Sun Sextile Mercury Synastry: When Who One of You Is and How the Other Talks Fit Together

This contact pairs two parts of two birth charts. The Sun is who a person is: their core, what they stand for, the direction they tend to take. Mercury is how a person thinks and talks: the words they choose, the questions they ask, how they explain, listen and joke. Here one person's Sun is about 60° from the other person's Mercury, 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 pair.) That is the geometry. The reading built on it is a fit between differences: who one of you is and how the other talks do not come from the same temperament, but they suit each other, like two different tools that do a job together.

So the contact may be easy without being automatic. The words and the person are not the same kind, and the conversation may go best when each of you adds something the other would not have said.

It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, classmates, a parent and their child, and partners, and it is one contact among many in any two charts.

In this contact one of you brings the Sun and the other brings Mercury, from two different elements that suit each other. Call them the Sun person and the Mercury person.

If you are the Sun person, you are following what matters to you and shaping the day as you like it. Around the Mercury person you may be described from a slightly different angle than you would have chosen. They may put your plan in words that are not yours but fit, or ask the question that was not on your list and turns out to matter. You may feel understood without feeling copied.

If you are the Mercury person, you are turning things over, asking, explaining, noticing. Around the Sun person your talk may meet something that suits it without matching it. They may answer in a register different from yours, and the exchange can be better for it. You may feel listened to without feeling echoed.

If the link also runs the other way, from the Mercury person's Sun to the Sun person's Mercury, each of you is both.

In a sextile each of you works from a different place, so each may see what the other is doing and have something to add.

The Mercury person may give the Sun person a second way of seeing. What the Sun person is sure of can come back with an added angle, one that does not argue with it and makes it easier to explain to someone else.

The Sun person may give the Mercury person a response with a character of its own. A thought offered to someone whose way of being differs from yours can be tried against that difference, and may be the better for it.

Either of you may want to be met halfway. The Sun person may want to be asked what they think and not only told. The Mercury person may want an addition taken up and not only thanked. A sextile can give an opening, and two people taking part may turn it into a conversation.

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

• Friends. One friend is set on moving to a smaller town. The other asks what the mornings would be like there, and the first realises they have never pictured one.
• Siblings. Two siblings put together a speech for a parent's retirement. One has the stories; the other has the order that suits them. Between them the speech has a beginning and a point.
• Colleagues. One colleague has a clear idea for a pitch but not the words. The other writes the one sentence a client would understand, and the first says "yes, that is what I meant".
• Parent and child. A child has an idea for a school project and talks about it too fast. Their parent asks which part they care about most, and the child slows down and answers.
• Classmates. Two classmates are assigned a joint presentation. One wants the topic; the other sets out the headings. Each is slightly surprised that the other's half works.

In each sketch one person offers something and the other fits a word, a question or an order around it.

A sextile usually joins fire with air, or earth with water. In plain terms: fire is enthusiasm and action, air is talk and ideas, earth is practical steadiness, water is feeling. Which of you has which element changes the feel.

Fire and air. This pairing is quick and talkative. With the Sun in fire and Mercury in air, the Sun person's confidence may be met by a Mercury person who talks it into shape. With the Sun in air and Mercury in fire, the Sun person is curious and the Mercury person's words are bold, and the idea may get said sooner than it would alone. It might look like two members of a walking group choosing next month's route, one naming the summit they want and the other adding the stops that make the day work.

Earth and water. This pairing is slower and more private. With the Sun in earth and Mercury in water, the Sun person's steadiness may be met by a Mercury person who speaks from feeling and memory. With the Sun in water and Mercury in earth, the Sun person feels deeply and the Mercury person's plain speech may give the feeling somewhere to rest. It might look like two cousins sorting a relative's tin of buttons: one recalls whose coat each came from, the other sorts them by size.

One thing this contact can give is two different ways that meet without clashing. It can also have a quieter side, which belongs to this pair of planets.

A sextile can offer an opening, and an opening can stay an opening: the talk is pleasant, and may not go further than it needs to.

Because the two sides are different, each of you may leave a job to the other. One may leave the question-asking to the Mercury person, and the other the self-describing to the Sun person, so a topic can go unraised that either of you could have raised.

Taken together, the fit is easy, and may be fullest when both of you take part.

Two passages in the older sources used here name the Sun with Mercury in an aspect: William Lilly's (*Christian Astrology*, 1647, Book III, p. 638) and James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381). Neither passage says anything about the sextile. The only aspect either names is the opposition. Lilly's page also has a line on the Sun and Mercury standing in each other's places, which is not an aspect and is not used here. So nothing from the older sources is used for this contact.

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 the Sun and Mercury. The same goes for everything else on this page: who the Sun person and the Mercury person are, what each gives and may want, the element variations and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• One of you may add a word, a question or an angle that the other had not thought of, and it fits.
• You may find each other easy to talk to without sounding alike.
• The better conversations between you may be the ones where both of you took part.
• One of you has been surprised that the other's half of a joint piece of work held up.
• Now and then a topic has gone unraised between you that either of you could have started.