Mars Sextile Chiron: Practical Courage That Grows With Use

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Mars sextile Chiron means Mars and Chiron were 54° to 66° apart when you were born. Mars describes drive, initiative, desire and the ability to say no. Chiron marks a sore spot that astrologers read as a place of sensitivity and, in time, of real understanding. A sextile is the lighter of the two easy aspects: the connection is open, but it tends to reward effort more than it does anything by itself.

Read the sextile as a possibility you can use. It is not a guarantee of anything, and it says nothing about what someone has lived through.

Patterns linked with the sextile

Small acts of nerve. Rather than big confrontations, the sextile tends to show in modest, repeated steps: making the call, raising a hand, asking for the thing you want. Each one can make the next easier.

Effort as a way through. Many people with this contact find that doing something practical, training, building, fixing or moving, eases the sore spot better than thinking about it does.

Encouraging other people's courage. The sextile is often linked with a knack for helping others take a first step they are nervous about, whether as a friend, a teammate, a coach or a colleague.

An opening that can be missed. Because sextiles are mild, this one can sit unused. The evolutionary reading treats it as an invitation that grows when you act on it.

Mars's sign and house, and any planet aspecting both ends, show where the opening is most practical.

A retrograde Mars usually brings an R beside Chiron

Across 51,501 Greenwich noon charts from 1920 to 2060, one per date the calculator includes Chiron, Mars was sextile Chiron on 3,470 days, 6.74%, about one day in 15. Chiron was retrograde on 31.9% of those days, a little below its 39.5% share of all days.

The split by Mars's own direction is striking. Mars was retrograde on 9.7% of sextile days, and on 88.1% of those Chiron was retrograde too. With Mars direct, the figure was 25.9%. The reason is geometry rather than meaning: Mars only retrogrades when it stands roughly opposite the Sun, so a retrograde Mars 60° from Chiron puts the Sun on the far side of the sky from Chiron (131° away on the median Mars-retrograde sextile day), inside Chiron's own retrograde season, which needs the Sun at least about 100° away.

The Sun was sextile Chiron as well on 7.7% of sextile days. Out-of-sign sextiles made up 8.6%.

Roughly once a year, sometimes for three months

Each Mars-Chiron cycle holds two sextiles, one on each side of the conjunction, so the aspect came round about once a year on average (155 noon windows in 141 years). With Mars direct, a window lasted 15 to 48 days, most often about 19. Nine windows contained Mars-retrograde days and ran 37 to 90 days.

The longest of them is recent. From 3 December 2022 to 2 March 2023, Mars in Gemini stayed sextile Chiron in Aries at every noon. On 19 December 2022 the calculator has Mars at 12°04' Gemini, retrograde, and Chiron at 11°56' Aries, also retrograde, 0.14° apart. Chiron turned direct around 23 December and Mars around 13 January 2023, and on 11 February 2023 the two met again, both direct, at 12°58' Gemini and 13°01' Aries (0.06°).

2018: three exact sextiles from Aquarius

In 2018 Mars lingered for months around the start of Aquarius, dipping back into late Capricorn during its retrograde, while Chiron sat at the very start of Aries. At London noon:

• 20 May: Mars 1°36' Aquarius, Chiron 1°32' Aries, 0.07°, both direct. The Sun was sextile Chiron too, 2.15° wide.
• 4 August: Mars 1°56' Aquarius and Chiron 2°01' Aries, both retrograde, 0.09°. Mars had turned retrograde around 27 June at about 9°13' Aquarius, and Chiron around 5 July.
• 13 September: Mars 0°29' Aquarius, direct again since about 28 August, and Chiron 0°34' Aries, still retrograde, 0.08°.

The noon windows were 4 May to 13 June and 8 July to 30 September, the second one 85 days long. Three exact passes in one season is what a Mars station close to the sextile point can produce.

A more ordinary pass followed on 12 August 2026: Mars at 0°43' Cancer, Chiron at 0°49' Taurus with an R, 0.10° apart, in a window from 4 to 21 August.

Finding it on your chart

A sextile is a dashed blue line on your free birth chart; a solid blue line is a trine. ♂ and ⚷ should be 54° to 66° apart in the planet table. Chiron appears only for births from 1920 to 2060.

When the birth time is unknown, Mars lines are still drawn from noon as an internal reference. Mars moved at most 0.8° a day in the sample, so the date usually decides, but the sextile's narrower 6° orb makes edges more common: on 16.9% of sextile days the noon orb was within 1° of the limit, and on 8.6% within half a degree. How aspect orbs work lists every orb.

Read next

• Mars trine Chiron, the fuller easy contact, where a retrograde Mars points the other way
• Mars conjunct Chiron, where the cycle begins
• Mercury sextile Chiron, the same light contact for thinking and speech
• Chiron in astrology
• Back to every aspect page

If you want to see how this sextile fits with your Mars sign and the rest of the chart, ask in Ask the Astrologist.