← Encyclopedia of Astrology · lesson 167/235
Grand Sextile
The shape
A Grand Sextile takes six planets, each about 60° from its neighbours, spaced evenly round the whole wheel. Joined up they make a hexagon; joined across they make a six-pointed star, which is why it is also called the Star of David. Every one of the fifteen pairs among the six is accounted for: six sextiles round the edge, six trines between planets two steps apart, and three oppositions straight across. That exact count is how the figure is recognised.
A worked example: planets at about 10° of Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius and Aquarius — say the Sun, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter and the Moon. Every contact must sit within its orb, and the figure is as tight as its loosest leg.
What it is made of
More than any other figure. A Grand Sextile contains two interlaced Grand Trines, three Mystic Rectangles, six Kites, six Cradles and six Minor Grand Trines. Reported flat, six planets would produce two dozen "figures" — but they are one figure seen from many angles. The chart shows the Grand Sextile as the whole and keeps those parts inside it, so they can be opened to see how it is built.
No apex
There is no focal planet; each corner is held equally by its neighbours. Michael Meyer counts the Grand Sextile among the "perfect formations", and it is genuinely rare in a birth chart, since it needs six bodies in a near-perfect ring.
By element
The geometry puts the planets alternately in two compatible elements, and each of the two Grand Trines inside it keeps its own element. In the example, the Aries, Leo and Sagittarius planets make a fire triangle and the Gemini, Libra and Aquarius ones an air triangle: a fire–air Grand Sextile. The other kind joins earth and water.
In a chart
A natal Grand Sextile is read as an unusually connected chart, in which opportunity leads to opportunity and very little stands alone. The caution is the same as the Grand Trine's, multiplied: with so much easy connection, little may compel change, and the promise can stay unspent.
In the sky
In the passing sky it is rare and fleeting. A transiting planet can, though, fill the last corner of a natal near-ring for the time it stays in orb — a transit worth noticing when it happens.