Quincunx aspect: the 150° link between unrelated signs

In the Tetrabiblos (book I, chapter 16), Ptolemy describes “disjunct” or “alien” signs: those that have none of the familiarities he has just set out, and that remain outside the four aspects, opposition, trine, square and sextile. These are the signs separated by one sign or by five. Of the latter, he says that they divide the circle into unequal parts, whereas the other aspects divide it into equal parts.

The traditional term inconjunct, from the Latin for “not joined,” keeps the trace of this idea: according to the ancient sources, two signs five signs apart cannot behold each other.

William Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647), presents the quincunx as a novelty. On page 32 of book I, after noting that we seldom use more aspects than the conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition, he lists those that “one Kepler, a learned man” has added, among them the quincunx of 150°. He reads it in the ephemerides of his day, where it is marked Vc: on a day in January, the Sun and Jupiter are given in quincunx, an aspect that “consists of five signs, or 150 degrees.” Lilly explains these abbreviations so his reader can decipher them.

At the end of book III, he says it again: in his directions, the quincunx symbol stands for “a new aspect, consisting of 150 degrees.” The sources disagree on the exact list of Kepler's aspects: Lilly includes the quincunx, whereas David Plant's study on Skyscript credits him with three, the quintile, the biquintile and the sesquiquadrate. AstralPro draws no conclusion from this: it keeps the quincunx for its geometry.

Two signs in quincunx share neither element, nor modality, nor gender: Aries and Virgo, cardinal Fire and mutable Earth. The two functions linked have no obvious common language. The quincunx does not block like a square or smooth the way like a trine: it calls for repeated adjustments, with no stable formula. The legend of the aspect table in your report puts it this way: adjustment, two registers that do not speak to each other.

The quincunx has a twin: the semi-sextile, one sign apart, which Ptolemy places in the same chapter on disjunct signs. The two are complementary, since 150° and 30° add up to 180°: a body in quincunx to a point is in semi-sextile to the opposite point.

To read it, look for what each body has to yield to the other. With the Sun quincunx the Moon, what you want to do and what you need line up poorly, and the balance has to be found again and again: taking your emotions into account without sacrificing your ambitions, and the reverse.

In your birth chart, the orb of the quincunx is 5°: two bodies 145° to 155° apart are in quincunx. It is the widest tolerance of the four minor aspects, ahead of the sesquiquadrate and the semi-square (3°) and the semi-sextile (2°), and the same for all bodies.

A minor aspect holds a precise place in your reports. It appears in the complete natal grid, with its orb, its direction and, if it is tight, its reading. The wheel does not draw it, and the Book's table, reserved for major aspects, leaves it out. When the aspects the chapters discuss are chosen, the majors get a clear advantage, so a quincunx rarely makes it in.

The Book does use it for one figure, though: the yod, where two bodies in sextile are each in quincunx to a third, the apex. To detect it, the Book tightens the quincunx to 3°.

Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), has a single quincunx in her grid of 40 aspects: Lilith quincunx Ascendant, orb 1°58', on line 15. Lilith is at 14°01' Aries, in the 5th house; the Ascendant at 15°59' Scorpio. Aries and Scorpio illustrate the quincunx well: Fire and Water, cardinal and fixed, masculine and feminine.

On its line, the Direction column carries a dash, because the Ascendant is an angle. The Reading column, however, is filled in: it covers the lines up to 3° of orb, here the first twenty, and the fifteenth is one of them. The quincunx is not drawn on the wheel and is not among the twenty aspects discussed in chapter I. Nor does it enter a yod in the Book, whose detector only connects the ten planets, the Ascendant and the Midheaven, without Lilith.

Among her ten planets, her Ascendant and her Midheaven, the grid finds no quincunx: the only one in her chart runs through Lilith, alone in Aries.

A quincunx under 2°, like Camille's, deserves attention even if it is not discussed at length. The method stays the same: name the two functions, then look for the point where they get in each other's way. Here, Lilith describes an untamed part, and the Ascendant the way of making contact with the world. Their quincunx calls for an adjustment between what refuses to bend and what shows itself first.

In the grid, this line takes its place by orb, regardless of the aspect's family: between Moon conjunction Pluto (1°52') and Sun square Saturn (1°58'). A tight minor aspect is thus read alongside majors of the same precision.

Direction also matters for a quincunx between two planets: applying, it describes an adjustment that is building; separating, a balance already found. When the column carries a dash, the aspect is read in full, simply without that nuance of timing.