Mars Sextile Mars Synastry: When Two Different Ways of Going at Things Fit

Every birth chart has a Mars. It is what drives you: your energy, your effort, your initiative, what you go after and how you go after it. In this contact your Mars and their Mars are about 60° apart, a sixth of the way round the zodiac.

A sextile usually joins signs of two different elements that suit each other: fire with air, or earth with water. (Usually, not always: near the edge of a sign, the pattern can shift.) That is the geometry. The reading built on it is a fit between differences: your way of going at things and theirs are not the same, but the two can slot together. In either pairing the two of you are alike in some respects and unlike in others.

Because both of you have a Mars, the contact looks the same from either side. It can appear between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, a parent and their child, or partners, and it is only one of many contacts in any two charts.

A sextile joins signs of different elements, so the likeness is one of fit and not of temperament, and the two of you can still work in step. One of you may like to begin with a burst and the other to begin with a plan; one may go in a straight line and the other by a loop; one may want the finished thing and the other the doing of it. Where the two meet, a job may get done by both.

Making a decision can look like an exchange. One of you says what they would do first, the other says what they would do second, and the sequence that comes out is one neither of you would have written alone. A low day for effort may find the two of you on different jobs in the same room, each moving at a different speed, and the day still feels shared.

A disagreement about method may show up as two ways of getting to the same place, which can be interesting before it is anything else. On a quiet evening, one of you might be tinkering and the other reading about tinkering, with each aware of the other's work.

Because the fit comes from differences, it can show in the places where your two methods overlap: the job you both want finished, the tool you both like, the hour you both find good for starting. Those overlaps may be small, and much of an ordinary day may rest on them.

One thing this contact can give is a second way of doing the same task. Each of you can give the other an alternative that is close enough to try and different enough to be useful: a shortcut, a more careful order, a different place to start.

Each of you can also give the other the experience of effort that is met halfway. Your way of going at things is neither copied nor opposed, and the other's way adds to it.

What each may want is for the difference to be taken as a contribution. Your way may matter to you more when it is used, and not merely tolerated. Either of you may also want to be asked how a thing will be done before it is done, since the two ways can fit and still not be the same.

In a sextile these wants can be met as a matter of course, since each of you may already be curious about the other's method.

Sketches, not reports: invented moments that show how the contact might look in different kinds of pairs.

• Friends. Two friends haul a stuck car out of a muddy verge. One fetches the tow rope and the other walks round to look at the angle, and the car comes free on the first try.
• Colleagues. Two colleagues run a lunchtime fitness class at work. One designs the circuits and the other keeps the stopwatch and the music, and the room finishes on time.
• Siblings. Two siblings put up a marquee for a family reunion. One lays out every peg first, the other starts at a corner and unrolls, and the two sides meet in the middle.
• Flatmates. Two flatmates hang a hammock between the balcony posts. One tests the knots, the other holds the posts steady, and both take their turn in it.
• Parent and child. A parent and their child build a go-kart from a kit. The child spends the first hour on the steering and the parent on the frame, and then they swap.
• Partners. Two partners learn to make fresh pasta. One is quick with the rolling and the other careful with the cutting, and the table fills with more than either planned.

In each sketch the two do the job differently, and the job gets done in the space between.

A sextile usually joins two different elements that suit each other, and the pairing gives its own flavour. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, air is talk and ideas, earth is practical steadiness, water is feeling.

Fire and air. One of you may supply the spark and the other the plan or the words for it. It might look like two cousins who organise a neighbourhood supper, one deciding to do it and the other drafting the flyer and the guest list.

Earth and water. One of you may supply the steadiness and the other the care for how it lands. It might look like two colleagues who set up a quiet room at a hospital, one sorting the practical details and the other choosing what will make the room feel kind.

In either pairing the two of you may be alike enough to work in step and different enough to cover more ground together than either would alone.

A job with several stages, such as clearing a garden, preparing a stall or learning a new skill together, shows how this can work. At the start, the two of you may break the job up in different ways, one of you listing the stages and the other beginning on whichever is nearest, and the two approaches can sit side by side for a few minutes. Each of you may borrow from the other along the way, and the job may come to feel partly yours both.

The fit between two manners can be seen in small things.

A plan changes halfway through. The two of you may each have a different idea of what to do about it, and the plan that comes out of the exchange may show a bit of each of you.

A deadline is near. One of you may take the first half at speed and the other the second half with care, and neither has to claim the other's half.

An evening with nothing planned. You may each drift to a different corner of the home and then, without a signal, settle at the same table.

The older sources used here say nothing about a Mars and a Mars a sixth of the circle apart. The one passage in them about the same planet in two charts is James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381). It is about the same place, which is a conjunction, and it says nothing about places at an angle, so nothing from it is used here. Nothing in the sources used here tells a sextile from a trine.

The distinction this page makes, that a sextile reads as a fit between differences because it usually joins signs of two different elements that suit each other, is based on the kinds of sign a sextile usually joins. It is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Mars and Mars. The same goes for everything else on this page: what the contact is like, what each of you gives and may want, the element pairings and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• You get a job done by different routes and arrive together.
• One of you starts with the doing and the other with the plan, and the order feels right.
• Each of you picks up something from how the other does it.
• Others describe you as a good team without being much alike.
• Sometimes you find yourselves using the other's method without having decided to.