⚼ Sesquiquadrate
Mercury sesquiquadrate North Node
The thinking argues with the direction. Read as talking yourself out of it, which the tradition frames as a habit rather than a verdict.
- Angle
- 135°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☿ ☊
What these two are about together
Thinking and the direction of development. Associated with learning as the route forward, and with the difference between what a person already knows and what they will have to.
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
The thinking argues with the direction. Read as talking yourself out of it, which the tradition frames as a habit rather than a verdict.
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
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
North Node: The direction of growth, and the thing you have no practice at
Mercury and North Node at other angles
- Mercury conjunction North NodeTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-sextile North NodeThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Mercury semi-square North NodeForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile North NodeSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile North NodeSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury square North NodeNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Mercury trine North NodeA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury quincunx North NodeA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Mercury opposition North NodeDirectly 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 Mercury and North Node actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.