Saturn Square Saturn: The Waxing and Waning Squares Explained

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Saturn square Saturn is the transit in which Saturn in the sky stands 90° from the degree it held when you were born. It happens twice in each Saturn cycle of roughly 29 years. The waxing square comes on the way out, between the return and the opposition, and for the first time often around age 7. The waning square comes on the way back, between the opposition and the next return, often around 21 or 22. In the second cycle the same two squares tend to arrive in the mid to late thirties and around the early fifties. Treat those ages as rough orientation. Your own dates come from your natal Saturn degree, not from your age.

Astrologers read the squares as checkpoints in the Saturn cycle: moments when the structures you are building or keeping are put under pressure and tend to be adjusted. They are patterns to reflect on, not events that have to happen.

Educational guide: Astrologist.com does not currently offer a transit calculator, return chart, transit calendar or automated timing report. The free birth chart shows natal positions only. The dates in the worked example come from an offline calculation described on this page; they are not a feature of the site. To find your own, take natal Saturn from the free chart and compare it with a Tropical ephemeris.

Where the two squares fall

Start from one number: natal Saturn's longitude, counted from 0° Aries. The two square points are that longitude plus 90° and minus 90°, wrapping round at 360°.

• Waxing square: natal Saturn + 90°. Saturn moves forward through the zodiac, so this is the square it reaches first after a return.
• Opposition: natal Saturn + 180°, covered in Saturn opposition Saturn.
• Waning square: natal Saturn minus 90°, which is the same point as + 270°. Saturn reaches it after the opposition and before the next return.

So natal Saturn at 0°28' Capricorn (270.48°) has its waxing square point at 0°28' Aries and its waning square point at 0°28' Libra. The degree stays the same and the sign moves three signs either way. Near the start or end of a sign the 8° band discussed below can spill into the neighbouring sign, so work in degrees rather than sign names.

"Waxing" and "waning" here only say which half of the cycle the square belongs to, before or after the opposition. They are not the same thing as applying and separating aspects, which the Astrologist.com calculator does not distinguish for any aspect.

Why the ages are not quarters of 29

Dividing a 29-year orbit into four would put the squares at about 7¼ and 21¾. Real dates do not follow that split. Saturn's speed changes along its slightly elliptical orbit, and seen from Earth it also stops, moves backwards for about four and a half months each year and turns forward again. Both effects shift when Saturn reaches a given degree, and the shift depends on where in the zodiac your natal Saturn sits. That is why two people of the same age can have their squares a year or more apart.

The retrograde loops also change how many times Saturn hits the exact degree. Some squares are exact once. Others are exact three times as Saturn passes, backs over the point and passes again. Sometimes a loop turns round just short of the point and there is no second hit. No count is fixed in advance; you find it by checking the ephemeris across the whole period.

Worked example: an offline calculation

The birth below is invented for this explanation. The positions were computed offline with the same ephemeris routines the Astrologist.com natal calculator uses, as a one-off calculation for this page; the site itself does not produce these dates.

• Birth: 17 November 1988, 03:45, Leeds. Greenwich Mean Time was in force, so the birth was at 03:45 UT.
• Natal Saturn: 0°28' Capricorn (270.48°), moving direct.
• Model: Saturn's geocentric apparent Tropical longitude from the VSOP87B planetary theory (as implemented in the astronomia library the calculator uses), true equinox of date.
• Search: from age 1 to age 60, with Saturn sampled every 6 hours, every crossing of each square point refined to under a minute, and every station in the period located. Dates below are UT and rounded to the day.

What the table shows. The first waxing square came at 7.4, not 7¼, and the first waning square at 21.0, not 21¾. The first waxing square was exact only once, even though Saturn did loop back: it turned direct on 3 December 1996 at 0°36' Aries, about 0.12° short of the square point, so it never recrossed it. The first waning square was exact three times over about nine months. The same person therefore has one-hit and three-hit squares in the same cycle.

The 8° band is a comparison, not a duration

The natal calculator uses a fixed 8° orb for squares. Borrowing that number for transits is only an educational comparison: it is not an Astrologist.com rule for transits, and neither the exact dates nor the band measures how long anyone feels anything.

In the example, Saturn entered the 8° band around the first waning square on 28 August 2009 and left it on 7 October 2010, one continuous stretch with three exact hits inside it. The second waning square shows how arbitrary the edges can be. Saturn first came within 8° on 5 October 2038, slipped out on 21 May 2039 when its retrograde turn reached 8.01° from the point, came back in on 29 May, hit the exact degree once on 9 September 2039 and left on 16 November 2039, before a later retrograde loop briefly brought it within 8° again in 2040. One exact square, three separate stretches inside the band. Keep the exact crossings and the band entry and exit dates apart when you write them down.

If your birth time is unknown

Without a birth time the free chart calculates the planets for local noon as a reference, not as your birth time, and it does not show the full range Saturn covered during your birth date. For this example the noon reference gives 0°31' Capricorn. Running the whole local date, 00:00 to 23:59 Leeds time, moves natal Saturn from 0°28' to 0°34' Capricorn, steadily forward, with no station on that date.

Repeating the search for natal positions every 10 minutes across that day (and at both extremes) gave the same number of exact hits for every square and moved each date by at most a day. The near miss in 1996 also held: the latest possible square point, 0°34' Aries, is still short of the 0°36' turning point. That stability belongs to this chart. Saturn stationing on or near a birth date, or a loop that turns very close to the square point, can change both the dates and the number of hits. Use only the planet positions from any test times; houses and angles from a guessed time are not yours.

How astrologers read the squares

Interpretation here is about pressure on structure, read through your natal Saturn's sign, house (with a known birth time) and aspects. These are possibilities, not requirements.

• First waxing square. When it falls in childhood, astrologers who discuss it do so in hindsight and in broad terms, such as a child meeting more outside rules and routines. It is not a forecast of anything happening to a child, and it says nothing about how a child was raised.
• First waning square. Often read as a review of the habits and commitments taken on in the teens, with some kept and some dropped, ahead of the first Saturn return. Nothing has to be settled by a set age.
• Second waxing square. Commonly linked with testing what was built around the first return: workload, roles, routines that may need firmer footing or a different shape.
• Second waning square. Often described as pruning before the second return, as discussed in first and second Saturn return. It is not a midlife crisis by another name.

The squares are not the same transit as Saturn moving through your houses, which is covered in Saturn transits through the houses.

Checking your own dates

1. Note natal Saturn's degree, sign and longitude from the free birth chart.
2. Add and subtract 90° to get the two square points.
3. In a Tropical ephemeris, list every date Saturn reaches each point, and check around each station so a loop that recrosses, or stops just short, is not missed.
4. Record the time standard of your source (often 00:00 UT) and give dates to the day at best.

The general workflow is in how to read transits without a transit tool. The other long cycles in this cluster are the Chiron return and the nodal return; the wider picture is in the life-cycle transits overview. To talk through your natal Saturn while you bring dates from your own source, use Ask the Astrologist.

Related articles

• Saturn Opposition Saturn
• What Is a Saturn Return?
• First and Second Saturn Return
• Saturn Transits Through the Houses
• What Your Saturn Sign Means
• Aspect Orbs Explained
• Jupiter Square Jupiter
• Uranus Square Uranus