⚻ Quincunx
Mercury quincunx Mars
Thought and drive collide. Traditionally read as arguing for its own sake, as impatience with slower thinkers, and as saying the true thing in the most damaging available way.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☿ ♂
What these two are about together
Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.
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
Thought and drive collide. Traditionally read as arguing for its own sake, as impatience with slower thinkers, and as saying the true thing in the most damaging available way.
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
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Mercury and Mars at other angles
- Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Mercury trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Mercury opposition MarsDirectly 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 Mercury and Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.