Mercury semi-sextile Mars

What these two are about together

Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.

What a semi-sextile does

A semi-sextile puts two planets in adjacent signs, which share no element, no quality and no polarity. The tradition treats it as the mildest contact in the table and disagrees with itself about whether it is helpful at all: some read it as a small supportive link, others as a low-level irritation between two things that simply do not speak the same language. Both readings agree it is quiet.

How it reads

Mental energy that goes somewhere. Associated with people who think clearly under pressure and who finish what they start explaining.

In practice

Read as a minor note rather than a theme. A semi-sextile is worth mentioning when almost nothing else is in orb, and worth leaving out of a summary when anything major is.

What to watch for

Overreading it. Adjacent signs are genuinely awkward together, but at this strength the tradition does not expect the awkwardness to be conspicuous.

The two planets

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Mercury and Mars at other angles

• Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Mercury square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Mercury trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Mercury opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis