Synastry contact

Moon Square Moon Synastry: When Your Moods and Theirs Pull Different Ways

Short answer: Moon square Moon synastry (comparing two birth charts) means that how each of you feels, your moods, needs and comforting habits, tends to cut across the other's. Each of you has a Moon, so the contact is the same from either side. A square usually joins signs that move at the same pace but sit in different elements that do not mix easily, so you tend to react in the same way from different places, and what comforts one of you may not comfort the other. "Raphael" in 1905 writes that when the Sun or Moon in one chart makes a square or opposition with the lights in the other, "quarrelling and enmity will occur". This page reads that as a tendency, and reading it as covering Moon to Moon is an inference from his wording. It also reads the friction as energy, not as a flaw. It is one contact among many, and what gets built on it is up to the two of you.

Two Moons at an angle

Every chart has a Moon. It is how you feel: your moods and needs, the habits that comfort you, what it takes for you to feel safe, and what you do when you are tired, hurt or just want things to be familiar. Moon square Moon in synastry means your Moon and their Moon are about 90° apart in the zodiac, a quarter of the way round the circle. Each of you has a Moon, so the contact is the same from either side.

The signs come in three modes, which describe how they act: cardinal signs begin things, fixed signs hold on to them, mutable signs adjust. A square usually joins two signs of the same mode, one from fire or air and one from earth or water, elements that do not mix easily. (Usually, not always: a square near the edge of a sign can reach past the pattern.) So the two of you tend to react in the same way and at the same pace, from different places.

That is why this contact tends to read as friction: what soothes one of you is not quite what soothes the other. Friction is energy, and it is how this contact makes itself felt, not a fault in it or in either of you. It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, or a parent and their child as well as between partners, and it is only one of many contacts in any two charts.

Because both of you have a Moon in this contact, there is no one who steadies and one who is steadied. Each of you is both the one whose mood affects the other and the one who is affected.

Living near a Moon like this often means your moods need translating. How much noise you can take after a long day, whether a bad mood wants company or a closed door, when you would like to eat, how you like a home to feel: these may be close to what the other does, and yet not quite. You may both go quiet when hurt, but one of you wants to be asked and the other wants to be left alone. You may both want comfort, but the comfort one of you offers can strike the other as a bit much, or a bit thin.

Because you tend to move at the same pace, you can recognise how the other's mood is moving. Because you sit in different elements, it still pulls against your own. When one of you comes home flat or edgy, the other may notice early and respond in a kindly way that is a little wrong for the moment. It can take a few tries to find what works.

What each gives, and what each may want

Put simply, each of you tends to give the other something they did not ask for: a different way of handling a feeling, and the same is true in both directions.

Without trying, each of you shows the other, quickly and with little tact, how their way of coping looks to someone else. Anyone surrounded by people who cope as they do may never notice that theirs is only one way. Around you, they may.

What each of you may want in return is often plain, and harder to give than it sounds: your feelings taken as real and not as a delay, your routines left alone or at least asked about, a little time at your own pace. In a square these are not usually met by accident. When they are, it is often because one of you noticed and did it the other's way, not yours.

Neither of you may find it easy to simply give way, so decisions about the household, the plans or the evening may be slower, and more thoroughly argued.

How it might look

These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how the contact might show up across different kinds of pairs.

Flatmates. One comes home from a bad shift and wants silence and a closed door. The other copes by company and has invited a neighbour round for tea. Both are short with each other until the neighbour leaves, then they share the biscuits.
Parent and child. A parent and their teenager both go quiet after a row with a teacher. The parent wants to talk it through that evening. The teenager wants to sleep first. The argument is about timing, not about the teacher.
Colleagues. A client pulls out. One colleague wants to walk round the block alone. The other wants the team in a room within the hour. The meeting starts without the first, who comes back to find the decisions made and says nothing for the rest of the week.
Siblings. Two siblings are clearing their grandparents' attic. One cannot stop reading old postcards. The other wants every box labelled by noon. They finish the job in separate rooms, and the postcards stay in a bag neither of them mentions.
Friends. One friend phones after a bad week and wants to be heard. The other, trying to help, suggests a hike on Saturday. Each hangs up a little stung, and each rings back the next day.
Partners. After a hard month, one wants to be left alone and the other wants to stay close and keeps coming into the room. The row is about the open door, and neither will say which of them should have given way. The door stays half open that night.

In each sketch both people deal with a feeling in much the same spirit from different places, and the difference is what they have to work out.

Fire, earth, air or water against the other

A square usually joins a fire or air sign with an earth or water sign, so there are four pairings. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, earth is practical steadiness, air is talk and ideas, water is feeling. The contact is symmetric, so each pairing reads the same from either side.

