two squares, seen in a week

Moon square Venus: the need to feel safe, at right angles to what draws them. They accept the invitation they wanted, want their own sofa by the time they have found parking, leave at ten, and accept the next one. Sun square Saturn: what someone is for, against where they hold back. They finish the proposal, read it twice, and leave it in drafts over the weekend while the colleague with the worse idea sends theirs on Friday. Both planets get their way in turn; the habit is the alternation.

The square as a transit

A square by transit is a planet in today's sky at 90 degrees to a planet in the natal chart. The slow ones are read within 3 degrees, and the mover sets the length: Uranus square a natal Sun stays inside that window for a year or more, its retrograde loops carrying it in and out, and Pluto, slower again, for several years, so the friction is a stretch of life, not a season.

A square from the sky sets the mover's function against the natal planet's for as long as it lasts: Mars square the natal Mercury over a day or two, and the email goes out with the sentence that should have been cut.

See Square in your own chartA free birth chart, with the reading, from your date, time and place.

Questions

Are squares bad in astrology?: Tradition calls them hard, which means effortful, and that is the honest word. A square describes two of a person's own aims crossing, and the friction is real. It is also where most of what a person works at comes from, and a chart with no square at all is unusual.
How far apart are planets in a square?: 90 degrees, a quarter of the circle, which places the two planets three signs apart. This site allows 7 degrees either side in a birth chart, and 3 when the planet making it is a slow one in transit. A square 2 degrees from exact reads more sharply than one at 7, and both count.
How does a square differ from an opposition?: Both are hard aspects. In a square the two aims cross inside the person and the friction shows as a habit; in an opposition the two sit at opposite ends, 180 degrees, and the person is apt to see one end in someone else first and swing between them. The square is a conflict of wants; the opposition is a conflict of position.