A short window each time
A sextile is a sixth of the circle. With five degrees of tolerance the band is ten degrees wide, and Venus takes about eight days to cross it. Pluto, needing two hundred and forty eight years for a circuit, moves a degree or two a year and is effectively stationary in comparison.
Venus makes both sextiles to Pluto in the course of a year, so the total is a couple of weeks of births. That is a smaller cohort than the trine or square produce, and the tighter orb means the aspect is less often nominal, but it is still shared by everyone born in those weeks.
If Venus stations retrograde at a sextile to Pluto, the aspect perfects three times across roughly two months. Births in that stretch carry it more definitely than the single crossing does.
What is on offer
Venus is attraction, affection and value. Pluto is depth, compulsion, power and everything held back from ordinary view. A sextile joins them through signs of different but compatible elements, so there is a working link and no obligation attached to it.
In practice this reads as depth on demand. The person can go into a difficult conversation, a difficult subject or a difficult person's material and come back out, and can equally decline to. Research, negotiation, editing, therapy and anything that requires sitting with what someone is not saying all show up in descriptions of this aspect, though only in the charts of people who took the offer.
Because nothing forces it, the sextile is often invisible until it has been used. Two people with the same contact can look entirely different, and that is the aspect behaving exactly as the tradition describes rather than a failure of the technique.
Reading it honestly
The five degree limit is doing real work here. At one degree the contact is usually recognisable in how someone handles pressure. At four it is already loose, and anything wider is not counted.
Houses supply the arena and need a birth time. A third to fifth sextile reads as directness in speech and in creative work. A sixth to eighth is more often practical: money, other people's affairs and a steady stomach for both. A tenth to twelfth is quieter and tends to show at work rather than at home.
Pluto is retrograde for close to half of each year, so a natal retrograde Pluto in this configuration is the ordinary case and adds nothing. The orb, the house and the presence of a fast body on the degrees are the three things worth checking.
Whether anyone will pick it up
The question with any sextile is whether the chart contains something willing to use it. Mars or Mercury in contact with that Venus makes it likely, since both act. A Venus with nothing much attached to it leaves the offer open indefinitely.
The second question is the usual one for a slow planet. Pluto is shared by everyone born across a long span, so the contact becomes personal when a Moon, an angle or a chart ruler sits on the degrees. Without that, it is a fact about your birth window rather than about you, and it is more useful to say so than to inflate it.
The widget above returns the exact orb, the two houses and both degrees, which is what a general description cannot know about your chart.
Questions people ask about this
Why is the orb for a sextile only five degrees?
The sextile is treated as the weakest of the major aspects, so it is given the smallest tolerance. A ten degree band takes Venus a little over a week to cross, which keeps the contact tight enough to mean something.
What is the difference between this and the trine?
Both are read as easy. The trine tends to operate whether or not you attend to it, while a sextile is described as available on request. The sextile is therefore more often a developed skill and the trine more often an unused one.
Does it show up in relationships?
Sometimes, as a willingness to have the difficult conversation rather than manage around it. It is a quieter contact than the square or the opposition and rarely produces the dramas those are known for.
How common is it?
Venus makes both sextiles to Pluto within a year, each lasting a bit over a week, so a couple of weeks of births in every year carry it. Less common than the trine, still an ordinary placement.
Can Venus retrograde reinforce it?
Yes. A retrograde station near the sextile degree produces three passes over about two months, and someone born in that window tends to show the aspect more clearly than a single crossing would suggest.
Is it worth including in a reading?
Only when the orb is tight or something personal touches the degrees. Contacts to Pluto are shared across a whole birth cohort, so a wide sextile with nothing on it is background and should be read that way.