Fire and earth. Quick against slow. One of you tends to feel fast and be done, the other to feel slowly and keep it. It might look like two flatmates after a quarrel: one has apologised by lunchtime, the other is still mulling it over at supper and finds the quick apology a little too quick.

Fire and water. Bold against tender. One of you tends to say it at once and loudly, the other to feel it deeply and keep it close. It might look like two neighbours at a street party: one speaks up about a mix-up over the food, the other goes pale and quiet, and they sort it out on the steps afterwards.

Air and earth. Talk against practice. One of you tends to sort a feeling out by discussing it, the other by doing something with their hands. It might look like two colleagues after a bad week: one wants to go over what happened, the other reorganises the stockroom, and each takes the other's way for avoidance.

Air and water. Reasons against feeling. One of you tends to want to understand a mood, the other to stay in it. It might look like two friends after a cancelled trip: one lists the alternatives, the other wanted to be sad for an evening, and a week later the list turns out useful.

What the friction gives

Friction is not restful, and it is not nothing. Between two Moons it gives some things an easier contact does not.

It gives each of you a voice for your needs. Because the other does not automatically know what soothes you, you cannot count on being understood without saying anything, so you say it. Needs that can stay unspoken for years between easy company tend to be named early here.

It gives you two angles on the same feeling. Two people with the same kind of Moon tend to miss the same things. You stand in different places, so what one of you misses, the other is likely to bump into.

It gives each of you a wider range. Living near a way of coping that is not yours, you may borrow some of it, such as the other's habit of talking first or their ability to leave a thing alone.

And it keeps you noticing each other. Moods against moods are rarely easy to ignore, so a long friendship, family tie or working partnership with this in it tends to stay lively.

None of this means the friction is pleasant every day. It means it is doing something.

From the sources

What the older sources say

"Raphael" (*The Guide to Astrology*, 1905, p. 96) is the source for this contact. He says that when the Sun or Moon in one nativity (the old word for a birth chart) makes a friendly contact with "the lights in the other nativity", friendship follows, and that when it makes a square or opposition, "quarrelling and enmity will occur". His page prints the square and the opposition as symbols, so those words are not quoted. His "lights" means the Sun and Moon. He does not say Moon to Moon: his line speaks of the Sun or Moon in one chart and the lights in the other. Reading it as covering Moon to Moon is an inference from its wording, not something he spells out.

Two passages from Ptolemy are used as supporting, and each is about aspects or places in general, not about the Moon to the Moon. First, *Tetrabiblos* calls the opposition and the quartile, his word for the square, "discordant", because they join signs "not of the same kind, but of different natures and sexes" (Ashmand, 1822, p. 38, I.16). That is a statement about aspects in general, not about two people. Here "sexes" means masculine and feminine, the old names for the two halves of the zodiac, which alternate sign by sign; it is not about the people. His reason fits the square: the two signs a square joins are usually one masculine and one feminine.

Second, his chapter on friends and enmity (IV.7) is about two people. On p. 192 he looks at four places in both charts together: the Sun, the Moon, the ascendant (the sign rising at birth) and the part of fortune (a point worked out from the Sun, Moon and ascendant). Where those places are only at an angle to each other, he expects minor friendship if the angle is a trine or sextile, but "if by quartile, they will excite minor enmity". That grading is for the four places as a set, so a single Moon–Moon square does not earn the label by itself. He then adds (pp. 192–193) that where familiarity between two charts, or the absence of it, exists "only as regards the places of the luminaries" (the luminaries, or Lights, are the Sun and Moon), the friendship that follows is "the best and most secure" and the enmity "the worst and most dangerous". He is speaking there of the Sun and Moon in general, not of the square in particular.

None of these passages tells the square from the opposition: Raphael and Ptolemy on p. 38 name the two together, and Ptolemy's p. 192 passage names the quartile without saying how an opposition would differ. The difference this page draws, that a square reads as friction between two people reacting in the same way from different places, because it usually joins signs that share a mode but not an element, is this site's reading, based on the kinds of sign each aspect usually joins. The older books do not say it.

The sources state their readings as a matter of course: quarrelling and enmity "will occur". Reading that as a tendency, not a description of a relationship or a promise of how it turns out, is this site's reading, and so is reading the friction as energy, something two people can have and use. So is everything in the other sections about moods and habits, what each of you gives and may want, and what the friction gives.

None of these passages gives the contact a direction that is needed here, since each of you has a Moon. The contact is described here for any two people.

Is this you two?

When one of you is low, what the other does to help is kindly meant and often slightly off.
You can each say exactly what soothes you, partly because you have had to explain it.
You both go quiet when hurt, but not in the same way or for the same length of time.
Your disagreements are often about how something should feel, or when to talk about it, not only about what should be done.
A routine that matters a great deal to one of you can seem to the other like a fuss.
You rarely bore each other.
Now and then one of you does the thing the other needed without being asked, and it arrives with surprising force.