The Sextile

Think of a friend who introduces you to the person you needed to meet. They do not do the work for you, but the door is open, and if you walk through it things go well. That is a sextile: an opportunity between two parts of you, waiting to be used.

The sextile is the angle of 60 degrees, a sixth of the circle. Two planets in sextile usually sit two signs apart, in elements that get on: fire with air, earth with water.

The geometry

Signs two apart always share a polarity: both active (fire and air) or both receptive (earth and water). Fire and air feed each other; earth and water nourish each other. So planets in sextile tend to cooperate, and the link feels friendly, lively and easy to use.

The sixth of the circle

Here is a lovely piece of geometry. Six sextiles fit exactly round the circle, and if you join their points you draw a perfect hexagon, the shape of a honeycomb or a snowflake. In the pattern called a kite, two sextiles join a grand trine to the planet opposite it. The sextile was one of the five aspects Ptolemy recognised nearly two thousand years ago, the gentlest of the four that join different signs.

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