Mars wants the matter settled and Mercury wants it correct, and squared they cannot have both at the same moment. The native therefore commits early and defends late, which is a tiring way to be right. Schooling is often a struggle not from dullness but from impatience: the answer is seen before the working, and the working is what gets marked. Speech runs ahead of thought under pressure, and under enough pressure it runs ahead of good sense. The temper is verbal rather than physical. It arrives fast and departs fast and leaves debris.
The concrete signs are familiar to anyone who has worked beside such a person. Emails are sent that should not have been. Sarcasm is deployed as a first instrument and then explained as humour. A criticism, however mild, is heard as a challenge and answered with force out of proportion. Deadlines are met by a sprint at the end rather than by pacing. Documents contain a brilliant argument and three errors of fact. Driving is fast and the near misses are always someone else's doing. Apologies, when they come, are quick and genuine and repeated.
This is one of the more productive squares in the chart, because the friction lands somewhere useful. Forced repeatedly to defend what they said too soon, the native who is honest with themselves begins to check first, and a checked fast mind is a formidable instrument. Most acquire the habit somewhere in their thirties, usually after one public error too costly to shrug off. What does not change is the appetite for combat, and it should not. Aimed at a real opponent, a bad law, a false claim, it is worth more than any amount of tact.
What It Gives
- ◆argument pursued without flinching
- ◆speed under genuine pressure
- ◆appetite for a real opponent
- ◆accuracy hard won and then kept
What It Costs
- ◆positions taken before the evidence
- ◆sarcasm reached for first
- ◆errors of fact inside good arguments
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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