⚻ Quincunx
Mars quincunx Chiron
Wanting is where it catches. Read as hesitation about pursuing anything for yourself, and as anger that turns inward rather than outward.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ♂ ⚷
What these two are about together
Assertion and the sore place. Associated with what happens to somebody who was punished for wanting things, and with the particular difficulty of acting on your own behalf.
What a quincunx does
A quincunx, also called an inconjunct, puts two planets in signs that share nothing at all: not element, not quality, not polarity, and not even the awkward adjacency of the semi-sextile. The tradition is specific that this is not a weak square. A square describes two things in conflict, which at least implies they are on the same terms. A quincunx describes two things that do not have terms in common, so neither can be traded off against the other.
How it reads
Wanting is where it catches. Read as hesitation about pursuing anything for yourself, and as anger that turns inward rather than outward.
In practice
Read as adjustment rather than conflict. The classical picture is of continually correcting for something that never resolves and never quite becomes a crisis, in the way a person compensates for a limp without noticing they are doing it. Modern practice associates it with health and with habits maintained past the point of usefulness.
What to watch for
The absence of a decision. Squares get resolved. A quincunx tends to get accommodated instead, and the tradition treats the accommodation itself as the thing worth looking at.
The two planets
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Chiron: The injury that does not close, and what it made you able to do
Mars and Chiron at other angles
- Mars conjunction ChironTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mars semi-sextile ChironThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mars semi-square ChironForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mars sextile ChironSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mars quintile ChironSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mars square ChironNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Mars trine ChironA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mars sesquiquadrate ChironA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Mars opposition ChironDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Mars and Chiron actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.