← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 111/235
Separating
An aspect is separating when the planets are moving away from the exact angle: the orb is growing. Usually the faster planet has already caught up with the slower one, passed the point of exactness, and is pulling ahead. It is the other half of applying — every aspect between two moving bodies is one or the other, except at the instant it is exact.
A worked example
Mars at 16° Aries and Saturn at 14° Aries are conjunct with an orb of 2°. Mars, at about 0.7° a day, is ahead of Saturn and moving away from it at roughly 0.6° a day, so the conjunction is separating: it was exact a little over three days ago, and in about a week it will be wider than the 6° allowance for that pair and drop out of orb altogether. A 2° separating aspect is still tight — strength and direction are separate questions.
Retrograde motion
A separation is not always final. If the faster planet slows to a station and turns retrograde, it moves back toward the slower one and the aspect becomes applying again. This is the familiar pattern of an outer-planet transit: Saturn passes over a natal Sun (exact once), separates, stations and returns (exact twice), stations again and moves on (exact a third time), the separations in between being pauses rather than endings. In the charts here applying and separating are worked out from each body's actual speed, so these turns are reflected as they happen.
How readings use it
A separating aspect is read as fading or integrating: the matter it describes has had its moment and is being absorbed. In a birth chart, some astrologers read separating aspects as qualities already familiar, something the person brings with them rather than grows into. In transits, separation is the aftermath — the time to make sense of what a contact brought. In horary, Lilly's practice is to read the Moon's most recent separation as describing what has just happened, and her next application as what comes next.