⚻ Quincunx
Moon quincunx Pluto
Need turns into compulsion. Traditionally read as jealousy, as emotional crises that keep recurring until something is genuinely faced, and as a difficult or overwhelming mother figure.
- Angle
- 150°
- Orb used
- ±3°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☽ ♇
What these two are about together
Need and power. Emotional intensity at its most extreme, and the tradition's clearest statement about what people do when they are afraid of losing something.
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 turns into compulsion. Traditionally read as jealousy, as emotional crises that keep recurring until something is genuinely faced, and as a difficult or overwhelming mother figure.
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
Pluto: Power, compulsion and what will not stay buried
Moon and Pluto at other angles
- Moon conjunction PlutoTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Moon semi-sextile PlutoThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Moon semi-square PlutoForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Moon sextile PlutoSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Moon quintile PlutoSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Moon square PlutoNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Moon trine PlutoA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Moon sesquiquadrate PlutoA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Moon opposition PlutoDirectly 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 Pluto actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.