Conjunction

Meaning

A conjunction joins two bodies at the same degree of the zodiac, or close to it. It is the simplest contact and often the strongest: the two do not look at each other across the sky, they stand together, and what they stand for works as one. Mercury conjunct Mars thinks in action and speaks with heat; Venus conjunct Saturn loves seriously, slowly and loyally.

The conjunction has no colour of its own. Unlike the trine or the square, it is neither easy nor tense by nature; it takes on the character of the bodies it joins. Two planets that suit each other, such as Venus and Jupiter, blend with little effort. Two that pull different ways, such as the Moon and Saturn, make a mixture that takes time to sort out: here, feelings and restraint arrive together.

Because the two act together, they can be hard to tell apart. A conjunction is often what other people notice first, while its owner experiences it simply as “how I am”. The work it invites is to recognise the two strands inside the one trait, so that neither drives the other unseen.

A conjunction is also a beginning. Every cycle between two planets starts when they meet: the New Moon is the conjunction of the Sun and the Moon. Read this way, a conjunction is a seed, an impulse that is new and not yet seen from outside, which the later phases of the cycle will unfold.

In practice

• The Sun conjunct Mercury is very common, since Mercury never strays more than about 28° from the Sun: thinking stays close to identity, and ideas feel personal.
• A planet conjunct the Ascendant or the Midheaven is among the most visible features of a chart: its nature shows in a person’s manner, or in their public life.
• Three or more planets gathered in one sign or one house form a stellium, a cluster of conjunctions read as one emphasis.
• A planet very close to the Sun is traditionally combust, hidden in its light; within 17′ of it, it is called cazimi, “in the heart of the Sun”, and is read as strengthened instead.

Across traditions

• Indian astrology calls two planets in one sign a yuti, a union. When two of the five planets visible to the eye, from Mercury to Saturn, come within a degree of each other, it speaks of a planetary war, graha yuddha, in which one of the two is judged to prevail.
• Mundane astrology follows the meetings of the slow planets: Jupiter and Saturn come together about every twenty years, a meeting traditionally called the great conjunction.
• Human Design has no aspects, but two bodies in conjunction usually fall in the same gate, or in neighbouring ones, of its wheel of 64 gates.

Origin and history

In the Tetrabiblos (2nd century), Ptolemy lists four configurations between signs: the opposition, the trine, the square and the sextile. The conjunction is not one of them, since two bodies in one place stand together rather than looking at each other; later usage counts it as the first of the five Ptolemaic aspects. In the twentieth century, Dane Rudhyar made it the starting point of every planetary cycle: in The Lunation Cycle (1967), each aspect is a phase of the relationship two planets begin when they meet.

How Ulune calculates it

• Two bodies are conjunct within 8°, an angle included. In synastry the orb is 6°, or 7° when the Sun or the Moon is involved.
• A conjunction that reaches across the border of two signs, such as 28° Leo with 2° Virgo, is marked out of sign.
• The reading of each angle names the bodies conjunct it within 5°.
• A planet within 8° of the Sun is flagged combust, and within 17′ cazimi.
• The Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and the angles are checked against the six fixed stars Ulune charts: a star within 1° of one of them is shown beside it.

Correspondences