Grand Sextile Calculator

A Grand Sextile is a six-body aspect pattern: six planets or points spaced about 60 degrees apart so that each one is sextile to its two neighbors, closing a ring all the way around the chart. The ring draws a hexagram, the six-pointed shape that gives the pattern its other name, the Star of David.

Inside that ring sit two Grand Trines, one on each set of alternating points, interlocked and offset by 60 degrees. This calculator requires the aspects that define the figure: six sextiles in a closed circuit, each within the natal chart service's accepted orbs, which are body-specific and capped at 6 degrees. Eligible bodies are the Sun through Pluto, Chiron, and the Ascendant. Because the two triangles follow from the same six points, a positive result also tells you which two Grand Trines your chart carries.

Start with the two Grand Trines. The six points always alternate between two complementary elements, fire with air or earth with water, so one triangle runs on each. Read each triangle on its own first: which three bodies form it, which element it works in, and what that element does in your chart. A fire triangle interlocked with an air one reads differently from earth interlocked with water.

Then read the six sextiles that connect them. Those arms are where the two elemental modes reach each other, which is the pattern's distinctive contribution and the reason it earns its integrative reputation. The calculator also checks upcoming transits to the figure and lists the contacts that activate it. For the full reading, including how to keep the ring from coasting, open the Grand Sextile guide.

Three settings drive most disagreements. Orb width: a tool allowing 8 degree sextiles closes rings this one leaves open at 6 degrees. Body set: this calculator uses the Sun through Pluto, Chiron, and the Ascendant, while tools that add the lunar nodes, the Midheaven, or asteroids have extra points to complete a ring. Aspect style: whole-sign matching treats any two signs 60 degrees apart as a sextile regardless of degree, which manufactures hexagrams that degree-based detection rejects.

The Grand Sextile is the pattern where these settings matter most, because a ring of six needs every arm in orb at once and is only as tight as its widest one. A calculator running loose enough settings will report a Grand Sextile for a chart that really holds two Grand Trines and little else. The same engine and orb rules power this page and the Aspect Pattern Scanner, so results agree across this site.

This is the distinction that matters most here. Two Grand Trines in complementary elements sit at exactly the spacing a Grand Sextile needs, so software running wide orbs often labels them as one. The geometric test is stricter than that: a true Grand Sextile requires all six sextiles that connect the two triangles, not only the two trines themselves.

The functional difference is real. Two Grand Trines that do not connect give you two separate areas of elemental ease that your chart does not automatically bridge. A closed Grand Sextile gives you one figure where the two elements cross through the six connecting arms. This calculator holds to the strict test, so if your connectors are wide it reports the Grand Trines you actually have rather than rounding them up. The guide works through both cases in detail.

A natal Grand Sextile runs quietly until something outside it supplies a direction. The reliable triggers are slow: outer planets from Jupiter through Pluto contacting any of the six points, and eclipses landing on one of them. A square or opposition from a body outside the ring is the other activator, and often the productive one, because the six sextiles give the figure so much internal ease that it needs outside friction to point the integration at anything specific. When you run the calculator, the result lists the upcoming contacts to your six points.

Fast transits from the Moon or Mercury pass through in hours and do not move the pattern in any lasting way. To watch the slow contacts build month by month, the transit chart calculator shows the full sky against your natal wheel.

Most charts do not carry one, and at a 6 degree cap that is the honest, expected answer. The full ring asks for six bodies at six consecutive sextiles with nothing wider than the cap, the rarest alignment among the standard patterns. A no is still information, and the result page does not stop there: it shows the patterns your chart does hold, plus an aspect-family readout naming which family of contacts runs your chart.

If you are close, you usually have something real: most often one or two Grand Trines, a Kite, a Mystic Rectangle, or a Minor Grand Trine, each with its own calculator. Run the Aspect Pattern Scanner to see everything your chart carries in one pass.