Quintile: the 72° minor aspect in a birth chart

A quintile is an aspect between two planets that stand 72° apart along the ecliptic. It is a fifth of the circle, hence the name, from the Latin quintus, fifth. The quintile is a minor aspect but stands apart among them: it does not come from dividing the circle by two, three or four, which underlie all the major aspects, and opens a different series of angles.

Geometry: a fifth of the circle

The major aspects come from dividing the circle by two (opposition), three (trine), four (square) and six (sextile). The quintile divides it by five. Doubling it gives 144°, the biquintile, and together the two angles make up the fifth harmonic: place five points evenly around the circle and every pair is linked by either a quintile or a biquintile.

An angle of 72° equals two signs plus 12°. So the quintile has no pair of signs of its own. A planet at 10° Aries is in quintile to one at 22° Gemini, and a planet at 25° Aries to one at 7° Cancer. The signs may be one or two apart, and their elements differ.

Kepler and Addey

Before the 17th century astrology had no 72° angle: aspects were counted by sign, and a fifth of the circle does not match sign boundaries. Johannes Kepler proposed the quintile together with the biquintile and the sesquiquadrate. Kepler looked for a geometric basis for aspects and found it in regular polygons and musical ratios. A regular pentagon can be constructed with compass and straightedge, so for him 72° had as natural a basis as 60° or 90°.

The quintile got a second life in the 20th century. The British astrologer John Addey developed the theory of harmonics, set out in his book Harmonics in Astrology (1976). In Addey's view each division of the circle has its own theme, and the fifth harmonic is linked with form, style and the capacity to make things. Since then, modern writing often describes the quintile as an aspect of talent and creative signature.

The orb of a quintile

The quintile gets a narrow orb: 1-2°, up to 2-3° with the Sun or Moon. Harmonic astrologers work more precisely still and often stop at 1°. With a wide margin the quintile no longer stands out: every chart has a few pairs of planets roughly 70-75° apart.

How to read a quintile

The quintile does not fit the simple scale of soft versus hard. It is described as an aspect of particular ability: two functions of the chart combine so that a person does something in their own way, in a recognisable manner. That may be a craft, an art, a way of speaking or of organising. The quintile promises neither success nor a profession; it describes the quality of the combination.

The order of reading is the usual one:

• Planets. Which functions are combined. A quintile of Venus to Neptune is often read through image and aesthetics, one of Mercury to Saturn through precision and the form of thought.
• Signs. How each planet acts. The signs are arbitrary, so it matters more than usual to read each planet in its own sign.
• Exactness. A quintile within 1° is worth noting; a wider one is usually dropped.

The quintile refines the picture drawn by the major aspects and rarely changes the overall reading of a chart.

Example: the quintile in Donald Trump's chart

In Donald Trump's chart Saturn is at 23°48′ Cancer and Neptune at 5°50′ Libra. The angle between them is almost exactly 72°, an orb of 0°01′. This is a near-exact quintile, and these two planets share no major aspect in the chart, so without minor aspects they would easily be read as unconnected.

Tradition would describe a combination of Saturn, the planet of form and limits, with Neptune, the planet of image and imagination, as the capacity to give imagined things concrete shape. In the same chart Venus at 25°44′ Cancer forms a wider quintile to the same Neptune, with an orb of 1°53′. This describes a link between functions of the chart, not a judgement of the person.

The quintile in synastry and transits

In synastry quintiles between two people's charts are rarely considered, and only with a very narrow orb of up to 1°. There are many inter-chart aspects already, and minor ones easily get lost among them. When an exact quintile does link, say, one person's Venus with the other's Mercury, it is read as a shared language in what both are good at and enjoy doing.

The quintile is hardly used in transits. Transits are read as periods, while the fifth harmonic describes not events but the quality of how functions combine. The exception is astrologers who work with harmonics systematically: for them a transiting quintile is as much a working angle as any other.

How to find a quintile in your own chart

Not all software shows the quintile, so it is often found by hand. Convert the planets' positions to absolute degrees: Aries 0-30°, Taurus 30-60°, Gemini 60-90° and so on to Pisces at 330-360°. Trump's Saturn at 23°48′ Cancer becomes 113°48′, his Neptune at 5°50′ Libra becomes 185°50′.

For each pair, subtract the smaller number from the larger; if the result is over 180°, subtract it from 360°. Here that gives 72°02′. An angle within 1-2° of 72° is a quintile. You cannot spot a quintile by sign, because 72° is not a multiple of 30°: the two planets' degrees within their signs differ by 12°, and the signs are one or two apart. For checking, keep two numbers in mind: quintile 72°, biquintile 144°. Both are easy to find by adding 72° to a planet's position.

Quintiles in configurations

The fifth harmonic has figures of its own, though they rarely come up in practice. The best known, called the golden yod, is made of a quintile and two biquintiles: two planets in quintile and a third in biquintile to both, since 72 + 144 + 144 = 360. A full pentagon of five planets in quintile almost never occurs. The classic configurations of major aspects are covered under aspect patterns.

In celebrity charts

The tightest examples among the published charts.

• Rosalía: Moon quintile Mars, orb 0°00′
• Donald Trump: Saturn quintile Neptune, orb 0°01′
• Zohran Mamdani: Jupiter quintile Pluto, orb 0°10′

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