Grand cross

Meaning

A grand cross forms when four bodies stand about 90° apart around the chart: two oppositions crossing at right angles, each body square its two neighbours. As a rule all four are in signs of one modality, and the cross takes its name: cardinal, fixed or mutable.

It is the tensest of the common figures, and also one of the sturdiest. Pressure comes from every side, so there is no single focal planet through which it escapes, as in a T-square; the four functions have to be balanced against one another. People with a grand cross are often described as carrying a great deal, working hard, and becoming remarkably resilient.

The modality gives the style. A cardinal cross meets life through initiatives and turning points; a fixed cross through endurance and loyalty, and sometimes stubbornness; a mutable cross through adaptation, and many directions at once.

Its gift is integration, the capacity to hold four demands together. Its risk is the feeling of being pulled every way at once. The way through is usually to give each side its turn rather than to answer all four at the same time.

In practice

• A fixed cross joining the Sun, the Moon, Mars and Saturn: a steady will under pressure, and endurance learned as a life skill.
• Read the four houses involved: the cross ties four areas of life into one effort, and progress in one tends to ask for adjustments in the other three.
• Each corner of the cross is also the focal planet of a T-square, formed with the opposition it is not part of. Looking at the tightest of these four helps to find where the cross bears hardest.

Origin and history

Ptolemy names no figure of four planets: in the Tetrabiblos (2nd century) he describes configurations between two signs at a time. The grand cross is built from the two he calls discordant, the square and the opposition, because they join signs not of the same kind.

How Ulune calculates it

• Ulune looks for two oppositions whose four ends are all square to one another, with the birth chart’s orbs: 8° for each aspect.
• It searches among the ten planets, Chiron, the Ascendant and the Midheaven.
• The Table’s Patterns part lists the cross before the four T-squares it contains, each with the range of orbs that hold it.
• Without a birth time, a figure that may not hold all day is marked ~.

Correspondences