Q Quintile
Moon quintile Mercury
Feelings articulate easily. Associated with good listeners, with people who explain difficult things kindly, and with an instinctive rather than trained understanding of others.
- Angle
- 72°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☽ ☿
What these two are about together
Feeling and thinking. Whether what you feel can be put into words, and whether what you say matches what is going on underneath.
What a quintile does
The quintile divides the zodiac by five rather than by two, three, four or six, which puts it outside the classical scheme entirely. Kepler introduced it, and the tradition since has associated it with a particular kind of ability: a talent that is developed rather than given, and that tends to be applied to making something. It is the aspect most often described as the signature of craft.
How it reads
Feelings articulate easily. Associated with good listeners, with people who explain difficult things kindly, and with an instinctive rather than trained understanding of others.
In practice
Read as aptitude rather than ease. A trine describes something that costs nothing. A quintile describes something a person has repeatedly chosen to work at, often without being able to say why.
What to watch for
Claiming too much for it. The quintile has the thinnest traditional record of anything in this table, and honest practice treats it as suggestive rather than established.
The two planets
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
Moon and Mercury at other angles
- Moon conjunction MercuryTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Moon semi-sextile MercuryThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Moon semi-square MercuryForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Moon sextile MercurySixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Moon square MercuryNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Moon trine MercuryA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Moon sesquiquadrate MercuryA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Moon quincunx MercuryA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Moon opposition MercuryDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Moon and Mercury actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.