Mercury continues traversing mutable Sagittarius until Christmas Eve, representing (among other things) a messenger. One message is scheduled for delivery shortly before midnight EST today when Mercury squares Chiron, which is paddling through mutable Pisces. What Mercury delivers with its brief but timely square to Chiron will be more of a gift, actually — making this whole year about to end something you can grasp.
Those who vilify square aspects may find it counter-intuitive for gifts to be found within them. After what’s happened this year, just the idea of being able to grasp it holistically might seem futile.
Yet, the trials you typically go through when one planet is separated from another by 90 degrees on the zodiac circle (one definition of a square) often leaves you capable of doing, being and understanding what you could not manage before. That’s a gift anybody can grasp.
Another definition of a square is when the two objects in aspect occupy the same degree of two different signs that share the same quality (cardinal, fixed or mutable). Since a solar sojourn through a mutable sign (such as is taking place now for the Sagittarius Sun) represents the closing of a season, it’s possible to grasp how a mutable square has some of the same cachet.
The sense of closing is reinforced when you consider that tonight’s (or tomorrow’s, depending on where you are) square from Mercury to Chiron is a “closing square,” the last such aspect between the two before they conjoin late next March. That anticipates the last major lunar aspect of 2013, the “last quarter Moon,” a closing square from the Sun to the Moon on Christmas Day. That in turn is followed by a New Moon on the first day 2014.