By Dorian Grimault, astrologer · Published · updated
The sextile aspect links two bodies a sixth of the circle apart, 60°. It is the smallest of the aspects Ptolemy recognized, and the most discreet of the major aspects. It joins two functions that understand each other, without pushing them toward each other: an open door rather than a path laid out in advance. Here is what Ptolemy and William Lilly say about it, the tolerance AstralPro grants it, and the sextiles in the birth chart of Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data).
Ptolemy closes his list of aspects with the sextile (Tetrabiblos, book I, chapter 13): two signs apart, 60°, two thirds of a right angle. It is a third of the opposition, and the ratio of the square to the sextile is sesquialter, 3 to 2.
He counts it with the trine among the harmonious aspects, because it joins signs of the same kind. The sextile does indeed join two masculine signs, one Fire and the other Air, or two feminine signs, one Earth and the other Water. The elements differ, but they are compatible.
William Lilly, in Christian Astrology (1647, book I, chapter XIX), defines the sextile as the distance of a sixth part of the zodiac, six times 60° making 360°, and notes that it is also called a sexangular aspect or a hexagon. With the trine, he makes it an argument of love, unity and friendship, adding that the trine is the more forcible of the two.
He also gives the example of a partile sextile, that is, exact to the degree: the Sun at 1° Taurus and the Moon at 1° Cancer. Such an aspect, he writes, is a strong argument for the perfecting of any matter.
The sextile is harmonious, but its harmony is not passive. The two functions understand and stimulate each other, provided you call on them: it is an aptitude, an ease waiting to be put to work. The legend of the aspect table in your report sums it up in one word: opportunity.
To read it, ask yourself how the two principles reinforce each other when you set them in motion. With the Sun sextile the Moon, your aspirations and your emotional needs fit together without major conflict between head and heart. It is no guarantee of balance, but an available coherence, to be cultivated.
In your birth chart and in the Book, the orb of the sextile is 6°: two bodies 54° to 66° apart are in sextile. It is the narrowest tolerance of the five major aspects, and the same for all bodies. In the aspect grid, the name of the sextile appears in blue.
Counting in degrees rather than signs has a consequence: a sextile can be out of sign. A body at 28° Aries and another at 2° Cancer are 64° apart, in sextile for AstralPro, although their signs are three signs apart, a square distance. In Camille's chart, all the sextiles join signs two signs apart, as the classical scheme expects.
Other uses are tighter still: the wheel draws a sextile only at 3° or less, the compatibility table keeps it at 3°, the solar return at 5°, and the Book at 4° when it looks for a yod, a figure in which two bodies in sextile point together toward a third. The sextile remains a major aspect: when the aspects the chapters discuss are chosen, it enjoys the same advantage over the minor aspects as the conjunction or the square.
Camille Morel, AstralPro's sample chart (fictional data), has her stellium in Scorpio, a Water sign. Her sextiles connect it to Earth: to Virgo, where Chiron and the Midheaven are, and to Capricorn, where Uranus and Neptune sit. Her grid counts seven, and all seven are among the twenty aspects discussed in chapter I. Four also open a section of Life Domains:
The other three are Sun sextile Neptune (2°59', Separating), Neptune sextile Ascendant (2°57') and Uranus sextile Ascendant (3°12'), the last two with no readable direction since the Ascendant is involved.
All of them link Scorpio to Virgo or Capricorn, three feminine signs. This is exactly the case Ptolemy describes: a sextile joins two signs of the same kind, here Water and Earth, different but compatible elements.
The report does not discuss every aspect in the grid: it chooses twenty for chapter I, and one per section for Life Domains. Three criteria decide. The first is the family: the five major aspects come well ahead of the four minors, and the sextile is one of them. The second is the substance of the two bodies: an aspect is worth what its weaker end is worth. The Sun, the Moon and the other five traditional planets rank highest, then Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, then the angles, the North Node and Lilith, and Chiron last. The third is the orb: the tighter it is, the more the aspect weighs.
That is why a sextile to Chiron, like Venus's in Camille's chart, can be kept despite Chiron's modest rank: it is major, and its 1°22' orb is tight. A sextile between two of the three slow planets, by contrast, would be ruled out automatically, whatever its orb: a whole generation shares it.
With its 3° threshold, Camille's wheel makes a visible sort. It draws Jupiter sextile Midheaven, Sun sextile Uranus, Neptune sextile Ascendant and Sun sextile Neptune, all under 3°. It leaves out Uranus sextile Ascendant, at 3°12', and the two sextiles to Chiron, which the wheel does not connect. A sextile missing from the drawing is therefore not an oversight: it is wider than the threshold or touches a point the drawing ignores.
Direction tells a story too. The Sun's sextiles to Uranus and Neptune are separating: the Sun is moving away, the aspect has already formed. Venus, on the other hand, is moving toward Chiron. In the selection, this applying aspect receives a slight extra weight, without ever overtaking a separating aspect that is clearly tighter.
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