Sun sextile Pluto

What these two are about together

Identity and power. The most intense pairing the Sun makes, and the one the tradition reads as being about control, survival and what a person will not let go of.

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

Power that is usable rather than overwhelming. Associated with resilience, with the ability to start again after loss, and with an instinct for what is really going on beneath a situation.

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

Pluto: Power, compulsion and what will not stay buried

Sun and Pluto at other angles

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