Sextile

Meaning

A sextile joins two bodies a sixth of the circle apart. Their signs are two apart and share a polarity, so their elements suit each other: fire with air, earth with water. Aries is sextile Gemini and Aquarius; Taurus is sextile Cancer and Pisces.

The sextile is harmonious, like the trine, but lighter and more active. Where the trine flows by itself, the sextile opens a door that still has to be walked through: an opportunity, a skill that answers to practice, a connection that appears when it is reached for. It is often read as the aspect of cooperation and learning.

Because it asks for a step, the sextile is easy to overlook. Its promise often shows only once it is used: the course taken, the call made, two interests finally combined. Many people discover their sextiles by acting on small openings.

In practice

• Mercury sextile Mars: quick, direct thinking that turns into action; at ease in debate and in practical problem-solving.
• Venus sextile Uranus: affection that likes freedom and surprise; friendships across differences.
• The Sun sextile the Ascendant: identity and manner in easy agreement. In Ulune the orb shrinks to 4° when one end of a sextile is an angle.
• Two bodies in sextile, both quincunx a third, make a yod; two sextiles and two trines around two oppositions make a mystic rectangle.

Across traditions

• Indian astrology gives Saturn a special glance at the third sign from its own, which is a sextile counted by sign.
• Human Design has no aspects; what it reads between two positions is whether their gates complete a channel.

Origin and history

In the Tetrabiblos (2nd century), Ptolemy describes the sextile as a hexagonal distance between two signs, two thirds of a right angle, two signs or 60°, and counts it with the trine among the harmonious configurations, since it joins signs of the same kind. The name comes from the Latin sextilis, of a sixth.

How Ulune calculates it

• The orb is 6° between two bodies, and 4° when one of them is an angle. In synastry it is 4°, or 5° when the Sun or the Moon is involved, and never more than 4° to an angle.
• A sextile between signs that are not two apart is marked out of sign.
• Sextiles take part in three of the configurations Ulune looks for: the yod, the kite and the mystic rectangle.

Correspondences