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Mercury sextile Mars

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

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mercury sextile Mars is read as a mind that is very restless and never ceases to learn, quick, practical, perceptive and brave, easily detecting the weaknesses in other people's arguments. The tradition describes an expressive and lively conversationalist who generally means what they say and says what they mean, and who often makes the best decisions at the very last minute, Mars's own drive available to Mercury's thought as a resource to call on rather than a fusion to manage. Between two charts, one person's Mercury sextile another's Mars is read as a bond in which the Mars partner fuels the Mercury partner's thoughts and ideas, stimulating them to put those ideas into action; conversations are lively and productive, the exchanges stimulating and vigorous, and each partner genuinely challenges the other's thinking without the friction the harder aspects bring.

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. Mercury and Mars share a father without sharing a mother. Mercury is, in the standard telling, the son of Jupiter and Maia, daughter of the Titan Atlas. Mars is usually named son of Jupiter and Juno, though Ovid tells a stranger version, in which Juno, angry that Jupiter had produced Minerva without her, conceived Mars entirely on her own, by the touch of a magic flower, so that even the family's own genealogists cannot fully agree on his mother's part in the matter. Whichever telling is kept, the two gods stand as Jupiter's own children, one built for words and one for force. Set at this easier angle, the two half brothers cooperate rather than compete, Mars's own energy fuelling Mercury's own thought into something that can actually be acted on.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mercury:Mars:sextile.