The Aspects

The aspects are the lines drawn across the middle of a birth chart, joining planets that sit at particular angles to each other. They are where the chart stops being a list and starts being a person. Two people can both have the Moon in Cancer, and the one whose Moon is squared by Saturn lives a different emotional life from the one whose Moon is trined by Jupiter.

What an aspect is

The zodiac is a circle of 360 degrees. Two planets are in aspect when the distance between them round that circle is close to one of a handful of meaningful angles. Not exactly on the angle, because planets rarely oblige, but within a margin that astrologers call the orb.

I read five aspects, and the five have been the backbone of Western astrology since the Greeks. There are others, and I will come to them at the end, but these five do nearly all the work in a chart and they are the only ones I use when I write a reading.

The conjunction

Zero degrees. Two planets sitting in the same place, or within about eight degrees of it. Their energies fuse and you get one thing that is both of them at once. Sun conjunct Mercury is a mind that cannot be separated from the self. Venus conjunct Mars is desire and affection in the same breath. The conjunction is the strongest aspect and the least negotiable, because the two planets have no room to be anything other than together. Whether that is comfortable depends entirely on which two planets they are.

The opposition

One hundred and eighty degrees. Two planets facing each other across the wheel, within about eight degrees. This is the aspect of the seesaw. You tend to live one end of it and meet the other end in other people, until you learn to hold both. Sun opposite Moon is the Full Moon birth, and anyone born at a Full Moon has a Sun Moon opposition in their chart, which is a useful check that the birth data is right. The opposition asks for balance, and it gives you a lifetime to find it.

The square

Ninety degrees, within about seven. The square is friction. Two planets pulling in directions that do not line up, and neither will give way. It is uncomfortable, and it is also where most of the achievement in a chart comes from, because friction is what makes you do something. I have watched people with easy charts drift and people with hard squares build whole lives out of the effort of resolving them. A square is a piece of work, and the work is the point of it.

The trine

One hundred and twenty degrees, within about seven. The trine is flow. Two planets that understand each other without trying, usually in signs of the same element, so fire talks to fire and water to water. Trines are talents. They are the things you do well without noticing you are doing them, which is exactly their weakness, because what comes free tends not to get practised. A chart full of trines belongs to a pleasant person who may never find out what they are capable of.

The sextile

Sixty degrees, within about five. The sextile is opportunity. A smaller, friendlier version of the trine, between signs that get along, fire with air and earth with water. The sextile offers you something and waits for you to pick it up. It will not force the issue. Of the five aspects it is the one most often left on the table.

Hard and soft

You will hear the square and the opposition called hard aspects and the trine and sextile called soft, and the conjunction called either depending on the planets. The words are useful and I would ask you not to read them as good and bad. Hard aspects are where you grow. Soft aspects are where you rest. A life needs both, and a chart that is all one or all the other is harder to live than a mix. The most capable people I have read for have at least one square they have spent decades learning to drive.

Tight aspects

The orb matters. An aspect at the edge of its orb is a background hum. An aspect within one degree is a shout, and I name it as tight when I write it up, because the client needs to know that this one is running the show. If your Saturn squares your Sun by six degrees, you know about it. If it squares by half a degree, everyone who has ever met you knows about it.

Astrologers also talk about an aspect applying or separating, depending on whether the faster planet was moving towards the exact angle at your birth or had just passed it. An applying aspect is said to be building and a separating one to be easing. I note it, and I do not make much of it.

Patterns

Sometimes the aspects gather into a shape, and the shape is worth reading as a whole.

A stellium is three or more planets bunched in one sign or one house. That department of life is crowded, and the person usually knows it. The sign or house of a stellium can outweigh the Sun sign in how someone comes across.

A T square is two planets in opposition with a third planet square to both, sitting at the midpoint between them. The third planet is the focus and takes the strain. It is a driven pattern, and the empty point opposite the focal planet is where the relief lies.

A grand trine is three planets each 120 degrees from the others, forming a triangle, usually all in the same element. Enormous ease in that element, and the same risk the ordinary trine carries, multiplied by three. People with a grand trine often need a square somewhere to get them out of the chair.

A grand cross is two oppositions crossing at right angles, four planets all square to each other. It is the heaviest of the common patterns and the people who carry one tend to be formidable, because nothing in their life has ever come without being fought for. I frame it as what it is, a chart built for work, and the work tends to show.

Reading the whole chart

The mistake beginners make is to read aspects one at a time and add them up. A chart does not add up. It balances. One hard aspect to the Moon sits inside a chart that may have three soft ones to the same Moon, and the person lives the whole of it at once. When I read a chart I look first at the tightest aspects, then at anything touching the Sun, the Moon and the Ascendant, which is the Rising sign, then at the patterns, and only then at the rest. By the third step I usually have the person. The rest is detail, and detail is what the client remembers.

Others you will meet

Two more aspects turn up in most software and in most books. The quincunx, also called the inconjunct, is 150 degrees, between signs that share neither element nor mode, and it reads as a nagging adjustment that never quite settles. The semi sextile is 30 degrees, between neighbouring signs, a mild irritation or a mild help depending on who you ask. Both are given tight orbs, about two degrees. You will also come across the semi square at 45 and the sesquiquadrate at 135. I know they are there and I do not use them in my readings. The five major aspects say everything I need, and adding minor lines to a chart tends to hide the picture rather than sharpen it.

If you know your birth time, find the tightest aspect in your chart. Does it describe the thing you have spent your life working on?

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.