Saturn-Neptune Quintile
(Transit Saturn → Natal Neptune)
Avesalom Podvodny. Aspects
Saturn’s quintile: Asceticism is the desire to focus on one way of life. This aspect often brings to the areas of the planet an interested-yet-skeptical attitude toward life’s manifestations. Deep inside, the person strongly desires growth and flourishing, yet simultaneously perceives numerous obstacles, doubts success, and yet awaits it—becoming deeply distressed upon life’s failures and victories of stagnation, though never missing an opportunity to say: “I told you nothing good would come of these endeavors.” However, the individual becomes a suppressor of life’s expressions in the planet’s domains only at the lowest level of working with the quintile and Saturn, especially when these are heavily afflicted due to deep traumas inflicted upon their vulnerable life-affirming sensitivity. Usually, this aspect softens Saturn’s rigidity, providing beneath an outward strictness and discipline a desire to preserve life within the expressions of the planetary principle and allow it room for development. When Saturn is afflicted, the person will hold overly certain and dogmatic views about precisely how this life should be and exactly how it must animate the forms in which it arises; when harmonious, the person will know how and when to support this life, though often will be too lazy to do so. Here, working through the aspect brings deep understanding of what occurs within stagnant forms (especially the harshest and most difficult ones, such as mathematical and metal constructions) when life begins to emerge within them, as well as insight into the developmental prospects of their specific manifestations and knowledge of which forms require assistance and which do not (an afflicted Saturn, without proper integration, may suffocate). Quintile of Neptune: The River of Life, flowing into the Ocean of Universal Love, originates in the swamp of Compassion. This aspect imparts vitality to meditation within the planet’s spheres and, at a high level, genuine understanding of the planetary principle’s life and all its manifestations. At a low level, especially when the quintile is afflicted, the person will be interested and active primarily in parasitic forms of life connected with deception, false positions, and the secret use of others’ life force within the planet’s domains. When Neptune is afflicted, the person may be drawn to the lowest possible forms of life manifesting within that stagnant form, and will then defend them to the detriment of others; here, integration occurs primarily within the inner world, and sometimes the individual must descend to the very bottom of the corresponding puddle in order to renounce the pleasures of impure life (which they oppose to pure inanimateness), though occasionally half its depth suffices: the essential point is not to close one’s eyes to what is truly happening. A characteristic feature here is a subconscious sense of guilt toward life in the planet’s spheres, which the person attempts to suppress or clumsily compensate for. Affliction of the planet with a harmonious Neptune produces the “rose-colored glasses” effect: the person feels happy about any life manifestations in the planet’s domains and finds it difficult to distinguish lower from higher expressions or to understand their combinations, thus potentially ending up in unpleasant situations by attempting to protect what should not be protected from whom it should not be. A harmonious quintile brings mystical fascination with the life of the planetary principle, combined with a certain passivity and a tendency to parasitize upon it; at a high level—ability to detect life under incredible conditions and assist its development.
