The SemiSextile
The SemiSextile is considered a minor aspect in astrology. The major aspects, the common astrologers trusted tools, are called the Ptolemaic aspects. The are familiar to most even casual sunny weather practitioners of astrology. They are, the conjunction, the square, the opposition, the trine, and the sextile. After that you may be shocked, to hear of the minor aspects. They are work men of subtlety, fine craftsmen indeed.
The Minor Aspects
They are minor aspects because they do not have the same impact as the major aspects. The Ptolemaic aspects create dramatic life shifts that are palpable when they are activated by transit, progression, solar arc direction, or time lords. The minor aspects are experienced in a more subtle way, often being emotional or mental in tone, a driving inner force of expression. A drum beat in the skull, whispers in the ear, but then resulting over time in accumulating effects that are very noticeable. Ptolomeic aspects are waterfalls and eddying pools in the mountain creek.
The SemiSextile occurs when two planets are 30º apart, thus they are in different signs. With all minor aspects take a 2 or 3º orb. Use tight orbs because the vibratory fields of the planets or what the planets indicate, need to be intense because the aspects do not overlap their wave forms as vibrantly as you get with 0º, 60º, 90º, 120º, and 180º. The 30º aspect is called inconjunct in traditional astrology and implies that the planets involved do not communicate. This is the near inconjunct and it is the SemiSextile. One of the planets is in the 12th sign from the other, and this implies a 12th-house expression of shadow. That which is unseen, hidden from view, not in the light of consciousness. Our Shadow is close to us, but we do not understand it.
The Good Shadow
The shadow is often in pop psyche culture taken to be the dark. It includes what we have hidden from the world, the macabre. Such as peoples secret sex lives, the enjoyment of playing mental and emotional games with other people, the lust for power. I do not see that as the shadow though, because usually these types of cruelty and self inflicted moral harm are conscious endeavors by the people expressing their behavior. Rather, the Shadow, is that which you do not see about yourself. Good habits or bad habits, but habits you are not consciously aware of that effect how you act, think, or feel in the world. The SemiSextile will show you the good shadows in your chart.
An example that is illuminating would be Venus SemiSextile to the Sun. This illustrates someone who has a hard time consciously understanding their personality effects on relationships and creates a blind spot between the houses that are ruled by the two planets. Among celebrities with this aspect, we find Russell Wilson, Roman Polanski, Martha Stewart, and Megan Fox. All of them have experienced difficulties from not seeing how their experience of relationship was viewed as off by the world around them.
Marth Stewart’s trials and tribulations as well as success are well known to most people. For a while she was practically “America’s cook.” Before she went to jail. She came out and has done cameos with Snoop Dogg, which I think showed her arriving at a new degree of empathetic understanding for all Americans. However she is far past her prime, and it is doubtful that her name is whispered with mirth at the Tupper ware parties of Gen Z.
Here is her chart:
Notice the Semisextile between the Sun and Venus. The Sun up there on the Midheaven is a Queen. She will get her empire, that is her drive and soul in this life. The Sun being the daytime triplicity lord of the fire signs grants her that statues in her work and status. She becomes famous for her work. But what is her work, you could say it is putting herself into the public eye with new ideas. Mars and Sun are both in fire signs and the Moon is too.
It is a grand fire sign of passion to succeed through fire, spirit, and will. She was an influencer for the white middle class house wife long before Instagram was invented, what talent did she leverage to make it? Venus is SemiSextile the Sun, her innate talent for flavor, it became a driver of her professional success. She had to become conscious of this as her uniqueness to leverage it, and the best way to bring consciousness to ones ability to taste is by cooking, drinking wine, and talking about food. Now I do like to think Virgo has more of a say about food than Taurus, though some rather portly Taurus folks I know might disagree with me. Virgo holds a cornucopia, she is the season and the goddess of the Harvest. Taurus is just rolling around having sex in flowers, birds and the bees stuff.
This is aside the point though, and truly, walking the edge of being a hedonist myself, I love Taurus men and women above all others. My point is the SemiSextile shows in her chart the talent that she has which allows her to leverage to bring the promise of success through passion into an empire of success. A word of caution though, Venus also ruled her 12th house and she leveraged that success into insider trading which brought her into the less enjoyable side of things indicated by the 12th house, prison. This most likely occurred with out her even being aware of the danger, as we said, the inconjunct is not always seen, it is a shadow of our own capacities.
If you find this combo in your chart, look at the planets involved, and the houses involved and contemplate how the areas ruled by both planets may not support one another or see one another. This does not need to be the case. We are the whole of a chart, and all it takes for planets who do not work together because they are SemiSextile is for the consciousness of the soul and psyche to become aware of the action of both, and then find the bridge between them. Bringing them into the conscious experience of each other is tremendously powerful.
