Conjunction

What it means

Two bodies in the same place, or near enough that the chart reads them together. Each colours the other, and neither acts alone.

The geometry of the conjunction

A conjunction is 0°, the circle not divided at all, so it draws no figure: the two bodies share a point. Most conjunctions fall inside one sign, which means the pair also share an element, a modality and a ruling planet, and the tradition reads the combination through that sign. When they sit either side of a boundary, say 28° Leo and 2° Virgo, the conjunction still counts by degree but joins two signs with little in common.

The word aspect comes from the Latin aspectus, a looking at. Ptolemy’s list of the configurations names four angles, and later astrologers grouped the conjunction with them as the fifth, though two planets in one place are together rather than looking at each other. Every other aspect is measured from it.

How the conjunction is read

The tradition reads a conjunction as fusion: the meanings of the two planets become hard to separate, and what comes of it depends on what they are. Between fast personal planets it is read as a single strong trait. Venus conjunct Mars is read as desire and affection arriving together. Mercury conjunct the Sun is very common, because Mercury never strays more than about 28° from the Sun, and is read as thinking closely bound up with identity.

With a slow planet the reading shifts. The Moon conjunct Pluto is read as emotional intensity, and the Sun conjunct Saturn as seriousness and self-discipline carried at the centre of the character. Between two slow planets a conjunction is shared by everyone born over months or years and is read as generational: Uranus and Neptune met in the early 1990s, and Jupiter and Saturn meet roughly every twenty years. The new Moon is itself a conjunction of the Sun and Moon, the start of the month, which is why the tradition reads conjunctions as beginnings.

Orb, applying and separating

This site counts a conjunction within 8° between two planets and within 10° when the Sun or the Moon is involved, the widest orbs it allows, shared only with the opposition. Comparing two charts on the compatibility page uses 8°. A conjunction is applying while the faster body is still closing the gap and separating once it has passed the exact degree; the tradition reads an applying conjunction as gathering and a separating one as already under way. A retrograde planet can reverse the direction, which is how a slow conjunction can perfect three times over several months.

Where you meet a conjunction

In a birth chart a conjunction shows as two glyphs side by side, usually with no line between them. Three or more planets together in one sign or house make a stellium, one of the aspect patterns. In synastry one person’s planet on another’s is read as a strong point of contact, and on the transits page a moving planet reaching a natal degree is the simplest contact there is; the Saturn return is Saturn conjunct its own birth position, at about twenty-nine. The conjunctions page lists the ones the planets make with each other in the sky.

Common confusions

A conjunction is neither good nor bad in itself. The tradition reads it by the planets involved, and Mars conjunct Saturn is read very differently from Venus conjunct Jupiter. Nor does sharing a sign make two planets conjunct: 1° and 29° of Taurus are 28° apart, far outside any orb. The reverse mistake is commoner still, because a pair 4° apart across a sign boundary looks like two unrelated placements in a list of signs.