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Aspects: the angles between bodies

A sign says in what manner a body works. A house says where it shows. An aspect says who it negotiates with. Most of what gets read in a chart is built from aspects.

It is just an angle

Take two bodies in a chart and measure the angular distance between them around the zodiac. If it comes close to one of a few special values, the tradition calls it an aspect. That is all. There is no other machinery.

There are six special values, and all of them are simple fractions of the circle: 0° (the same place), 180° (opposite), 120° (a third), 90° (a quarter), 60° (a sixth) and 150°. The last one falls outside the series, which is exactly why it is considered the weakest.

Six angles and their tolerances

An orb is the tolerance: how far the angle may sit from exact and still count. An angle of exactly 120.0° happens approximately never, so without a tolerance there would be no aspects at all.

The numbers in the table are not universal. Different schools use different ones, and this is one of those cases with no “correct” answer. Ours are in the site’s code and identical on every page: in the horoscope, in the reading, in compatibility. Wider orbs would give more aspects and less meaning in each.

The aspects of the same chart

Here is everything found in the chart from the earlier articles:

• ☽ △ ♇Moon — Pluto, trine, orb 0.3°
• ☉ · ♄Sun — Saturn, quincunx, orb 0.2°
• ♃ △ ♇Jupiter — Pluto, trine, orb 0.5°
• ☽ △ ♃Moon — Jupiter, trine, orb 0.9°
• ☽ ⚹ ♆Moon — Neptune, sextile, orb 1.4°
• ♃ ☍ ♆Jupiter — Neptune, opposition, orb 2.2°
• ♆ ⚹ ♇Neptune — Pluto, sextile, orb 1.7°
• ♂ □ ♆Mars — Neptune, square, orb 2.7°

Every angle in the same chart: 8 of them. There are no others — the remaining pairs did not fit inside an orb.

Look at the orbs. The Moon’s trine to Pluto is nearly exact — under a degree. The tradition reads an aspect like that as strong, and one that barely fits inside the tolerance as background. That is not a separate rule; it simply follows from the orb being a measure of closeness.

What each one means

Again: these are traditional correspondences, not mechanisms.

• Conjunction (0°) — two bodies in one place. They are not separable: they work together, for better and for worse.
• Opposition (180°) — facing each other. Both are visible; the common ground is not. Often read through other people.
• Square (90°) — friction. Two pulls in different directions, and both are right. The most productive of the uncomfortable ones.
• Trine (120°) — ease. It works by itself, and therefore easily stays unexamined.
• Sextile (60°) — opportunity. It fires when you put something in; not on its own.
• Quincunx (150°) — mismatch. There is a link, but no shared language.

Applying and separating

An aspect does not stand still: the bodies move, and the angle between them is either closing on exact or moving away from it. The tradition calls the first applying and the second separating, and the difference is roughly the difference between “ahead” and “behind”.

In a birth chart this is frozen permanently: an angle that was applying at the moment of birth stays applying for life. In transits it is the opposite — it is the most useful thing to know: an applying transit has not finished, a separating one is past its peak.

The site computes this the simplest way that cannot go wrong: it takes the orb today and the orb a day later. Smaller means applying.

Aspects to the ascendant and the midheaven

Angles are not counted only between bodies. The ascendant and the MC are points of the chart too, and an aspect to them carries the same meaning: a planet conjunct the ascendant is traditionally read as the one seen first.

But there is a condition worth remembering: both points depend on the birth time. No time, no such aspects. The aspects between the bodies themselves all remain.

What aspects do not have

There are no “bad” and “good” ones. This is the most durable myth and the most harmful: a person finds a square and gets upset, finds a trine and relaxes. Inside the tradition itself it does not work that way — a square describes effort, not punishment, and effort is usually where things come from.

And there is no strength without an orb. If something says “you have a powerful opposition” without naming the orb, it cannot be checked. That is exactly why ours stands in every line.

See them in your own chart

Every aspect in your chart is computed in the chart form and listed with its orb. Aspects do not depend on the birth time — so even without it this section is complete. The terms are in the glossary.

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