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Mars sextile Pluto

Mars sextile Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mars sextile Pluto is read, together with the trine, as adding a layer of intensity, strategy and resourcefulness to the personality: the native is committed, determined and passionate, the sextile's version of this gift available rather than constant, called upon when circumstances actually reward the added intensity rather than imposed on every ordinary situation the way the square's crisis-proneness can be. Between two charts, Mars-Pluto interaspects are read as stimulating, sources say, more intensely so than most contacts, the battles-of-wills warning reserved for the pairing's difficult aspects rather than for an easy one like this.

The story

A sextile is sixty degrees, a sixth of the circle, one of the four configurations Ptolemy names, read through the compatible signs it joins and asking for a degree of active engagement before its ease is felt; Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect calls it similar to the trine but less intense, indicating compatibility and harmony. Mars is the god the Romans set over war, and Pluto is the god the Greeks set over what war, among other things, has always produced in quantity: the dead who cross into his kingdom and do not return. The two gods share no single myth between them, but they share a domain each keeps distinct, one causing what the other receives. Set at this easier angle, force can draw on Pluto's own depth and intensity without being consumed by it, a resource called on rather than one that simply takes over.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Pluto:sextile.