⚻ Quincunx
Moon quincunx Neptune
Need becomes fog. Traditionally read as idealising the wrong people, as escapism, and as a longing for something that cannot be named and therefore cannot be met.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☽ ♆
What these two are about together
Need and dissolution. The most permeable pair in the chart, and the one the tradition most associates with both compassion and self-deception.
What a quincunx does
A quincunx, also called an inconjunct, puts two planets in signs that share nothing at all: not element, not quality, not polarity, and not even the awkward adjacency of the semi-sextile. The tradition is specific that this is not a weak square. A square describes two things in conflict, which at least implies they are on the same terms. A quincunx describes two things that do not have terms in common, so neither can be traded off against the other.
How it reads
Need becomes fog. Traditionally read as idealising the wrong people, as escapism, and as a longing for something that cannot be named and therefore cannot be met.
In practice
Read as adjustment rather than conflict. The classical picture is of continually correcting for something that never resolves and never quite becomes a crisis, in the way a person compensates for a limp without noticing they are doing it. Modern practice associates it with health and with habits maintained past the point of usefulness.
What to watch for
The absence of a decision. Squares get resolved. A quincunx tends to get accommodated instead, and the tradition treats the accommodation itself as the thing worth looking at.
The two planets
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Neptune: Imagination, dissolution and what you cannot see clearly
Moon and Neptune at other angles
- Moon conjunction NeptuneTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Moon semi-sextile NeptuneThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Moon semi-square NeptuneForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Moon sextile NeptuneSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Moon quintile NeptuneSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Moon square NeptuneNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Moon trine NeptuneA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Moon sesquiquadrate NeptuneA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Moon 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 Moon and Neptune actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.