∠ Semi-square
Sun semi-square 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
- 45°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- 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 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
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 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
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 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 quincunx NeptuneA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- 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.