∠ Semi-square
Moon semi-square Saturn
Need meets refusal. Traditionally read as loneliness, as difficulty asking for anything, and as a person who is far more self-sufficient than they wanted to be.
- Angle
- 45°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☽ ♄
What these two are about together
Need and limit. The pair most associated with emotional restraint, with early responsibility, and with the belief that needing things is a weakness.
What a semi-square does
A semi-square is exactly half a square, and the tradition reads it as the same kind of friction at a smaller scale. Where a square describes a conflict that has to be dealt with, a semi-square describes the sort of persistent low-grade annoyance that never quite forces the issue and never quite goes away either.
How it reads
Need meets refusal. Traditionally read as loneliness, as difficulty asking for anything, and as a person who is far more self-sufficient than they wanted to be.
In practice
Read as irritation rather than demand. Kepler took the minor hard aspects seriously and much of the tradition since has treated them as real but secondary, which is the reading this site uses.
What to watch for
Accumulation. One semi-square is a footnote. Several of them to the same planet is the tradition's picture of somebody worn down by things too small to name.
The two planets
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Saturn: Limit, structure and what has to be earned
Famous charts with moon semi-square saturn
330 of the 13,000 documented charts on this site have it. The 24 best known are below. Every one is computed from that figure’s own birth data, with the source of the birth time stated on their page.
- Wolfgang Amadeus MozartComposer · 0.67° orb
- Ingmar BergmanFilm director · 1.39° orb · approximate
- Florence NightingaleNurse and statistician · 1.62° orb · approximate
- Leo TolstoyNovelist · 1.58° orb · approximate
- Max PlanckPhysicist · 1.44° orb · approximate
- Joseph FourierMathematician & physicist · 1.06° orb · approximate
- Évariste GaloisMathematician · 0.89° orb · approximate
- David HilbertMathematician · 1.85° orb · approximate
- Elizabeth BlackwellPhysician · 0.26° orb · approximate
- Hector BerliozComposer · 0.42° orb · approximate
- Sergei ProkofievComposer · 1.76° orb · approximate
- Nikolai Rimsky-KorsakovComposer · 1.31° orb · approximate
- George Frideric HandelComposer · 1.47° orb · approximate
- Nat King ColeSinger & pianist · 0.83° orb · approximate
- Jim MorrisonSinger & poet · 0.52° orb · approximate
- James K. Polk11th U.S. President · 0.12° orb · approximate
- Sandra Day O'ConnorSupreme Court Justice · 0.05° orb · approximate
- Benjamin DisraeliBritish Prime Minister · 1.48° orb · approximate
- Muhammad Ali JinnahFounder of Pakistan · 0.94° orb · approximate
- Gregory PeckActor · 1.98° orb · approximate
- Gene HackmanActor · 0.55° orb · approximate
- Peter CookComedian & writer · 0.63° orb · approximate
- Larry KingBroadcaster · 0.42° orb · approximate
- Ram DassTeacher & writer · 0.45° orb · approximate
23 of these are marked approximate: the figure has a birth date and no birth time, and the Moon moves far enough in a day that the hour could change whether the aspect holds. The rest do not depend on the hour at all.
Moon and Saturn at other angles
- Moon conjunction SaturnTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Moon semi-sextile SaturnThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Moon sextile SaturnSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Moon quintile SaturnSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Moon square SaturnNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Moon trine SaturnA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Moon sesquiquadrate SaturnA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Moon quincunx SaturnA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Moon opposition SaturnDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Moon and Saturn also have a midpoint: the halfway point between them, read as a third place in the chart rather than as an angle between two.
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Moon and Saturn actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.
