∠ Semi-square
Moon semi-square 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
- 45°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- 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 semi-square does
A semi-square is exactly half a square, and the tradition reads it as the same kind of friction at a smaller scale. Where a square describes a conflict that has to be dealt with, a semi-square describes the sort of persistent low-grade annoyance that never quite forces the issue and never quite goes away either.
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 irritation rather than demand. Kepler took the minor hard aspects seriously and much of the tradition since has treated them as real but secondary, which is the reading this site uses.
What to watch for
Accumulation. One semi-square is a footnote. Several of them to the same planet is the tradition's picture of somebody worn down by things too small to name.
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 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
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.