Q Quintile
Sun quintile Pluto
Power that is usable rather than overwhelming. Associated with resilience, with the ability to start again after loss, and with an instinct for what is really going on beneath a situation.
- Angle
- 72°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☉ ♇
What these two are about together
Identity and power. The most intense pairing the Sun makes, and the one the tradition reads as being about control, survival and what a person will not let go of.
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
Power that is usable rather than overwhelming. Associated with resilience, with the ability to start again after loss, and with an instinct for what is really going on beneath a situation.
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
Pluto: Power, compulsion and what will not stay buried
Sun and Pluto at other angles
- Sun conjunction PlutoTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile PlutoThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square PlutoForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile PlutoSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun square PlutoNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine PlutoA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate PlutoA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx PlutoA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Sun opposition PlutoDirectly 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 Pluto actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.