Applying or separating aspect: the Direction column

An aspect is applying when the orb is decreasing: the two bodies are moving toward the exact angle, and the configuration is still taking shape. It is separating when the orb is increasing: the exact angle has passed, the configuration has already played its part and is moving away from it. The limiting case, an orb of zero at the moment of birth, is called exact.

The direction does not depend on the orb but on motion. Two aspects with the same orb can go in opposite directions. It is generally the faster planet that leads, but a retrograde planet, moving backward through the zodiac, can also come to meet another.

The distinction is old: since antiquity, the separating aspect has pointed to the past, to the early years of life and to older people, the applying aspect to the future, to the later years and to younger people. Horary astrology made it a central criterion: what is coming is read in the aspect that is forming. In modern natal astrology, the applying aspect is readily read as a potential that builds over time, and the separating one as a resource already available, more spontaneous.

AstralPro keeps this nuance without turning it into a strict hierarchy: the direction colors an aspect, it neither erases it nor doubles it. In choosing which aspects the report discusses, an applying aspect receives a slight extra weight, all the more marked as its orb is tight.

The direction is calculated from the positions and speeds of the two bodies at the moment of your birth: the engine checks whether the gap between them is moving toward the exact angle or away from it. No speed threshold comes into play. A Mars in full retrograde motion has a clear direction, and its direction is given like that of any other planet.

The same calculation serves the natal chart, the solar return and the Book, so that two reports never give two different directions to the same aspect.

In two cases, the report gives no direction. This is an absence of information, not an oversight:

• An angle is involved. The Ascendant and the Midheaven turn with the Earth and cover the whole zodiac in a day. Their motion is not a planetary cycle, and no direction can be read from it.
• Both bodies are slow. This concerns Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Chiron, the Nodes and Lilith. Between two of them, the mutual direction reverses within a few months as the stations come and go: it does not describe a tendency of the person.

It is enough for one of the two bodies to be fast for the direction to be readable: the Moon with Pluto, Mars with the North Node have one.

In the Chapter I table, “The complete aspect grid”, the Direction column sits between Orb and Reading. It carries one of three words, Applying, Separating or Exact, or a dash when the direction cannot be read. The note under the table recalls this rule.

For Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), 19 rows out of 40 carry a direction. Two examples:

• Mercury conjunction Venus, orb 0°07', Applying. Mercury is at 6°37' Scorpio and retrograde, Venus at 6°30' Scorpio. Mercury moves back toward Venus while Venus moves forward toward it: the gap is closing, the conjunction is forming.
• Moon conjunction Pluto, orb 1°52', Separating. The Moon, at 27°09' Scorpio, has already passed Pluto, at 25°17' Scorpio, and is moving away from it at the Moon's fast pace: the meeting took place a few hours before the birth.

The Sun conjunction Pluto, orb 3°23', is applying: the Sun, at 21°55' Scorpio, is moving toward Pluto. Conversely, Saturn square Pluto (orb 1°24') carries a dash, because both bodies are slow, and so does Jupiter sextile MC (orb 0°35'), because an angle is involved.

The direction changes neither the nature of an aspect nor its basic reading: a square remains a square, a conjunction remains a conjunction. It adds a nuance of time. An applying aspect often describes a dynamic that builds and that you learn to handle with experience; a separating aspect, a more immediate asset, which works almost by reflex.

In Camille's chart, the Sun square Saturn, orb 1°58', is applying: it is among the twenty aspects discussed in Chapter I, and the Mind & learning domain takes it up. The Moon square Saturn, orb 3°16', is separating instead, and it is the Relationship patterns domain that reads it. Two tensions with the same body, one still forming and the other already knotted: the Direction column lets you see that difference at a glance.

If the column carries a dash, do not look for a hidden direction: the aspect is read in full, simply without this nuance.