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Malvin Artley has been a practising astrologer for more than a decade. He is an accredited member of the American Federation of Astrologers.
Malvin is the author of Bodies of Fire: An Exploration of the Lesser Chakra System. He has authored numerous articles and was a member of the faculty of the University of the Seven Rays, a non-profit organization dedicated to the teaching of the Trans-Himalayan tradition as expressed through the books of Alice Bailey, Helena Blavatsky and others.
His primary focus over the past 25 years has been on the sciences as they express occultism and with bridging work between the two. His special interests are the human subtle energy system and all the chakras, or energy centres, physics and technology, astronomy and all aspects of Chinese occultism. He has done extensive work with Chinese astrology and the cycles they use and seeks to synthesize the great Western and Oriental systems on such matters.
Malvin lives in Adelaide, South Australia. He also works in the engineering trades and sends out periodic emails about astrological happenings and developments. Click here to subscribe to Malvin's periodic letters.

The Grand Quintile
rare planetary configurations in October 2004

The Grand Quintile is a rare aspect that always presages powerfully significant changes in the human condition. This unusual aspect, first delineated by Johannes Kepler, is a division of the 360 degree circumference of the zodiac by 5, producing a five-pointed star (or pentagram—the mark of Venus). Two Grand Quintiles occur in October 2004, the first on October 1 and the second on October 28, in close conjunction with a lunar eclipse. Thus the Solar Eclipse occurs at the mid-point of two Grand Quintiles, a rare occurrence indeed. Malvin Artley discusses the meaning of these remarkable cosmic events.

The shifting of the seasons always puts me in a nostalgic sort of mood. There is something about certain types of weather, the angle of the Sun and the qualities of light that projects my mind and emotions into other realms and gives me over to strange inner sensations and misplaced memories. I have recently been taken back to the vague remembrance of Sunday afternoons as a wee lad when my parents would take me down to the rail yard after church and let me climb around on the big diesel locomotives in my Sunday best. Then one of them would get on a train with me at the station while the other one would race across town to greet us at our destination. Those were happy days, and I have had a fascination with trains, science and big machinery ever since I can remember. My parents still like to remind me of those stories when I see them, and I will have to say that I always recall them with fondness.

It is a liberating feeling to be “on the road”, whether by rail, plane or car and to know that we are being transported out of our usual circumstance to a place of our desiring rather than the everyday places to which we become so accustomed. Often as I travel I give thought to the effort, inventiveness and daring of the human spirit that has enabled us to live in the world that we know today with all its modern conveniences and liberating technologies. And, we have but little notion of what our inventiveness and innate genius has in store for us even in the next 50 years, given the pace at which technology has advanced.

The Genius of the Human Soul

In astrology there are certain aspects and configurations that presage and confer such human potential and which speak of the genius of the human Soul in all its multidimensional splendour. We have just entered into one such aspect in the last two weeks and in less than two more weeks we are about to witness a rare alignment of planets in the heavens, and one that speaks par excellence to and of the indwelling human Soul—the Grand Quintile. More than that, we will experience two of these configurations within a lunar month. The first one occurs on October first and the second one occurs on the 28th of October. And, to top it all off, they coincide with the full moon periods of Libra and Scorpio—the Scorpio full moon being also a partial lunar eclipse over the Atlantic. I spoke of these Grand Quintiles in a previous article and of the qualities that the quintile brings through, but we will look at all this in much more depth here. I have also long associated the quintile with the planet Venus in terms of the energies it expresses. Hopefully we will see by the end of this piece that these two Grand Quintiles will somewhat form the capstone, so-to-speak, of the recent Venus transit and will go a long way toward distributing the energies brought onto our planet by that transit.

We need to go back over what we know about quintiles before we launch into an exploration of the nuts and bolts of the upcoming configuration. As we go through all of this we need to keep in mind that, though this is a rare sort of alignment, it is not felt particularly strongly in the outer affairs of people. That in no way diminishes its importance or potency. But, the quintile is an esoteric aspect and functions more in the mental realms, hence its effect is not seen physically until later because it takes some time for changes in the mind to work out into physical manifestation. There is also another thing to keep in mind because of the rarity of the alignment: Just because it is rare and beautiful does not mean the Heavens will open and many of our problems will be solved. On the contrary, as we will shortly see, this particular alignment can initially bring circumstances with it that are seen as anything but spiritual and high-minded to most people, even though the benefits eventually brought by those circumstances invariably lead to a better state of affairs for humanity as a whole in the long run.

