Almagest

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The Sun sextile the Moon

the Sun sextile the Moon, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart a sextile between the Sun and the Moon is read, together with the trine, as the will and the feelings at peace with each other: a balanced personality in which goals and emotional needs pull the same way rather than against one another. The tradition describes these natives as personally popular, self-confident and relaxed enough to put other people at ease, needing, as a sextile always does, a little conscious effort to activate the ease rather than receiving it automatically; the caution repeated alongside the praise is that a life this settled can drift into avoiding conflict rather than working through it. Between two charts, one person's Sun sextile another's Moon is read as a natural, flowing compatibility, the two people cooperating easily and able to rely on and depend on each other. Sources note the same reservation given for the trine: an ease this available can, for some pairings, feel too comfortable to provide much stimulation, even as it delivers real and durable support.

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, in contrast to the discordant square and opposition. Solar and lunar deities appear together, across the comparative mythological record, most often as close kin: siblings such as Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi in Japan, or, in Inuit myth, Igaluk and his sister the sun goddess Malina, who became sun and moon only after a violent conflict between them, the sky ever after read as replaying that same tension, Igaluk chasing Malina across it without end. The kinship this key draws on is that closeness itself, not any peace the myth describes; the ease read into a sextile comes from the aspect's own harmonious classification, not from the story behind the two lights.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Sun:Moon:sextile.