⚻ Quincunx
Sun quincunx Neptune
The self is obscured. Traditionally read as confusion about direction, as a tendency to idealise people who do not deserve it, and as vitality that comes and goes for no clear reason.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♆
What these two are about together
Identity and dissolution. What happens to a sense of self when the edges are not firm, which the tradition reads as both the artistic gift and the central difficulty of this pair.
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 is obscured. Traditionally read as confusion about direction, as a tendency to idealise people who do not deserve it, and as vitality that comes and goes for no clear reason.
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
Neptune: Imagination, dissolution and what you cannot see clearly
Sun and Neptune at other angles
- Sun conjunction NeptuneTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile NeptuneThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square NeptuneForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile NeptuneSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile NeptuneSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun square NeptuneNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine NeptuneA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate NeptuneA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun opposition NeptuneDirectly 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 Neptune actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.