Aspect type
The sextile aspect
A sextile is two planets a sixth of the way round the chart from one another — two signs apart, which lands them in elements that differ and get on: fire with air, earth with water.
Planets in trine want the same thing and pursue it by the same means. Planets in sextile want different things that happen to sit well together, so nothing between them runs by itself. Somebody has to start it, and until somebody does, the two simply operate in parallel.
Why it has to be taken up
The word attached to this angle is opportunity, and for once the cliché is pointing at something structural rather than at a mood. The two planets are near enough to be in contact and different enough that the contact has to be arranged. A chart is perfectly capable of carrying a sextile that never once came to anything, and plenty do.
It is also the angle allowed the least room. A sextile is counted only while the two planets sit closer to exact than any other contact requires, which makes it the easiest thing to miss when reading quickly, and the easiest to leave out of a description without anyone noticing the omission.
Minor is still the wrong word for it. A sextile that gets used tends to be used on purpose, and on purpose is a different quality from effortless. What comes of a trine, a person takes for granted; what comes of a sextile, they generally remember choosing.
Questions
- Is a sextile just a weaker trine?
- It is a different arrangement rather than a smaller one. A trine joins two planets inside one element, so they agree by default and neither has to do anything about it. A sextile joins two elements that differ and get along, so they cooperate only once something puts them to work on the same job. One of the two can be ignored for a lifetime without any loss being felt, and it is not the trine.
- Does a sextile need something to set it off?
- In practice, yes. The angle does not switch itself on. What usually brings the two planets into the same piece of work is something outside them entirely — a decision, an occasion, a job that happens to need both, a person who asks. That is why a sextile reads so differently at twenty and at fifty, in charts that have not changed at all.
- Is a sextile a good aspect?
- It is workable, which is not quite the same thing. The two planets are in a position to help each other and nothing at all obliges them to. Whether that ends up counting for anything depends on what else in the chart is willing to make the arrangement, and on how much of the person’s attention it ever gets.
What changes the reading
Closeness counts for more here than elsewhere. The angle is allowed so little room to begin with that the distance between a sextile which is nearly exact and one at the outer edge of what still counts is proportionally large, and a sextile at that outer edge is faint enough that it is fair to ask whether it is doing anything at all.
It also competes badly for attention. Whatever else those two planets are involved in will usually be louder, and the quiet workable thing gets attended to last. That is a fact about how charts are read rather than about the angle, and it is worth naming because it is the commonest way a sextile goes unspent.
The pair of elements sets the tempo. Fire with air is mostly a matter of saying the thing out loud and going; earth with water is a matter of building something slowly around a feeling, and the two move at speeds that are not comparable. A sextile is a standing arrangement between two parts of a chart, and standing arrangements lapse.