Q Quintile
Sun quintile Moon
What you want and what you need agree. Associated with an unforced sense of self and, in the tradition, with a comparatively settled early home life.
- Angle
- 72°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☉ ☽
What these two are about together
The two lights, and the oldest question in a chart: whether what you are becoming and what you actually need are pulling in the same direction. Every tradition treats this pair as the most important relationship in a birth chart.
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
What you want and what you need agree. Associated with an unforced sense of self and, in the tradition, with a comparatively settled early home life.
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
Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Sun and Moon at other angles
- Sun conjunction MoonTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile MoonThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square MoonForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile MoonSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun square MoonNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine MoonA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate MoonA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx MoonA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition MoonDirectly 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 Sun and Moon actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.