Your Horoscope’s Dynamic Energy Points
It is easy enough these days to get an accurate, beautifully rendered birth chart without having to do much more than enter some information on your computer or phone, and then wait a few seconds for the result. If you’re in the early stages of learning astrology, understanding the various bits and pieces that go to make up the chart you now have in front of you — planets, signs, houses, and so on — can be a challenge, but if you set your mind to the task, it’s doable. What you have at this stage is akin to dumping a jigsaw puzzle on your kitchen table, so you need to fit all those pieces together in order to see the big picture.
This is where the astrological aspects come in, because without the aspects to connect the planets to each other a horoscope is just a static picture. It’s a bit like being in a neighborhood where no one has a phone or an Internet connection. Everyone knows where everyone else lives, but they can’t communicate with each other.
The aspects most often used in astrology are simple to understand, as they are based on a fine-tuned division of the zodiacal circle. The zodiac consists of 360 degrees, and each of the 12 signs consists of exactly 30 degrees, so the aspects most used in astrology are based on and . Major aspects are said to have a higher or stronger energy to them, while the minor aspects have a lighter or weaker energy. The traditional major aspects are the conjunction (0°, meaning planets in the same degree), the sextile, (two planets 60° apart), the square, (90°), the trine, (120°), and the opposition (180°). The traditional minor aspects are the semisextile (30°), and the quincunx (150°). Four additional aspects, the semisquare and sesquiquadrate (45° and 135° respectively), and the quintile and biquintile (72° and 144° respectively) are used rarely, mainly in special situations, so we’re calling those “specialty” aspects. The table accompanying this article summarizes this information.
