Moon semi-sextile Mars

What these two are about together

Need and drive. How quickly feeling becomes action, and what a person does with anger.

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

Feelings translate into action cleanly. Associated with people who deal with a problem rather than sitting in it.

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

Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Moon and Mars at other angles

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