What Is A Quincunx?

What do Quincunxes mean in astrology? They sound strange – like a hipster cactus or Scrabble ploy – and they are! But they’re also your secret key to self-composure, to unlocking secret assets within. It would help if you decrypted them before you can figure out how they run.

Firstly, a Quincunx is an aspect between the Sun, Moon, planets, or other points in your birth chart. Aspects are angles, and while the two points or planets in alignment remain the same, each aspect has a slightly different timbre.  Trines are the “easy” ones – 120 degrees. Squares (90 degrees) and Oppositions are traditionally edgier.

The Astrological Quincunx Needs Decoding

And a quincunx is 150 degrees, between the take-anywhere, perma-popular trine, and the polarizing 180 degrees opposition. The signs in a quincunx are not just a different element but a different modality. Here is where the fun begins: Your astro-points in Quincunx can hide from one another. Not deliberately, of course. They’re like two people who keep missing one another, but each knows ‘of’ the other person.

The Trine and Opposition aspects that flank the Quincunx are ultra-obvious. Trines are your Flow, your innate ‘go-to’ – a gift. They’re where you’re like a teenage model being asked their beauty tips: “Say, whaaat? Well, I um, you know, wake up in the morning…I like opalescent crystal eye glitter…” Trine Vibe is so innate that it can be genuinely difficult to imagine someone struggling with the themes of your Trine.

The Quincunx Is Quintessence – 5th Element

Example: Neptune Trines – inspiration is a form of breathing, and you secretly prefer phantom love affairs. You slide into liminal space without much effort, and all your best intel is channeled. You are Art. But people think you’re drugs and use you like an upper or a hallucinogenic.

And your Squares are your little bedevilments – the “issues” that you know you’re working on. If you’re not alert, the things associated with your closest square angled astro-points are potential kryptonite. You can buff them up into a talent or survival that you value all the more for having lived the unfinished version.

But if the times are screwy enough or the perfect provocation strolls in the door, giving you side-eye, you and your Square are like the Rapid Response Squad.

The Quincunx doesn’t operate like either of these two. You can’t take it for granted because you don’t usually know it and nor do your friends/family. Unlike the Square aspect, it doesn’t create tension until you engage with it.

A Quincunx is like a secret spell, hidden in front of you. The word means Five Twelfths, as in the 150-degree angle and, as you will see below, it conceals a variety of puzzles.

He Invented A Spirit Telephone

But in Alchemy, the Quincunx symbolizes Quintessence, the 5th Element, and its emblem resembles the Five of the classic dice. The ‘dot in the diamond’ has been around for centuries – go here for a profound anthropological take.

Thomas Edison, the inventor of electricity, revered it so much he had the Quincunx symbol tattooed on his forearm. Interestingly, his Uranus in Aries was exact Quincunx his Midheaven. Before you dismiss this as a coincidence and think maybe the guy just liked dots, remember this: He attended school for all of a few months and pulled himself up through sheer genius.

A Triple Aquarius and a lifelong vegetarian, he patented over 1000 inventions, including a Spirit Telephone. He made a working prototype, and it is in somebody’s possession, but nobody knows who. He hated A.C. Electricity because he thought the voltage was dangerous and that the government would then try to control electricity/the people. Don’t tell me he’s not ultra-Uranian and into Astrology. Clearly, he knew about his magical Uranus-Midheaven Quincunx and activated it early.

Quincunxes Almost Guarantee Individuation

Aside from patenting something every two weeks and having a quintessential hypersigil tattoo, how?  It’s tricky. I omitted the Quincunx in Astral DNA as these aspects have no classic expression. They are almost a guarantee of individuation – you live on a tangent.

The more you jive with the astral energy involved in a Quincunx, the more amazing the connection to Quintessence and concepts you can snatch out of the aether. But they’re not madly grounding. You’re never quite in your body or feeling like you belong to a ‘scene’ or a place.

The peculiar style of consciousness that games your quincunxed planets/Sun/Moon into working together naturally inspires invention and intricacy. Robert Smith, the lead singer of the Cure and ur-Goth of the Eighties, has a heap of Quincunxes. So do Trent Reznor and Megan Thee Stallion. In fact, she has three: Moon-Uranus, Mars-Neptune, and Jupiter-Ascendant.  George R.R. Martin (the Game of Thrones creator and author) is Sun in Virgo quincunx Moon in Aries – great writing combo!

Megan Thee Stallion Has Three Major Quincunxes

Dolly Parton has Sun-Moon and Mercury in Capricorn quincunx her Gemini Uranus/Midheaven. Barry Humphries – Dame Edna Everage – is Venus in Aquarius Quincunx Neptune in Virgo. You can’t express this angle in any other way but originally. There is no natural path for the aspect – or relationship if your synastry features a few of these – so you either elude one another or spiral up a new way of being.

Find out what yours are – you’re looking for a tight orb conjunction between two planets, the Sun/Moon or Node, Midheaven, Ascendant, that falls short of an Opposition.  It will be Aries-Virgo, Aries-Scorpio, Taurus-Libra, Taurus-Sagittarius, Gemini-Scorpio, Gemini-Capricorn, Cancer-Aquarius, Leo-Pisces, and you get the idea.

Think about the astral energies involved – Sun in Libra quincunx Moon in Pisces – the Kardashian Quincunx – and visualize them as elements of a cool particle physics experiment. You can’t blend them alchemy-style without a unique style of living or creating  – something else has to be the catalyst or the mercurial spark. Quincunxes are fusion. People with one significant quincunx or several are genius at juxtapositions that nobody else would do.

And they never think there is anything at all ‘weird’ about it. I’m not even sure you can get Quincunxian by thinking. It may be more effective to sleep with one of these dice beneath your pillow or to stop berating yourself for contradictions. Thoughts?

Images: Philippe Morillon
The Quincunx Symbol 
Thomas Edison with this Spirit Telephone.