⚻ Quincunx
Sun quincunx Moon
The self you are building and the comfort you require want different things. Read as the person who cannot rest while succeeding or succeed while resting, and traditionally as a tension carried from the two parents wanting different outcomes.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ☽
What these two are about together
The two lights, and the oldest question in a chart: whether what you are becoming and what you actually need are pulling in the same direction. Every tradition treats this pair as the most important relationship in a birth chart.
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
The self you are building and the comfort you require want different things. Read as the person who cannot rest while succeeding or succeed while resting, and traditionally as a tension carried from the two parents wanting different outcomes.
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
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Sun and Moon at other angles
- Sun conjunction MoonTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile MoonThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square MoonForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile MoonSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile MoonSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun square MoonNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine MoonA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate MoonA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun opposition MoonDirectly 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 Sun and Moon actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.