Sun sextile Neptune

What these two are about together

Identity and dissolution. What happens to a sense of self when the edges are not firm, which the tradition reads as both the artistic gift and the central difficulty of this pair.

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

Imagination is available without cost. Read as creative facility and as a natural, undramatic kind of empathy.

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

Neptune: Imagination, dissolution and what you cannot see clearly

Sun and Neptune at other angles

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