Q Quintile
Sun quintile Saturn
Structure supports the self. Associated with steady competence, with people who are trusted with responsibility early, and with ambition that does not need to announce itself.
- Angle
- 72°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☉ ♄
What these two are about together
Identity and limit. The pair the tradition associates most strongly with authority, with fathers, and with the difference between what you are and what you have proved.
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
Structure supports the self. Associated with steady competence, with people who are trusted with responsibility early, and with ambition that does not need to announce itself.
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
Saturn: Limit, structure and what has to be earned
Sun and Saturn at other angles
- Sun conjunction SaturnTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile SaturnThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square SaturnForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile SaturnSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun square SaturnNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine SaturnA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate SaturnA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx SaturnA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition SaturnDirectly 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 Saturn actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.