Quincunx in astrology

The aspect the old rulebook left out

Ptolemy's list of aspects has five entries: conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition. The quincunx is not on it. Later astrologers added it, and the addition is usually credited to Johannes Kepler in the early seventeenth century, who worked with several divisions of the circle beyond Ptolemy's. That is why the quincunx is classed as a minor aspect, though it carries more weight in modern practice than the label suggests. Today most chart software lists it beside the five classical aspects, usually with the narrowest orb of the set.

The name comes from the Latin for five twelfths. A quincunx covers five of the twelve 30 degree signs, which is 150 degrees. The alternative name, inconjunct, describes the same thing from the other side: two planets that cannot be joined by any shared quality.

What signs share at each distance

Reading across a row shows why the quincunx is odd. It is one of only two distances where signs share nothing at all, and the other is the 30 degree semi-sextile.

How narrow the orb is

Most astrologers allow only 2 to 3 degrees, which gives a band of about 147 to 153 degrees. The tight orb keeps the aspect from appearing in nearly every chart. Even so, because the two signs have no shared element or modality, a quincunx can be felt strongly when the orb is tight and the planets are personal ones.

How a quincunx is usually described

1. 1. There is no common ground

   A trine says the planets understand each other and a square says they disagree about how to act. A quincunx says they are not even on the same map, so neither the harmony nor the friction of the better known aspects is available.

2. 2. The result is adjustment

   The word that recurs is adjustment. The tradition says a quincunx is handled by repeated small corrections, not by one resolution, and that the effort can feel like a nagging irritation or a sense of never getting the fit quite right. Practitioners add that a person with a tight quincunx often learns to treat the two planets as a pair of tasks to alternate between, not a problem to be solved once.

3. 3. Read the houses as well as the planets

   A quincunx often links two areas of life that seem unrelated, since the signs and houses involved are five apart. The reading is as much about what must be balanced between the two houses as about the planets.

The yod, or finger of fate

A yod is a pattern of three planets: two form a sextile, and each of those makes a quincunx to the third, the apex.

• Shape: a long thin triangle with two 150 degree sides and one 60 degree base.
• The name is the Hebrew letter yod, the smallest letter of that alphabet, and the pattern is also called the Finger of God or the Finger of Fate.
• Tradition reads the apex planet as a point of focus that the two base planets keep adjusting toward.
• It is a minor configuration, and many astrologers do not use it at all.