Sun sextile Moon

What these two are about together

The two lights, and the oldest question in a chart: whether what you are becoming and what you actually need are pulling in the same direction. Every tradition treats this pair as the most important relationship in a birth chart.

What a sextile does

A sextile is traditionally read as opportunity rather than event. The two planets are in compatible elements and can work together easily, but the tradition is specific that a sextile describes something available rather than something that arrives. It is the aspect most often described as a door that is unlocked and still shut.

How it reads

What you want and what you need agree. Associated with an unforced sense of self and, in the tradition, with a comparatively settled early home life.

In practice

Reads as ease that is not automatic. Where a trine tends to be used without thinking, a sextile tends to be noticed and then either taken up or left alone.

What to watch for

Nothing happening. A sextile that goes unused is the most common way this aspect is experienced, and it is not a failure of the aspect.

The two planets

Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming

Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you

Sun and Moon at other angles

• Sun conjunction MoonTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Sun semi-sextile MoonThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Sun semi-square MoonForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Sun quintile MoonSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Sun square MoonNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Sun trine MoonA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Sun sesquiquadrate MoonA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Sun quincunx MoonA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Sun opposition MoonDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis