⚺ Semi-sextile
Venus semi-sextile Mars
Desire that moves easily. Associated with warmth, creative energy and an uncomplicated relationship with wanting things.
- Angle
- 30°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ♀ ♂
What these two are about together
Attraction and drive. The classical pairing for desire, and for the difference between wanting something and going after 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
Desire that moves easily. Associated with warmth, creative energy and an uncomplicated relationship with wanting things.
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
Venus: Values, attraction and what you find beautiful
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Famous charts with venus semi-sextile mars
494 of the 13,000 documented charts on this site have it. The 24 best known are below. Every one is computed from that figure’s own birth data, with the source of the birth time stated on their page.
- John LennonMusician, co-founder of The Beatles · 0.55° orb
- John F. Kennedy35th U.S. President · 1.69° orb
- Frederic ChopinComposer and pianist · 0.84° orb
- Malcolm XHuman rights activist · 1.23° orb
- William ShakespearePlaywright and poet · 0.08° orb
- Alexander FlemingBacteriologist · 1.51° orb
- Edwin HubbleAstronomer · 1.27° orb
- Leonard CohenSongwriter and poet · 0.89° orb
- Victor HugoNovelist & poet · 1.66° orb
- Aleksandr SolzhenitsynNovelist & historian · 0.24° orb
- Henry David ThoreauWriter & naturalist · 0.08° orb
- J. Robert OppenheimerPhysicist · 0.01° orb
- Ernest RutherfordPhysicist · 0.9° orb
- Edward ElgarComposer · 1.67° orb
- Roy OrbisonSinger & songwriter · 0.37° orb
- CaravaggioPainter · 1.94° orb
- Henri MatissePainter · 0.1° orb
- Willem de KooningPainter · 0.88° orb
- Antoni GaudíArchitect · 1.07° orb
- Satyajit RayFilm director · 0.73° orb
- John Adams2nd U.S. President · 0.74° orb
- Martin Van Buren8th U.S. President · 1.45° orb
- Theodore Roosevelt26th U.S. President · 0.2° orb
- Warren G. Harding29th U.S. President · 0.19° orb
Venus and Mars at other angles
- Venus conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Venus semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Venus sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Venus quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Venus square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Venus trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Venus sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Venus quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
- Venus opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis
Venus and Mars also have a midpoint: the halfway point between them, read as a third place in the chart rather than as an angle between two.
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Venus and Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.