Almagest

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Mercury sextile Mercury

the transiting Mercury's periodic pass in sextile to its own natal place, or one person's Mercury sextile another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Mercury sextile to itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the within-chart version of this contact belongs to the transiting sky, where Mercury's own fast orbit brings it back around to a sextile of its natal place several times a year. Cafe Astrology's own transit page reads this pass as a time for discovering interesting information exactly when it is needed, a lighter and more occasional window than the conjunction's own return. Between two charts, one person's Mercury sextile another's is read as stimulating, interesting conversation that comes easily: sources describe an ease of communication and complementary interests that make the exchange enjoyable, two minds that do not need to work hard at being understood by each other.

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. Hermes meeting Hermes, or one chart's herald meeting another's, has no single myth of its own, since the god does not typically appear twice in the same story except as messenger to himself; the tradition instead reads the doubling as a mark of the god's own particular gift, recognition. Mercury is named a god of boundaries, commerce, communication, eloquence and travel, patron of the marketplace and the road where strangers meet as equals and come to understand each other's terms. Set at this easier angle, two minds carrying his signature recognise in each other the same fluency, traders who need no interpreter because they already speak the same practical tongue.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mercury:Mercury:sextile.