Synastry contact

Mercury Sextile Venus Synastry: When How One of You Talks Fits What the Other Enjoys

Short answer: Mercury sextile Venus synastry (comparing two birth charts) means that how one of you thinks and talks and what the other enjoys (taste, affection, what makes time together pleasant) come from different but friendly sides. A sextile usually joins signs of two different elements that get on (fire with air, earth with water), so the contact reads as a fit between differences: the words of one of you and the taste of the other add to each other without being the same thing. The one with Mercury tends to offer the idea, and the one with Venus tends to give it a place to go. It is one contact among many, and what gets built on it is up to the two of you.

How one of you talks, and what the other enjoys, from different sides that fit

Every birth chart has a Mercury and a Venus, and they do different jobs. Mercury is how you think and talk: what you notice, how you explain, what you read, how quickly you pick things up, and the small daily exchange of messages, jokes and questions. Venus is what you enjoy: your taste, your pleasures, how you show affection, and what makes time with someone pleasant. In this contact, one person's Mercury is about 60° from the other person's Venus, 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.) So the way one of you talks and the way the other likes to be spoken to come from different temperaments that suit each other. It reads as a fit between differences. It is easy: conversation, jokes and shared interests may come up readily, and each of you can add something the other would not have said.

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

Who is who in this contact

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

If you are the Mercury person, you are mostly just thinking aloud, and you may notice that the Venus person responds with something you did not quite expect and are glad of: a different angle, a calmer or livelier tone, a question that opens the idea out. Your words tend to meet an enjoyment that is not an echo of them.

If you are the Venus person, you are mostly enjoying what you enjoy, and the Mercury person's talk can add something to it that you would not have reached for yourself: a name for the thing, a fact about it, a way of looking at it. You may find that what they say gives your pleasures more shape, and that you want to answer.

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 Venus person's Mercury to the Mercury person's Venus, each of you is both.

What each gives, and what each may want

Put simply, the Mercury person tends to offer an idea and the Venus person tends to give it a place to go.

The Mercury person gives information, questions and ways of putting things that are different from the Venus person's own but easy to take in. The Venus person gives enjoyment in a different register, which can turn a passing remark into a conversation. Each adds to the other and neither has to give up their own way of doing it.

What each may want is for the other to join in. The Mercury person may want a reply and not only a pleasant nod. The Venus person may want to be asked what they think, and not only told.

Day to day it can show in small collaborations: one of you finds a word and the other chooses the colour, one researches the trip and the other says which of the places feels right. The result may be something neither would have made alone.

How it might look

These are sketches, not reports: a few ways a fit between different tastes might show up between different kinds of pairs.

Classmates. Two people are preparing a presentation. One writes out the argument; the other arranges how it will look on the screen. Neither is sure whose it is once it is done, and both are fine with that.
Parent and child. A parent explains what a word means. Their child, who prefers pictures, draws it, and the drawing becomes how the family remembers the word.
Flatmates. One flatmate reads the recipe out; the other tastes and decides what it needs. Dinner is a conversation with a pot in it.
Siblings. Two siblings plan a surprise for a relative. One has the list and the schedule, the other has the sense of what the relative would like. The plan needs both.
Colleagues. One colleague drafts a proposal in dry, exact sentences. The other reads it and suggests where a warmer phrase would help. Both versions would have worked; the joint one works better.
Old friends. One friend sends a link at midnight with no comment. The other replies the next morning with the one line that makes it funny.

In each sketch one person offers and the other adds.

Fire with air, earth with water

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, Venus in air. The Mercury person's quick, bold way of speaking meets a Venus person who enjoys talk, company and ideas. It might look like two friends in a café, one declaring a plan and the other adding three ways it could go.

Mercury in air, Venus in fire. The Mercury person's questions and wordplay meet a Venus person who enjoys energy and action. It might look like two colleagues where one floats an idea and the other says "let's try it" before the sentence is over.

Mercury in earth, Venus in water. The Mercury person's plain, exact speech meets a Venus person who enjoys tenderness and mood. It might look like a parent giving careful directions on the phone, and their grown child hearing in the steadiness that they are cared about.

Mercury in water, Venus in earth. The Mercury person speaks from feeling and memory, and the Venus person enjoys what is well made and dependable. It might look like two flatmates, one telling a story about a house they grew up in, the other quietly fixing the thing it reminds them of.

What a fit between differences is like to live with

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

It may be taken for granted. The Venus person's welcome and the Mercury person's ideas are easy to give, so each may forget that the other is giving something.

It can settle into familiar topics. The difference between you may be enjoyed without being explored, since the usual exchange already works.

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

From the sources

What the older sources say (Leo about the same place; Robson about aspects in general)

Two older sources mention Mercury and Venus together, and they are different kinds of passage: Leo's is about the same place in two charts, Robson's is about aspects in general.

Alan Leo (*How to Judge a Nativity*, c. 1903; pages from the 1928 printing, p. 222) writes about friendships. He says that in all friendships Venus is the planet most affected, "by its own position" and by the planet that in another horoscope is in the same place, because Venus is "the planet of union and of communion". He then goes through what other planets do on that place: the Sun, he says, produces a happy friendship, and Mercury "will give affinity in music, art, or mental intercourse". The Mercury sentence does not repeat the words about Venus's place; reading it as Mercury in one horoscope on the place of Venus in another follows from where it stands in the passage, and that reading is editorial, as is calling "the same place" a conjunction. "Mental intercourse" is his old phrase; reading it as exchange of thought, which is to say conversation, is editorial. He says only "in one horoscope" and "in another", so he does not say which person is which.

Vivian Robson (*A Students' Text-Book of Astrology*, 1922, p. 141) has one short line on the two planets: Venus and Mercury, "correspondence, may be schoolfellows". It comes in his discussion of aspects in general and names no particular aspect, so it does not tell one aspect from another and cannot be read as a statement about a sextile alone. "Correspondence" most likely means exchange of letters and messages and "schoolfellows" people who share ordinary early company; that gloss is editorial.

Leo describes only the same place, and Robson names no aspect, so neither passage describes a sextile, and neither gives anything to tell a sextile from a trine or from other contacts between these two planets. Leo states his reading flatly (Mercury "will give" affinity); reading that, and Robson's "may be", as tendencies and not promises of how a relationship turns out, is also editorial. The distinction this page draws, that a sextile reads as a fit between differences because it usually joins signs of two different elements that get on (fire with air, earth with water), is based on the kinds of sign a sextile usually joins. This is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Mercury and Venus. The same goes for everything else on this page about what each person is like, gives or may want, and for the sketches.

Is this you two?

One of you tends to start a thought and the other to finish it in a different way.
A piece of work, a plan or a meal has come out better because you each did a different part.
You may find a few messages across a week are plenty, and that a longer call still goes easily.
One of you has been the one to ask the question that got the conversation going.
You enjoy talking about things you do not agree on.