T-square

Three T-squares stand in today's sky. The one carrying the most weight has Mars in Cancer opposing Pluto in Aquarius, with Chiron in Aries squaring both of them. Chiron is the apex, and its square to Mars is exact today.

A T-square is two bodies in opposition with a third squaring each of them. We read it as one configuration, not as two squares and an opposition. The opposition is a standing disagreement between two demands. The apex is where both press at once, and it carries the strain of a quarrel it did not begin. What the closure adds is that the strain has a single address: the apex body, its sign and its condition show where the difficulty is felt.

Ptolemy gives the reason these angles bind together. He treats the opposition, the full diameter of the circle, as so plain it needs no explanation. He then finds the square by dividing that half-circle in two: one right angle, three signs. Sir Christopher Heydon, quoted in the notes to Ashmand's translation, adds that the diameter alone divides the circle into two equal parts. So the square is the opposition cut exactly in half. The apex stands at the midpoint of the quarrel, and each side reaches it.

Today that quarrel has force behind it. Mars is in its fall in Cancer, and its opposition to Pluto is still applying, so the pull across the diameter is tightening rather than easing. Pluto, a slow body, is the standing side of it. Mars, passing through, is what makes it briefly specific. Chiron, in Aries only since mid-September, receives the strain.

We report this as difficult, because it is. It is not a fate and not an event. It describes a condition that holds only while Mars keeps these contacts.

The figure also shows where its pressure can go: the point opposite the apex. Usually nothing stands there, and what is missing has to be supplied deliberately. Today that point is not empty. Mercury in Libra stands near it and is moving toward its opposition with Chiron. That is why the sky shows a second T-square through the same bodies, this one with Mars at the apex.

The practice follows from the shape. Where two demands pull against each other and the strain collects in one place, stop pushing harder at that place. Name the two demands plainly. Then deliberately supply something at the other end, a step neither side of the quarrel is asking for, and let the pressure run there instead.