Mercury Sextile Mars Synastry: When How One of You Talks Fits What Drives the Other from a Different Side

Every birth chart has a Mercury and a Mars, and they do different jobs. Mercury is how you think and talk: what you notice, how you explain, ask and joke, how quickly you pick things up, and the small daily trade of messages and questions. Mars is what drives you: your energy, your effort, your initiative, what you go after and how soon. In this contact, one person's Mercury is about 60° from the other person's Mars, a sixth of the way round the zodiac.

A sextile usually joins signs of two different elements that get on: fire with air, or earth with water. (Usually, not always: a sextile that starts near the edge of a sign can reach into a different pairing.) The signs are two apart. The reading built on it is a fit between differences: the way one of you puts things and the way the other gets going come from different temperaments that suit each other.

It is easy, and what comes of it depends on whether it is taken up. One of you may put an idea into words and the other may find a way to try it, and neither has to give up their own way of doing it. What comes out may be something neither would have made alone.

A fit like this can show up between friends, siblings, teammates, neighbours, or a parent and their child as readily as between partners, and it is one contact among many in any two charts.

In this contact one of you brings Mercury and the other brings Mars, and the two of you stand in different but friendly elements. Call them the Mercury person and the Mars person.

If you are the Mercury person, you are mostly just thinking aloud, explaining, asking, working out what to say. Around the Mars person you may notice that your idea comes back with something added: a practical test, a different order, a way of doing it that you had not pictured. Your words tend to meet an effort that is not an echo of them.

If you are the Mars person, you are mostly just going at what you are going at: the job, the project, the next step. Around the Mercury person you may find that your plan gets a name or a reason you had not thought of, or a question that sharpens it. You may feel that what you are doing makes more sense out loud, and that the suggestion is one you can take up or leave.

Because your elements differ, what each of you adds may be a welcome surprise to the other.

If the link also runs the other way, from the Mars person's Mercury to the Mercury person's Mars, each of you is both. Then each of you is, at different moments, the one who offers and the one who adds.

Put simply, the Mercury person tends to offer an idea and the Mars person tends to offer a way to try it. In a sextile each adds something the other would not have reached for first.

The Mercury person often gives the Mars person a way of seeing the task: a question, a comparison, a different order of steps. The Mars person often gives the Mercury person a way of testing the thought: a first small action, a deadline, a prototype to point at. Each adds to the other and neither has to give up their own way.

What each may want is for the other to take part. Each may want to be asked as well as told: the Mercury person may want the idea answered and not only started, and the Mars person may want the way of trying it agreed and not only handed over. A sextile is an opening more than a guarantee, taken up or not.

Day to day it can show in small joint efforts: one of you drafts and the other builds, or one asks a question and the other goes to look. The result may be something neither would have made alone.

These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how a fit between different approaches might show up across different kinds of pairs.

• Classmates. Two people have to make a map of their school for a project. One writes the key and the labels; the other walks the corridors with a clipboard and pencils in the lines. The map needs both.
• Parent and child. A child wants a den in the garden and has described it in detail. Their parent fetches a ladder and two tarpaulins, and the child corrects where the doorway belongs.
• Colleagues. One colleague writes a brief in careful sentences. The other tries it out on a real order and reports which line did not work. The second version of the brief is shorter and clearer.
• Siblings. Two siblings plan a cycling weekend. One has read up on routes and describes the hills; the other loads the bikes and fits the lights, and the route is chosen on the way to the station.
• Old friends. One friend sends a long message full of ideas for a reunion. The other replies with a date and a booked room, and the ideas are sorted afterwards.

In each sketch one person offers and the other adds, in a way the first would not have thought of.

A sextile usually joins a fire sign with an air sign, or an earth sign with a water sign. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, air is talk and ideas, earth is practical steadiness, water is feeling. So there are four versions, depending on who has which element.

Mercury in fire, Mars in air. The Mercury person's bold, quick way of speaking meets a Mars person whose drive runs through ideas and suggestions. It might look like two team-mates before a match, one calling a plan in a sentence and the other adding three ways it could be varied.

Mercury in air, Mars in fire. The Mercury person's questions and wordplay meet a Mars person whose drive is to act at once. It might look like two siblings at a market stall, one inventing slogans for the produce and the other already on the crate, calling them out.

Mercury in earth, Mars in water. The Mercury person's plain, exact speech meets a Mars person whose effort is fuelled by feeling. It might look like a parent writing out a careful timetable for a grown child's first week in a new job, and the child, who cares a great deal about getting it right, taking the timetable as a sign of how much it matters.

Mercury in water, Mars in earth. The Mercury person speaks from feeling and memory, and the Mars person works steadily and practically. It might look like two friends re-covering a set of old chairs: one tells stories about who sat where, and the other pulls the fabric tight and tacks it down.

A fit between differences is easy, and it has its own texture.

It can be left unused. The idea and the way of trying it are both within reach, so each may wait for the other to begin. A plan may stay a plan because neither feels pressed to start.

It may be taken for granted. The Mercury person's words and the Mars person's effort are easy to give, so each may forget that the other is contributing something different.

It can settle into one routine. Two people who work well together in one way may keep to that way and not try the other.

It can leave each of you free to stay yourself. Neither has to talk or work like the other to be understood.

The older sources used here say nothing about a Mercury and a Mars a sixth of the circle apart. The only passages in them that name Mercury together with Mars are William Lilly's (*Christian Astrology*, 1647, Book III, p. 638) and James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381). Both are about the opposition. Neither says anything about the sextile or separates it from the trine, so nothing from them is used here.

The distinction this page draws, that a sextile reads as a fit between differences because it usually joins fire with air or earth with water, is based on the kinds of sign a sextile usually joins. It is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Mercury and Mars. The same goes for everything else on this page: who the Mercury person and the Mars person are, what each gives and may want, the element variations and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• One of you tends to start a thought and the other to try it in a different way.
• A job, a plan or a trip has come out better because you each did a different part.
• One of you has asked the question that got something going.
• A few messages across a week may be plenty, and a longer call still goes easily.
• You may find you enjoy working on things you would have done differently on your own.