Sun sesquiquadrate Pluto

What these two are about together

Identity and power. The most intense pairing the Sun makes, and the one the tradition reads as being about control, survival and what a person will not let go of.

What a sesquiquadrate does

A sesquiquadrate is a square plus a semi-square, and it is read as the same family of friction arriving later and more awkwardly. The tradition associates it with tension that surfaces after the fact: the consequence of something already done, rather than the pressure to do it.

How it reads

Identity in a power struggle. Traditionally the aspect of confrontation with authority, of compulsion that overrides judgement, and of periods where the person feels they must be entirely remade.

In practice

Read as an aftermath. Where a square describes an argument in progress, a sesquiquadrate more often describes the clearing up, and the discovery that the matter was not as settled as it looked.

What to watch for

Treating it as a square. It is genuinely weaker, and a chart read as though every minor hard aspect carried full weight becomes a list of problems nobody recognises.

The two planets

Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming

Pluto: Power, compulsion and what will not stay buried

Sun and Pluto at other angles

• Sun conjunction PlutoTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Sun semi-sextile PlutoThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Sun semi-square PlutoForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Sun sextile PlutoSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Sun quintile PlutoSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Sun square PlutoNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Sun trine PlutoA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Sun quincunx PlutoA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Sun opposition PlutoDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis