⚺ Semi-sextile
Mercury semi-sextile South Node
The old knowledge is genuinely useful. Associated with being the person who already knows.
- Angle
- 30°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☿ ☋
What these two are about together
Thinking and what is already known. Associated with fluency in something learned long ago, and with the difference between knowing a subject and still being curious about it.
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
The old knowledge is genuinely useful. Associated with being the person who already knows.
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
South Node: What comes easily, and what you hide in
Mercury and South Node at other angles
- Mercury conjunction South NodeTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Mercury semi-square South NodeForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Mercury sextile South NodeSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Mercury quintile South NodeSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Mercury square South NodeNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Mercury trine South NodeA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Mercury sesquiquadrate South NodeA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Mercury quincunx South NodeA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Mercury opposition South NodeDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Mercury and South Node actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.