Sixty degrees and a five degree orb
The sextile is a sixth of the circle. Its working orb is five degrees rather than seven or eight, which reflects a long-standing view that the smaller the angle, the less latitude it deserves. That gives a ten degree window.
With the Sun moving about a degree a day and Jupiter far slower, the pair takes about eleven days to cross it. The sextile forms twice in each thirteen month cycle, before and after the conjunction, so somewhere around three weeks of births a year carry one.
Signs sixty degrees apart are of compatible elements, fire with air or earth with water. That compatibility is part of why the sextile is read as cooperative, and it is worth noticing that the sign pairing is doing as much work as the angle itself.
What is on offer
The Sun stands for deliberate identity and Jupiter for the widening of it: more scope, more confidence, a readiness to assume the door is open. A sextile links them loosely enough that the connection has to be used rather than lived in.
In practice the tradition describes this as a person who has access to opportunity through ordinary means. Someone knows someone. A course turns out to be available. The offers are real and unremarkable, and they are declined as often as they are taken, because nothing in the configuration applies pressure.
That is the honest distinction from the trine. A trine is a resource already in the account. A sextile is a resource that requires a small deliberate act to draw on, and charts differ enormously in whether that act ever gets made.
It is also the aspect most often reported second hand, in the sense that other people notice the chance before the person does. The tradition is fairly consistent on that point, and it fits the general shape of a sixty degree contact: present, workable, and quiet enough to walk past.
Where the difference actually shows
Because this aspect is shared by everybody born in an eleven day stretch, twice a year, it says almost nothing about an individual until it is grounded. Two things ground it.
First the orb. Five degrees is not much room and the strength falls away fast inside it, so a sextile at four degrees is nearly negligible while one at half a degree is a real feature. The check above gives you the figure.
Second the houses, which need a birth time. A sextile between the tenth and the twelfth reads nothing like one between the third and the fifth. It is also worth seeing whether a third body forms a sextile to one end and a trine to the other, since that pattern ties the whole thing into a larger and much more legible shape.
Retrograde, cohort and proportion
Jupiter spends around four months of every year retrograde and can be in either state at a sextile, so whichever yours is, it is unexceptional. Descriptions that make a retrograde Jupiter sound like a complication are describing a third of all charts.
Keep the proportion right. A Sun to Jupiter sextile is a mild supportive note. If it is the only Jupiter contact in a chart it is worth mentioning and no more. If it sits alongside a tight square from Saturn to the same Sun, the square is the headline and the sextile is a footnote about where relief comes from.
That kind of ranking is more useful than any single interpretation, and it is why the orb list from the chart matters more than a page of general description.
None of this is a prediction. It is a description of a geometry that held for a few days around your birth, together with what several centuries of practice have made of that geometry, and the two should be kept clearly apart.
Questions people ask about this
What is the orb for a sextile?
Five degrees is the standard, narrower than the seven used for squares and trines or the eight for conjunctions and oppositions. The smaller angles are given less latitude by convention, and the strength drops away quickly across that range.
How is a sextile different from a trine?
Both are read as cooperative, but a trine is treated as something already present while a sextile is treated as something offered. The practical difference is that a sextile needs a deliberate move to come to anything, and often does not get one.
How often does Sun sextile Jupiter occur?
Twice in each thirteen month cycle, once on either side of the conjunction, and each pass holds for about eleven days. So it covers around three weeks of births a year, shared by everyone in those windows.
Which signs will my Sun and Jupiter be in?
Signs of compatible elements sixty degrees apart, so fire with air or earth with water. A Sun in Libra sextile Jupiter puts Jupiter in Leo or Sagittarius. Some of what the aspect is credited with belongs to that elemental pairing.
Does a retrograde Jupiter weaken it?
No. Jupiter is retrograde for roughly four months a year, so a natal retrograde Jupiter is the ordinary case and carries no special weight in a sextile. Look at the orb and the houses instead.
Is this aspect worth much on its own?
Modestly. It is a supportive note shared by a whole cohort of births, and it is easily outranked by any tighter aspect to the same Sun. It is most useful read as the place a chart goes for relief rather than as a feature in itself.