⚺ Semi-sextile
Sun semi-sextile Moon
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.
- Angle
- 30°
- Orb used
- ±2°
- Type
- Soft
- Bodies
- ☉ ☽
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 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
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
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
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-square MoonForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile MoonSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- 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
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Sun and Moon actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.