⛤ The Quintile · Making

A fifth of the circle. The pair combines into making rather than being. It tends to show up as a knack for producing one particular kind of thing.

The quintile at a glance

• Angle72°
• Umbriel calls itMinor · Making
• Typical orbabout 2°
• Keywordsmaking, craft, a particular knack

What the quintile means

An aspect is the angle between two planets: how they talk to each other. At 72°, the quintile is the aspect of a specific thing the pair is good at producing, traditionally the artist's angle. In a chart it's associated with making, craft, a particular knack, originality.

We call this one Making, after what the angle does rather than how it is supposed to feel. Elsewhere you will see the quintile called a “minor creative” aspect. Same geometry. Both words are worth having, and we would rather hand you the mechanism first and let you decide how it feels.

Why quintiles work like that

Seventy-two degrees is a fifth of the circle, and that is the whole story. Every other aspect here comes from dividing by two, three, four, six or twelve. This one comes from dividing by five.

Five does not go into twelve, so the quintile falls at no sign relationship whatever. It is the one aspect on this list that sits genuinely outside the classical scheme rather than being a smaller version of something inside it.

How close does it have to be?

About 2 degrees, and some astrologers work with one.

Is it a good aspect or a bad one?

Neither, and it has never been handed a moral label, largely because it arrived too late for the tradition that hands them out. Kepler put the fifth-harmonic aspects forward in 1619.

The meaning usually attached to it is making: skill, craft, the particular shaping of a talent. That is a modern reading and it is worth holding as one.

How common is it?

Two places on the circle for the quintile itself, and two more for its double at 144 degrees, the biquintile. The very tight orb takes back most of that frequency.