Aspect

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Mercury Square Jupiter

Scale and accuracy are at odds in this square, and the native pays for it in overcommitment, unfinished reading and arguments won on the large point while losing the small one.

Jupiter presses for the sweeping statement and Mercury has to supply the evidence, and squared the two are never ready at the same time. The native believes the conclusion before the case is assembled, which makes them exciting and occasionally indefensible. Schooling tends to be uneven: brilliant on the essay, careless on the paper that required precision. There is a real appetite for knowledge, and a real impatience with the part of knowledge that is drudgery. Both are permanent features and neither disappears with age, though the balance can be managed.

It shows in the diary before it shows anywhere else. Too much is agreed to, in good faith, because the future looks roomier than the present ever turns out to be. Books are begun at three times the rate they are finished. The native exaggerates without noticing, is caught at it, and is genuinely embarrassed, since no deception was intended. In discussion they generalise from a single case with great conviction, and a well informed opponent can dismantle it. Travel is undertaken on impulse and the arrangements are inadequate more often than not.

The friction produces something worth having. Repeatedly overreaching and being called on it teaches the native, usually the hard way and usually in public, to bring evidence to the size of their claims. Those who learn it become formidable, because the reach was never the problem and most careful people have no reach at all. Editors, examiners and demanding colleagues are the making of such a person, and the wise ones seek them out. The trap is the opposite retreat, into a small safe accuracy, which spends the aspect's whole advantage in order to avoid its embarrassments.

What It Gives

  • ◆reach that careful minds lack
  • ◆conviction others will follow
  • ◆genuine appetite for knowledge
  • ◆rigour acquired the hard way

What It Costs

  • ◆far more agreed to than done
  • ◆generalising from a single case
  • ◆exaggeration without any intent

This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.

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Mercury Conjunct Venus

Thought and taste occupy the same ground when Mercury and Venus conjoin, producing a person whose speech is pleasant by construction and whose judgements are shaped by what they find beautiful.

Mercury Sextile Venus

Sixty degrees is nearly the widest these two ever manage, and the sextile offers the native a workable alliance between clear thinking and good taste that has to be picked up to be worth anything.

Mercury Square Venus

No birth chart has ever contained this square: Mercury stays within twenty eight degrees of the Sun and Venus within forty eight, so the two can never stand ninety degrees apart.

Mercury Trine Venus

A trine wants a hundred and twenty degrees of separation, and Mercury and Venus never exceed about seventy six, which places this configuration well outside anything the solar system permits.

Sun Square Moon

A first or last quarter birth divides intent from instinct, so the native's wants argue with their needs, and the argument, though tiring, does most of the work of building a character.

Sun Square Mercury

Ninety degrees cannot open between the Sun and Mercury; the planet's greatest elongation is about twenty-eight degrees, so the square belongs to aspect tables and software errors rather than to any nativity.