An aspect is the distance between two pieces of the chart, measured in degrees, and that is what says whether they work together, ignore each other or fight. The previous series describe each piece on its own: the planet in the sign, the planet in the house. This one describes what happens between two of them.

There are five distances that tradition calls the major aspects: the conjunction (0°), the sextile (60°), the square (90°), the trine (120°) and the opposition (180°). Each has its own way of putting two pieces in contact, and none of them is good or bad, what exists is what each one charges and what each one delivers.

And there is the number almost no text gives: the orb. Two pieces at exactly 90° form a square; at 97°, they form nothing. This blog uses 6 degrees for the major aspects, and outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. That is why an aspect is not found out from the date: it needs the calculated chart.

And there is a reading order that changes everything, and that almost no site respects: the aspect comes last. It describes the relationship between two pieces, and there is no reading the relationship without knowing both. Whoever arrives here without having read each piece in the sign and in the house is reading the conversation without knowing who is speaking.

The aspect between Sun and Saturn says how you handle your own authority, and other people's. The Sun is who the person is building; Saturn is the limit, the ruler and time. In contact, they produce someone who demands of herself before any boss demands, and who, for that reason, tends to build things that last.

It is the aspect of weight and of solidity, and the two come together. Almost every person with Sun and Saturn in contact has a story with a father, a teacher or a boss who left a mark, and a real competence that came from there.

And here is what hardly any text writes down: an aspect is a RELATIONSHIP, and not one more piece. It does not add a trait to your chart, it says how two traits that are already there get along with each other. In this pair the difference between the aspects is large: the conjunction builds slowly, and the square builds against something. Both build.

It is worth giving the number before any reading, because without it there is no aspect: this blog uses a 6-degree orb for the major aspects. Outside that they are two pieces in the same chart, which is another thing. And the orb needs the calculated chart, and Saturn stays two and a half years in each sign, which the date gives, while it does not give the distance to the Sun, which is what decides whether there is an aspect.

The conjunction puts the ruler inside the identity: this person demands of herself with nobody asking. She matures early, usually had responsibility before her time and carries a seriousness others read as distance. It is not coldness: it is a person who learned to measure before she learned to play.

The cost is a demand that never switches off. The person with this conjunction achieves a great deal and feels little of it, because the ruler rises along with the result, and enough never arrives.

The sextile and the trine give structure without suffering: the discipline comes free. The person meets deadlines, finishes what she starts and is reliable in a way any team notices. Responsibility does not weigh on her the way it weighs on others, and for that reason she takes on more without complaining.

The cost is the absence of confrontation: whoever never had to fight with her own ruler also never had to ask whose it is. It is common for these people to discover at fifty that they spent a whole life meeting a standard they did not choose.

The square and the opposition set identity against limit, and it is from that fight that authority which was not inherited comes. The person feels she has to prove something and does not know to whom. She usually had a difficult father or authority figure, and takes years understanding that the voice demanding of her inside belongs to someone who is no longer in the room.

The fix is slow and it is the same one: naming the voice. Whoever finds out whose the ruler is can decide whether to keep it, and it is then that the demand becomes competence, which is this aspect's gift and it arrives late.

It shows up in how much this person demands of herself before anyone demands anything. They are concrete signs, the kind one recognizes in one's own week, and they hold for any of this pair's aspects, because the subject is the same and what changes is the friction:

• takes on responsibility before being asked
• feels she has not done enough yet, having done it
• had an authority figure who left a mark
• matured earlier than her peers
• finds it hard to celebrate what she achieved
• is reliable in a way others count on

Notice what this list does not say. It does not say the person is pessimistic or hard, two labels this pair carries that describe the extreme, not the aspect. It says her ruler is internal, and it arrived early.

This is the inversion most texts do not make, and it holds for every pair: what runs with no friction was never tested, and what bothers is what produces. The trine between Sun and Saturn delivers the result with no effort, and for that reason the person usually does not build the muscle, and finds that out on the day the ease is not enough. And the square delivers the opposite: a person who had to win her own authority, and who for that reason knows it is hers.

In this pair the difference shows up in how they say no: the trine says it with no effort, and the square took years to manage it. The Shelly Method reads every archetype through four faces, the light, the shadow, the excess and the deficiency, and in an aspect they get distributed between the two pieces: almost always one of them is in excess and the other in deficiency, and the fix goes through the weak side.

It matures at the first Saturn return, around 29, and the change is a big one. That is when the person usually finds out whose voice it is that demands of her, and decides, for the first time, whether she wants to go on obeying it.

Maturity here is not demanding less of oneself. It is the person telling apart the ruler she chose from the one she inherited, and it is that distinction that turns demand into authority.

No honest text gives an exact age for this: the arc depends on the whole chart.

It says how those two pieces get along, and not who you are. A Sun square Saturn condemns nobody to a hard life: it describes a person who builds against resistance, and the building tends to stay standing.

Which signs and which houses the two fell in changes everything: a Sun in Leo with Saturn square is someone who wants to shine and forbids herself; a Sun in Capricorn with the same square is someone who demands of herself twice over. See The Sun in the 12 signs and Saturn in the 12 signs, which describe each piece on its own, and that is the reading that comes before this one.

A limit said out loud, because it is part of reading seriously: none of this is prediction. Astrology describes a tendency and gives vocabulary for what the person already lives, it does not replace your work or your decisions.

And the questions that come up most on this subject, with the short answer: