Venus sextile Mars

Aspect · sextile · default orb 4°

In the natal chart the Venus signifies the principle of attraction and sweetness — preference, ornament, the part of life that gathers what it values close. The Mars signifies the principle of decision and severance — appetite, contention, the part of life that cuts and presses forward. When their longitudes form a temperate, opportune contact across two compatible signs; the configuration offers an opening that must be taken — it does not insist on itself, the chart carries the resulting configuration as a structural feature of its temperament — present in every house and angle that either body touches.

Preference meets appetite. The classical tension between attraction and pursuit. The contact describes the chart's erotic and competitive surfaces — the way its desire weighs being held against being chased.

The sextile is the most temperate of the major aspects. It is opportunity, not insistence: the configuration offers a productive ground for Venus and Mars to cooperate, but does not force the cooperation. Hellenistic sources read sextiles as conditional on attention; the contact wants to be drawn upon to manifest, not assumed.

The configuration is in orb when the angular separation between Venus and Mars falls within 4° of an exact sextile (Lilly's classical orb; Netra's Aspects view defaults match this and can be tightened in the chart preferences).