Mars Square Mars Synastry: When Two Drives Differ in Pace or Manner

Every birth chart has a Mars. It is what drives you: your energy, your effort, your initiative, what you go after and how you go after it. In this contact your Mars and their Mars are about 90° apart, a quarter of the way round the zodiac.

A square usually joins two signs of the same mode (both cardinal, both fixed or both mutable) that belong to different elements. (Usually, not always: near the edge of a sign, the pattern can shift.) That is the geometry. The reading built on the differing elements is a difference of pace or manner: in plain terms, fire is enthusiasm and action, earth is practical steadiness, air is talk and ideas, water is feeling, so the way you each go after things can start from different places.

Each of you has a Mars, so neither side of the contact differs from the other. It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, a parent and their child, or partners, and it is one contact among many in any two charts.

Living near someone whose Mars is a quarter-turn from yours can feel like working beside a person who is clearly trying, and who is trying at another speed or by another route. One of you may want to begin at once, the other to look at the whole job first. One may want a thing done quickly, and the other to do it in the way that will last.

You may notice it in small decisions. Which job comes first, how long to give it, whether to stop for a break: each can have two reasonable answers, and the two of you may each have a different one. You may pull against each other over the speed of a plan, or over the method, and the conversation can be lively on both sides.

It can also have a second effect. Each of you may find your own way clearer when it is set beside the other's. A quicker start can set a more deliberate starter moving, and a steadier finish can settle a quicker one. You may spur each other on, and each find yourself doing more than you meant to.

On a low day, one of you may want to do something and the other to do nothing yet. On a quiet evening, one of you may start tidying and the other settle with a book, and each may be aware of the other's rhythm in the room.

One thing this contact can give is a reason to say what you mean about how you work. When the other's pace or method is different, your own is no longer invisible to you, and either of you may find you can put into words what you have always done by habit.

Each of you can also give the other something to move toward. A pace you would not have chosen can show you a different setting; a method you would not have tried can turn out to suit a job you were stuck on.

What each of you may want is for your pace or manner to be treated as a way of working and not as a mistake. Your speed may matter to you more when it is taken as a speed and not as impatience, and your care when it is taken as care and not as delay. Either of you may also want to hear early what the other has in mind.

These are sketches, not reports, picked to show how the contact might look between different kinds of pair.

• Flatmates. Two flatmates tidy before guests arrive. One wants to start with the ironing basket and be done in twenty minutes; the other wants to do the room properly, one corner at a time. The doorbell is a while off, and they are still talking about the order.
• Siblings. Two siblings finish a quilt a grandparent began. One takes long quick stitches to see the pattern appear, the other small ones that will last. They hold up the same corner and look at it for a while.
• Colleagues. Two colleagues plan a gallery opening. One wants the date fixed on Friday, the other wants the labels printed first. They are comparing diaries.
• Parent and child. A parent and their child plant bulbs along a path. The parent wants every bulb in before dusk; the child wants each at the right depth with a marker beside it. Both are kneeling in the same row.
• Friends. Two friends are out on a snowshoe walk. One wants the ridge before the light goes, the other wants to stop at the frozen stream. Both have stopped walking.
• Partners. Two partners plan a long weekend away. One has drawn up a route with times, the other has marked three places and left the rest open. The map is on the table between them.

Each sketch is left at the moment where two ways of going at things are both on the table.

The difference in a square can be mostly one of two kinds, and the kinds can mix.

Pace. One of you may move in quick bursts and the other at an even walk. It might look like two colleagues stacking and labelling archive boxes: one fills a box in a few minutes, the other settles each box before starting the next. Each may find the other's tempo a little surprising, and each may notice their own tempo more when they are working next to someone else.

Manner. One of you may think a task through before touching it, and the other may think by touching it. It might look like two friends rehearsing a presentation, one wanting to write it out in full and the other wanting to say it aloud and see what comes. Each way gets to a talk, and each may borrow something from the other: a written line, a spoken turn of phrase.

Both kinds can be present in a day. A pair may differ in speed over breakfast and in method over lunch, and spur each other on in between.

The difference shows in small things.

A plan is drawn up, and each of you sees a different first step. Both steps may be reasonable, and the plan that results can carry traces of each.

A busy week arrives and the list is longer than the days. You may each put the list in order by a different rule, the shortest jobs first or the most important first, and notice the two orders side by side.

A disagreement over method may come up in the middle of a job. It might be settled quickly, shelved, or left until the job comes round again.

An evening with nothing planned. The two of you may each take up a project at a different speed in the same room, one finishing and starting again while the other is still on the first stage, and the room can feel full without being crowded.

The older sources used here say nothing about a Mars and a Mars a quarter of the circle apart. The one passage in them about the same planet in two charts is James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381). It is about the same place, which is a conjunction, and it says nothing about places at an angle, so nothing from it is used here. No source used here names a square between two Mars positions, and nothing in them tells a square from an opposition.

The distinction this page makes, that a square reads as a difference of pace or manner because it usually joins signs of different elements, is based on the kinds of sign a square usually joins. It is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Mars and Mars. The same goes for everything else on this page: what the contact is like, what each of you gives and may want, the two kinds of difference and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• Early in a job you can tell the two of you would have gone about it in different ways.
• One of you finishes before the other has quite settled on a start.
• You have each borrowed something from how the other works.
• Others find the two of you interesting to watch at a task.
• Sometimes you both say "that is not how I would do it" at the same moment, and smile.