An ingress is the moment a planet crosses from one zodiac sign into the next. An aspect is a particular angle between two planets, or a planet and the Sun or Moon, measured along the zodiac. Between them, these two kinds of event account for most of what sky-watching astrology reports from day to day: “Venus enters Libra”, “Mars square Saturn”, “the Sun moves into Scorpio”. Both are precise and calculable. The meaning attached to them is the interpretive part.
This article explains each in enough detail to read a sky report without a glossary, and then says how a cosmic guide uses them: as events that colour a stretch of days, not as things that happen to you.
The zodiac as a dial
Both concepts depend on the same picture, so start there. Imagine the Sun’s yearly path across the sky as a circle of 360 degrees, divided into twelve equal sections of 30 degrees. Those sections are the signs, starting from the point where the Sun stands at the March equinox. Every planet, and the Moon, travels round that circle, each at its own speed. The circle is the dial; the planets are hands.
An ingress is a hand crossing a boundary between sections. An aspect is two hands at a particular angle to each other. Everything else is detail.
Ingresses: a planet changes sign
Each body crosses sign boundaries at its own rate:
| Body | Time in each sign (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Moon | 2.5 days |
| Sun | 1 month |
| Mercury | 2 weeks to 2 months, depending on retrogrades |
| Venus | 3 to 4 weeks, longer around a retrograde |
| Mars | 6 to 8 weeks, longer around a retrograde |
| Jupiter | about 1 year |
| Saturn | about 2.5 years |
| Uranus | about 7 years |
| Neptune | about 14 years |
| Pluto | 12 to 30 years, depending on the sign |
Two ingresses are familiar to everyone under other names. The Sun’s entry into Aries is the March equinox and into Libra the September equinox; its entry into Cancer and Capricorn are the June and December solstices. The seasons are Sun ingresses, which is a reminder that the signs are a calendar first.
The symbolic reading of an ingress is a change of style. Each planet stands for a set of themes: in the tradition, the Sun for purpose, the Moon for mood, Mercury for thinking and talking, Venus for relating and valuing, Mars for drive, Jupiter for growth, Saturn for structure and limits. Each sign stands for a manner. A planet entering a sign is read as its themes taking on that manner for as long as it stays: Venus in Libra, relationships conducted with tact; Mars in Capricorn, drive turned to the long game. The usable question has the same shape every time: for the weeks Venus is in Libra, where would a little more tact get me further than being right? For the weeks Mars is in Capricorn, which push would go better as a plan?
How much an ingress matters depends on the planet’s speed. The Moon’s ingresses are a mood for two days and are covered in the Moon in each sign. The Sun’s are the seasons. The outer planets’ ingresses are rare enough that astrologers write about them for years in advance; Pluto’s into Aquarius was discussed for most of a decade.
Aspects: two planets at an angle
An aspect is an angle between two bodies on the dial. Five angles are counted as major:
| Aspect | Angle | Traditional reading |
|---|---|---|
| Conjunction | 0° | Blending: the two sets of themes act together |
| Sextile | 60° | Opportunity: easy, if you use it |
| Square | 90° | Friction: something has to give |
| Trine | 120° | Flow: easy, sometimes too easy |
| Opposition | 180° | Tension across a divide: both sides want a say |
Four minor aspects, at 30, 45, 135 and 150 degrees, are used in finer work and mostly left out of daily readings.
An aspect does not have to be exact to count. Astrologers allow an orb, a margin of a few degrees on either side of the exact angle, within which the aspect is “in effect”. While the faster body is still approaching the exact angle the aspect is applying, read as building; once it has passed, it is separating, read as fading. The exact moment is when the reading is strongest.
How long that lasts depends, again, on speed. The Moon makes several aspects a day and each is a matter of hours. Mercury or Venus aspecting Saturn is a few days. Jupiter square Saturn comes within orb for months and, because one of the two usually turns retrograde in that time, often goes exact three times over a year. The slow aspects are the ones that give a season its mood; the fast ones give a day its texture.
Reading an aspect without a textbook
Three steps are enough for any aspect you meet in a sky report.
- Name the two sets of themes. Mars square Saturn: drive and limits. Venus trine Jupiter: relating and growth. Moon opposite Mercury: mood and thinking.
- Apply the angle. Square: the two are in friction; something has to be chosen or adjusted. Trine: they help each other, possibly without effort, which is nice and can be lazy. Opposition: they pull against each other and want balancing. Conjunction: they merge, for better or worse.
- Turn it into a question. Mars square Saturn: where am I pushing against a limit, and is the limit real? Venus trine Jupiter: what is easy today that I could enjoy instead of distrusting? That question is the usable product. The rest is vocabulary.
Nothing in the three steps predicts anything. A square between Mars and Saturn is not a day on which you will be blocked; it is a day whose sky, in this language, is about pushing and limits, and a day on which that question is worth asking.
What these events are not
Worth repeating, because the news-style phrasing invites the wrong reading.
- Not physical. An angle between two planets as seen from Earth has no force. The planets do not interact more at a trine than at any other time.
- Not personal, at first. An ingress or aspect in the sky is the same for everyone. It becomes personal only when compared with an individual birth chart, which is a different and finer calculation called a transit.
- Not rare. The Moon makes aspects every day; some planet is always within orb of something. A day with “no aspects” does not exist. What varies is how many, how exact, and how slow.
- Not instructions. No aspect tells you to avoid signing, travelling or talking. The reading is a question about a theme, and questions can be answered either way.
Where this lives in Cosmia
Cosmia lists the Sun’s ingresses and the planets’ retrograde stations among the Key Dates in its Calendar, and on any given day the Day Cover names up to two key events from the sky in plain words, ingresses and notable aspects among them, with the full list of up to three in the Why Today’s Energy? layer under the theme. Those events colour the Day Theme on the days they are loudest, such as the two days after a planet’s station, and the layer shows which parts of the sky the theme was read from. If you have ever wanted the working shown rather than hidden, that is what the layer is for. The companion pieces are Sun, Moon and rising sign for the fixed points of a chart and why does a day have a character for how the moving ones become a theme.
