← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 146/235
First quarter
What it is
The first quarter is the moment, about seven and a half days after a New Moon, when the Moon stands 90° ahead of the Sun in the order of the signs. It is a square between the two lights — the waxing square, made on the way out towards the Full Moon. The Moon has then travelled a quarter of its cycle, which is where the name comes from; seen from Earth it is a half Moon, lit on one side, straight-edged down the middle. Nicholas deVore gives the old word for that shape, dichotome, "cut in half".
A first-quarter Moon rises around midday, is highest in the south (in the northern hemisphere) at sunset and sets around midnight, so it is the bright half Moon of the early evening. Because a square always falls between signs of the same mode, the first quarter usually links two cardinal, two fixed or two mutable signs: a Sun in Aries meets a first-quarter Moon in Cancer.
As with the other phases, the word is used for both a moment and a span. Astronomers mean the instant of the exact square. In Dane Rudhyar's eight phases the first quarter phase begins at that square and runs to 135°, about three and a half days; calendars, by contrast, often give the name to a few days either side of the square.
In the tradition
The quarters are among the oldest markers in astrology, because they are the points where the Moon's light visibly changes character. Ptolemy has the Moon passing at the first quarter from a time productive of moisture to one productive of heat. Kepler, quoted by deVore, held that the lunar influence is "powerfully stressed at the quadratures" — the quarters. Weather prophets watched the quarters for changes, and older medical astrology treated the Moon's squares to its own place at the onset of an illness as critical days (see decumbiture) — history and symbolism, never a substitute for a doctor's care.
The first quarter is a square, and squares are traditionally hard aspects; but it is a square of the Moon gaining light, which the tradition counts in her favour. The two facts sit together in most readings of it: friction, but friction that builds.
How it is read
Rudhyar called the first quarter a crisis in action. A new impulse, seeded at the New Moon and struggling through the crescent days, now meets the outside world head-on. It must be built into something real or abandoned; decision and will are called for. He insisted that this square must not be read like the last quarter: one is the crisis of a form being born, the other the crisis of a meaning that has outlived its form. Michael Erlewine makes the same point about every waxing and waning square.
For the person born in this phase, the first quarter type, Rudhyar described a strong will and the ability to organise and make decisions, to push through obstacles — sometimes ruthlessly — and to rebel against a tradition that binds or no longer serves; "self-exaltation in the thrill of activity and overcoming difficulties"; and, at the negative pole, a sense of defeat. Later writers call it the builder's phase: executive, impatient with hesitation, turning vision into structure.
In the month's rhythm the first-quarter days are read as the moment to commit, to deal with the first real obstacle and to put effort behind what was begun. A plan that does not survive the first quarter is often read as one that was not quite ready.
In a personal chart attention goes to the houses the Sun and Moon fall in at the quarter, and to any natal planet the quarter Moon crosses: the square is felt more personally when it lands on the chart's angles or on the natal Sun or Moon.