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The Sun sextile the Sun

the transiting Sun's yearly passage in sextile to its own natal place, or one person's Sun sextile another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show the Sun sextile itself, since a single body cannot stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key instead through transit, roughly two months after the solar return and again roughly two months before the next one, when the transiting Sun reaches a sextile to its own birth place. Cafe Astrology's transit pages describe this stretch as a good period for dealing with other people, particularly on professional footing or with those holding some kind of authority, self-expression flowing smoothly and vitality and confidence both quietly increased. Between two charts, one person's Sun sextile another's is read as strong compatibility and mutual support: sources describe the two people understanding and standing in harmony with each other's basic needs, aims and general approach to life, a pairing that actively encourages personal growth and settles, without much friction, into a comfortable, natural connection.

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 even where both points on the wheel belong to the same body. The Sun meeting itself at an easy angle still carries the same old promise Sol Invictus gave the Romans at the winter solstice, a rebirth marked at the year's darkest point and then carried forward, the same light the Greeks had already named twice over in Helios, the Titan who personified it, and in Apollo, credited with the same solar quality under the name of enlightenment. A sextile between the Sun and itself, whether met yearly in transit or found between two people in synastry, asks only a little cooperation to put that returning light to use, an ease that still has to be taken up rather than simply inherited.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Sun:Sun:sextile.