Moon semi-sextile Pluto

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 semi-sextile does

A semi-sextile puts two planets in adjacent signs, which share no element, no quality and no polarity. The tradition treats it as the mildest contact in the table and disagrees with itself about whether it is helpful at all: some read it as a small supportive link, others as a low-level irritation between two things that simply do not speak the same language. Both readings agree it is quiet.

How it reads

Emotional endurance. Associated with people who survive things and are strengthened rather than hollowed by them.

In practice

Read as a minor note rather than a theme. A semi-sextile is worth mentioning when almost nothing else is in orb, and worth leaving out of a summary when anything major is.

What to watch for

Overreading it. Adjacent signs are genuinely awkward together, but at this strength the tradition does not expect the awkwardness to be conspicuous.

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-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 quincunx PlutoA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Moon opposition PlutoDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis