Mercury quintile Mars

What these two are about together

Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.

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

Mental energy that goes somewhere. Associated with people who think clearly under pressure and who finish what they start explaining.

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

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Mercury and Mars at other angles

• Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Mercury trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Mercury opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis