Mercury Sextile Venus: Mind and Taste That Lend Each Other a Hand

With Mercury sextile Venus, two signs apart, your ideas and your tastes each keep their own tune yet get along. Put some care into combining them, and your words gain an extra layer of charm. This page starts from what Mercury governs (thinking, communication and learning) and what Venus governs (love, taste, values and money), then looks at how the sextile makes the two interact, how it tends to show up in everyday life, its strengths and blind spots, and some advice for it.

Mercury Sextile Venus at a glance

Percentages are our own calculation from 8,401 charts of people born in Taipei between 1960 and 2005 with random birth times, using the same orbs as our chart calculator.

The core meaning of Mercury Sextile Venus

Mercury handles thinking, speaking, and learning. Venus handles preferences, aesthetics, and the warmth you bring to people. Both planets stay close to the Sun and can never get more than seventy-some degrees apart, so the sextile is the widest major aspect they can form. It mostly occurs when one runs ahead of the Sun and the other trails behind it. The two sit in compatible signs. One may lean toward reason and the other toward feeling, and although they speak different languages, they get along well.

Compared with the conjunction, the sextile keeps the two abilities separate. People with the conjunction polish their words the moment they open their mouths. You have two gears. You can be quite direct when you want to make something clear, and you can produce a gentle way of saying it when you want people to feel at ease. The pairing only shows when you actively use it. Many people with this aspect discover it after writing a card, giving a presentation, or mediating for someone, and realize they can fit both sense and warmth into the same few sentences.

How it feels inside

Your reasoning and your preferences mostly live in peace. When you like something, you can say why. When you analyze something, you do not entirely ignore how you feel about it. That spares you a lot of agonizing over choices. Shopping, picking a class, deciding where to go this weekend: a bit of thought usually gives you the answer. Now and then you may feel there is nothing special about your taste, and that is mostly because you have not cultivated it in earnest. Once you start spending time with music, writing, or design, you will absorb it faster than you expect.

In love and relationships

Socially, you are easy to talk to. You hear the emotion in what people say and know when to drop in a remark that puts them at ease, so a gathering with you in it rarely goes quiet. In love you need a partner you can really talk with; attraction without conversation fades for you quickly. You show interest in an understated way, often by sharing a song or an article to get your feelings across. If you are willing to take one more step and say “I like you” outright, this aspect will help you find just the right words.

At work and in getting things done

At work this aspect is a skill you can develop. You have what it takes to write a proposal that is both organized and readable, to present a product clearly and appealingly, and to voice an objection in a meeting in a way people can accept. All of that takes practice, and left unused it is just ordinary communication ability. Go after tasks that involve outside communication, writing, pitching, or anything visual. After a few rounds, you will be the one coworkers describe as “great at explaining things, and pleasant to listen to.”

Strengths

• Range in how you speak: You can be blunt or gentle. Switching styles to fit the occasion takes you little effort, so you have more flexibility in communication than most people.
• Quick to learn aesthetics: Understanding and taste help each other along. With art, language, or design, you catch the knack easily, and your progress is visible.
• A sense of proportion: When you speak, you look after both the logic and people’s feelings, and you can find something to talk about with all sorts of personalities.

Blind spots

• Ordinary without practice: The pairing takes shape only through actually writing and speaking. Without chances to sharpen it, it will not turn into talent on its own.
• Feelings stated too faintly: You tend to show affection in subtle ways. Sometimes the other person does not catch it, and things stall at the stage of enjoying each other’s talk.
• Stopping at the surface: You pick things up fast and want to move on once the novelty fades, so truly deep work or expertise is slow to accumulate.

Advice for Mercury Sextile Venus

Find yourself a regular outlet where ideas and aesthetics can take the stage together. It could be writing a short piece every week, running a small page where you share what you love, or volunteering for your department’s presentations. As you work, keep an eye on two things at once: whether the content is clear, and whether it is pleasant for the reader. After you have managed both a few times, it becomes a habit.

What to keep in mind when reading this aspect

1. The tighter the orb, the more it matters. In our calculations, only 13.6% of all major aspects are within 1° of exact, and 41.2% are within 3°. If your Mercury sextile Venus is tight, the traits on this page will be more noticeable; if it is close to the 5° limit, they will be much fainter.

2. Applying and separating. An aspect is applying when the two planets are moving toward the exact angle and separating once they have passed it. Tradition holds that an applying aspect is still taking shape and acts more strongly. Our chart calculator marks which one you have.

3. Watch for out-of-sign aspects. Two planets in sextile are usually two signs apart, in compatible elements (fire with air, earth with water), but an aspect is measured by actual distance. In our calculations, 9.5% of sextiles do not match the usual sign relationship (one planet late in a sign, the other early in another). The nature of the aspect is still there; it just shows up in a less typical way.

4. Most people born on the same day share this aspect. Mercury and Venus move only a little in a day. The difference lies in which houses they fall in on your chart, and that depends on your birth time; see Planets in the Houses.

5. Then look at each planet’s own placement. The signs Mercury and Venus are in decide how each one expresses itself; see Planets in the Signs. If either planet has other aspects, read them together. For a complete reading, use the In-Depth Chart Reading.

Other aspects between Mercury and Venus

Conjunction · Sextile · Square (cannot occur) · Trine (cannot occur) · Opposition (cannot occur)

The sextile with other planets

Mercury: Moon sextile Mercury, Mercury sextile Mars, Mercury sextile Jupiter, Mercury sextile Saturn, Mercury sextile Uranus, Mercury sextile Neptune, Mercury sextile Pluto.

Venus: Moon sextile Venus, Venus sextile Mars, Venus sextile Jupiter, Venus sextile Saturn, Venus sextile Uranus, Venus sextile Neptune, Venus sextile Pluto.

All Mercury aspects · All Venus aspects · Planet aspects overview