The Light of Knowlege

So, let us begin to unravel what is about to be bestowed upon us in the coming lunar festivals through these Grand Quintiles. As I have stated in an earlier article, a quintile is an aspect of 72 degrees that is associated with unique qualities of mind. The circle divided into 5 (72 degrees) carries with it the energy of the 5th creative Archetype, or Ray. This energy has been called the Ray of Concrete Knowledge, or Science. This is only its lower expression, though. The higher expression of this Ray or Quality is what we might call “esoteric psychology”—the relation of the human being to the greater Whole in which we all have our being. This 5th Ray is the Light of Knowledge itself and its Regent has been called “the Lord Who is Knowledge itself”. So, a quintile can confer this type of energy when it is found in a person's or event's chart. How that manifests will depend upon the planets involved and their placements within the chart, as well as the spiritual development of the individual. This Ray has a specific rulership over the mental plane or density and it links the three types of mind in all human beings—concrete (reasoning), higher (symbolic), and abstract (beyond all form). Hence, when quintiles are activated in a chart they bring with them the possibility that, by a linking of these three mental qualities, the Light of the Soul (which exists primarily beyond all mind) can pour forth in a much greater measure into the outer realms than has hitherto been the case. The preceding is the esoteric framework which underlies the operation of this aspect.

In strictly human terms, though, quintiles work in one of two ways with people. In a person who is spiritually focused it indicates an acute linkage between imagination and hard mentality. Therefore, this indicates a person who has more than the average ability for working with symbolism, for making the imaginative faculty usable in the mundane world, for seeing things in any given situation in a way that is lost on other people, for getting at the very essence of knowledge and for being able to synthesize and/or organize hard data (concrete knowledge) in truly unique ways. It can be and often is an aspect that indicates pure and true genius.

Much of what is passed off as genius is actually simply reorganization of already existent knowledge. True, there is a thing we could call organizational genius, but it has not the true spark of originality in it. It is this originality that the quintile confers or indicates. On the other hand, for the person who is materially focused quintiles often go unnoticed, primarily because their minds do not reach up into the realms of true imagination. They are “earth-bound”, for lack of a better term. However, when the quintile is activated and these people are given a glimpse of the higher realms, what they see is often misinterpreted and misappropriated and the Light the quintile bears is often de-stabilizing to such an individual. In this we see activated the phrase: “There is often a fine line between genius and madness.” Activated in a negative manner, then, the quintile will often bring with it uncontrollable compulsions and destructive behaviour as the mind then becomes “the slayer of the real”. It is also often implicated in sexual aberrations, the energetics of which would take to long to go into here.

Creative Genius

As a result of the factors outlined in the preceding paragraph, quintiles are found prominently in the charts of true creative geniuses, especially in science and the arts. There is a long litany of famously creative people who have quintiles to their Sun, prominent planets or in strong configuration with other planets. I will name but a few here so the picture becomes clearer. With artists, we have: al Biruni, Gauguin, Rockwell Kent, Henri Matisse, Michelangelo and Picasso. Among musicians, we have: Mozart, John Lennon, Liberace, Nat King Cole and “Cannonball” Adderly. Among actors, we have: Shelley Winters, Richard Pryor, Peter Ustinov, Peter Fonda, Julie Andrews, Jean Harlowe, Marilyn Monroe (also a famous victim), Jack Nicholson, Bruce Lee, Bob Crane, Bo Derek, Barbara Streisand, Audrey Hepburn, Jane Mansfield, Judy Garland and Liza Minelli, and Francis Ford Coppola. Among statesmen, despots and revolutionaries, we have: Martin Luther King, Dennis Kucinich, Oliver Cromwell, Douglass Haig, Conrad Adenaur, Bismarck, Hitler and Robespierre. Among scientists, we have: Einstein, Steve Wozniac, Alexander Fleming, and Galileo. And, I have only just barely scratched the surface with these people. I have only had limited lists from which to choose. Of these people, with some their particular genius might be called into question. Some of them—in fact a great many—were/are quite compulsive. A few were certainly unstable or even mad and a few were more victims than actually being able to consciously create through their process. All of these people were chosen at random from lists primarily to show the variety of ways in which quintiles can operate, for anyone who knows about these people's lives.

In part two of this article, Malvin Artley continues his discussion of the meaning of these remarkable cosmic events. These aspects stimulate the heights and depths of human achievement. By putting us in touch with the greater Archetypes we are empowered to be more than we were and to stand apart from the status quo and show our uniqueness as human beings.

Read part two of The Grand Quintile 2004

Malvin Artley is an accredited member of the American Federation of Astrologers. His primary focus over the past 25 years has been on the sciences as they express occultism and with bridging work between the two. His special interests in those fields are the human subtle energy system and all the chakras, or energy centres, physics and technology, astronomy and all aspects of Chinese occultism.
He sends out periodic emails about astrological happenings and developments. These letters are sent out as a gift and a service. If you wish to be added to or deleted from the mailing list please let me know. If you feel inspired to pass them on please do so, but do so without alteration or charge. They are sent to people of many persuasions, not just astrologers. Blessings. Click here to subscribe to Malvin's periodic letters.