Almagest

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Saturn sextile Saturn

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

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Saturn sextile to itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit, at the points in Saturn's cycle where its transiting place forms a sextile to its own natal one. Sources describe the pass as adding a stable, secure and steady theme to a person's life, a period suited to solid, gradual progress and to strengthening a long term project so that it can withstand future pressure; the same sources credit the period's success less to any dramatic new insight than to a willingness to humble oneself to what has already been learned from past mistakes. Between two charts, one person's Saturn sextile another's is, together with the trine, one of Saturn's two harmonious contacts, sixty degrees apart. None of the sources consulted for this entry gives a separate reading for this specific contact in synastry, so none is offered here.

The story

A sextile is sixty degrees, a sixth of the circle; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs calls it, together with the trine, harmonious, since the signs it joins are of the same kind, all masculine or all feminine. Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect rates the sextile as similar in influence to the trine but less intense, an easy aspect that indicates compatibility and harmony and, unlike the trine, is described chiefly as providing opportunity rather than automatic ease. Saturn meeting Saturn has no myth of doubling to draw on, since the god does not typically face himself in the old stories; the tradition instead returns to the moment his own reign was renewed rather than ended. The Saturn page records a tradition that, after being supplanted by his son Jupiter and driven out of Greece, Saturn arrived in Italy "dethroned and fugitive" and was received there by Janus, who rewarded him with a share of the kingdom for the agriculture and civilization he brought with him, so that Saturn ruled again, this time alongside another. Set at this easier angle, two charts' Saturns are read the same way: not a single dramatic recognition, but one old, careful power finding that another is willing to share the ground with it rather than contest it.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Saturn:Saturn:sextile.