The Sun sextile Pluto
the Sun sextile Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry
What the tradition reads
Within a single chart the Sun sextile Pluto is read as making it easy and natural to pursue real passions and stay focused on long term goals without the fear that can accompany Pluto's harder contacts. The tradition describes natives who embrace psychological growth willingly, genuinely enjoy solving mysteries, and often feel they carry some particular calling, finding meaning in ordinary events other people pass over; they are perceptive, not easily rattled, and generally well respected, willing to help others both practically and spiritually. They are not natural rule-breakers, but comfort with the darker aspects of human nature leaves them willing to bend a rule when the situation genuinely calls for it. Between two charts, one person's Sun sextile another's Pluto is read as belonging to the pairing's easier register: sources describe the fascination and intensity that mark this contact in general as showing up here with less drama and an easier expression than the conjunction, square or opposition tend to produce.
The story
A sextile is sixty degrees, a sixth of the circle; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs names it, together with the trine, harmonious, since the two signs it joins are of the same kind, all masculine or all feminine, a judgment about the angle itself that holds regardless of which two bodies occupy it. Pluto's myth is Hades, lord of the dead, one of three brothers who divided the cosmos after their father's fall, taking the underworld while sky and sea went to his brothers; the Eleusinian Mysteries later softened the same god into Plouton, wealth-giver, a dignified and faithful ruler rather than only the harsh figure of Persephone's abduction. Offered only a cooperative angle to a planet this deep, the Sun gets to draw on the underworld's own wealth, in the mysteries' own sense of the word, without being asked to descend into it uninvited.
Written from
- Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book I, Chapter XVI (Ashmand translation, Project Gutenberg ebook 70850, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/70850/70850-h/70850-h.htm)
- Wikipedia, Aspect (astrology)
- Wikipedia, Pluto (mythology)
- Wikipedia, Pluto
- Cafe Astrology, Sun - Pluto Aspects in the Natal Chart
- Cafe Astrology, Synastry: Sun - Pluto Aspects
Corpus key aspect:Sun:Pluto:sextile.