Neptune Sextile Chiron: Quiet Openings for Empathy and Repair

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Neptune sextile Chiron means the two were 54° to 66° apart at birth; the sextile takes a 6° orb, while the other major aspects take 8°. Neptune is linked with imagination, compassion, ideals and the softening of boundaries. Chiron, in modern astrology, is a lasting sensitivity that can grow into understanding. The sextile is a cooperative angle, but a quiet one: it tends to offer a possibility rather than force an issue.

Within 1920 to 2060 the sextile comes in four separate stretches, each about one to two years of births: 1939 to 1941, 1949 to 1950, 1998 to 1999 and 2037 to 2040. Houses (with a known birth time) and contacts to the personal planets are what make it individual.

What astrologers often see in it

Compassion that finds a channel. A common reading is an ability to turn sensitivity into something useful for others, through listening, art, care work or spiritual practice, once the person chooses to.

Imagination as a way in. Some astrologers describe old difficulties becoming easier to approach through stories, music, symbols or dreams rather than head-on.

Soft boundaries that can be learned. The sextile is often read as making it easier to notice when empathy turns into taking on too much, and to adjust.

Easily overlooked. Because the angle asks little, its potential may go unused. Many astrologers treat a sextile as an invitation, not a guarantee.

As with every page here, these are possibilities to test against a whole chart, not predictions.

Four stretches, two directions

Of the 51,501 daily Greenwich noon charts in the sample (1920 to 2060, the range in which the calculator shows Chiron), 2,131 carry Neptune sextile Chiron: 4.14%. On 19.8% of those dates the pair is out of sign, so the sign pair alone can mislead.

Chiron is the faster body, so the direction tells where the stretch sits in the cycle. With Neptune ahead, Chiron is closing in on the next conjunction (1945, then 2010); with Chiron ahead, it is moving away from the last one. The 2037 stretch is the first Neptune-Chiron line of any kind after a long silence: no date from 3 March 2014 to 23 July 2037 carries one.

The R markers lean together

The sextile is narrow enough that the Sun is often far from both bodies at once. Chiron was retrograde on 55.6% of the sextile dates with Neptune retrograde, against 23.5% with Neptune direct. Both were retrograde on 23.2% of sextile dates and neither on 44.5%; Neptune alone was retrograde on 18.5% and Chiron alone on 13.7%.

1940 and 1941: Virgo and Cancer

At London noon on 22 July 1940 Neptune was at 23°20' Virgo and Chiron at 23°22' Cancer, 0.02° from exact, with Uranus at 25°28' Taurus trine Neptune (2.12°) and sextile Chiron (2.10°), so all three were joined by easy angles. On 2 February 1941 both were retrograde, at 27°22' Virgo and 27°22' Cancer (0.01°), and Pluto at 2°58' Leo was conjunct Chiron (5.59°) and sextile Neptune (5.60°). On 16 April 1941 the line was exact again (0.01°), Neptune at 25°32' Virgo still retrograde and Chiron at 25°32' Cancer direct. Virgo is ruled by Mercury and Cancer by the Moon; see Neptune in Virgo.

1950: one pass, with Pluto exact as well

The 1949 to 1950 sextile had a single exact pass. At London noon on 15 January 1950 Neptune at 17°20' Libra and Chiron at 17°21' Sagittarius were 0.01° apart, and Pluto at 17°30' Leo, retrograde, was sextile Neptune (0.16°) and trine Chiron (0.15°): three slow bodies within a fifth of a degree of exact easy angles. Saturn at 19°11' Virgo squared Chiron (1.84°). Libra is ruled by Venus and Sagittarius by Jupiter. Neptune in Libra covers that generation.

1999: three passes in Neptune's first degrees of Aquarius

• 31 January 1999: Neptune 2°11' Aquarius, Chiron 2°11' Sagittarius (0.01°), Mars square Neptune (0.22°).
• 23 March 1999: Neptune 3°50' Aquarius, Chiron 3°50' Sagittarius, retrograde (0.00°); Saturn at 2°24' Taurus squared Neptune (1.43°).
• 9 October 1999: Neptune 1°35' Aquarius, retrograde, Chiron 1°36' Sagittarius (0.02°), with Jupiter at 1°49' Taurus square Neptune (0.23°).

Aquarius has Uranus as its modern ruler and Saturn as its traditional ruler.

2038 and 2039, calculated ahead

These dates come from the same ephemeris and are calculated, not observed. Exact passes at London noon fall on 8 August 2038 (Neptune 1°22' Taurus retrograde, Chiron 1°20' Cancer), 2 February 2039 and 25 May 2039 (Neptune 2°16' Taurus, Chiron 2°16' Cancer). On 2 February 2039 Neptune at 28°44' Aries and Chiron at 28°44' Gemini, retrograde, are exact, and Saturn at 28°44' Virgo, also retrograde, squares Chiron to the minute; Jupiter at 28°08' Leo trines Neptune and sextiles Chiron (both 0.60°), and the North Node at 29°01' Gemini is conjunct Chiron (0.28°). Aries is ruled by Mars and Gemini by Mercury.

Finding it on your chart

The free birth chart shows a sextile as a dashed blue line between ♆ and ⚷; a solid blue line is a trine. In the planet table the two should be 54° to 66° apart. There is no Chiron for births before 1920 or after 2060, so there is no line either.

Without a birth time, both positions are computed for local noon as a reference, not a guessed hour. Their separation changed by at most 0.18° a day, so the hour could decide the line on only about 0.4% of sextile dates (estimated by interpolating between noon charts).

Read next

• Neptune conjunct Chiron, the meeting that the sextiles lead up to or follow
• Neptune square Chiron, the tense quarter of the same cycle
• Saturn sextile Chiron, a faster planet's version
• Back to every aspect page

For a personal look at how this sextile fits a chart, open Ask the Astrologist.