⚻ Quincunx

Sun quincunx Mars

Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.

Angle
150°
Orb used
±3°
Type
Hard
Bodies
☉ ♂

What these two are about together

Identity and drive. What you are becoming, and the force you are willing to use to get there. The tradition treats this as the pair that decides whether somebody acts on their 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

Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.

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

Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Famous charts with sun quincunx mars

169 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.

Browse all 13,000 charts

Sun and Mars at other angles

Sun and Mars 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 Sun and Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.

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