The Moon
in the Sixth House
With the Moon in the Sixth House, you are likely to search for emotional stability and security through service. This often poses a problem for your ego and the position of your Sun. The Sun seeks recognition and praise, things you don’t always get when you are focused on service. In many instances, this can create a divide in your personality. No matter how hard your need for success and recognition pushes you upward, the empathy and humility of the Moon in the Sixth will pull you back, back to the ones who need your care—back to the ones who are left behind.
Routine and efficiency are important to you. This doesn’t always mean that you will adopt strict physical and dietary regimens or that you will always approach your work in a manner that is orderly and methodical. It just means that when you don’t, or if you are in situations in which this is not possible, you tend to feel vulnerable and adrift. You can put up with this for a while, maybe even for a lifetime, but it will eat away at your emotional security and mental acuity. In some cases, this lack of order could bring about physical illness or various nervous complaints.
This all sounds very humdrum, but it doesn’t have to be. An athlete who surrenders him or herself to a strenuous physical regime can become a champion. A businessperson who finds emotional fulfillment in the minutia of his or her business can become a billionaire. Despite its emphasis on service, plenty of successful people have the Moon in the Sixth House. However, your greatest strength is the fact that you don’t really need to be a champion or a billionaire in order to feel emotionally fulfilled. All you need is the chance to be of service to someone who really needs you.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the First
You and your body are not always in agreement. In fact, you may come to see your physical being, and the regimens required to maintain it, as oppressive, or at least as an impediment to living the way you would like. The problem is that whenever you attempt to free yourself from these restrictions, there are unpleasant consequences. Either you get sick, you overindulge, or you are beset by a feeling that you are out of balance, out of sync, and emotionally exhausted.
How you will deal with this gap between ego and body will depend on what else is happening in your horoscope. You may see it as simply a health issue, but in reality, there are deep emotional forces at work. You have a strong sense of your own importance, which is typically a good thing. However, with the Moon in the Sixth, that importance can only be realized when you pay attention to the most mundane and humbling aspects of life.
For you, becoming the kind of outstanding, self-willed person you were meant to be often requires you to take charge of your body and its appetites. This is not always an easy thing to do, and many of you might struggle with it. However, it is only by submitting your ego to a discipline, a plan, a humbling regime, that your emotional security can be assured and you can get your inner life and outer life working together.
The Moon in the Sixth with the Sun in the Second
You play it safe. You may occasionally take chances in certain areas of your life, but where your physical and emotional security are concerned, you are decidedly risk-averse. You typically keep a watchful eye on your health and you try to maintain a wholesome diet and exercise regime. You also tend to pay close attention to your finances. However, more than anything, you try to maintain a routine that guarantees your life in the real world is protected from unexpected disruptions.
This doesn’t mean that you will never cheat on your diet or occasionally take a holiday. There is always a degree of self-indulgence hidden within the folds of your safety-conscious nature. You are too focused on the physical to be unappreciative of the pleasures of the body (particular if you have an Earth sign Sun or Moon). What it means is that when you’re through having fun, you will always go back to what you know and the safety of your routine.
Occasionally your intense focus on the physical can backfire on you. No combination of Sun and Moon houses is more prone to channel emotional grievances into physical complaints or to let demons arising from the subconscious to play havoc with health and decisions regarding financial security. Other factors in the horoscope will determine how prevalent this tendency is for you, but it is a trend that requires close attention.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Third
You like to tinker and you are fascinated by the making of things. You want to know how everything works and you are always ready to soak up more information. People probably think of you as extraordinarily intelligent, which you may be, but your compulsion to know has less to do with your intellect than with your emotions. Knowing all the facts and figures is your way of keeping all your weaknesses and fears from being exposed.
What you fear is not so much a failure to succeed as it is a failure to know. Of course, you can’t know everything, but you try hard to know all that is expected of you, as well as a lot of extraneous bits that strike your interest. You are also good at learning new techniques and routines. While deeply involved in some technicality, you can forget your fear. Step B follows step A and so forth. There’s no danger of having your feelings hurt there.
However, there is danger in letting your compulsive focus on the immediate and on the routine prevent you from seeing the bigger picture. This can limit both your awareness of the wider world and your ability to achieve the physical and fiscal stability you need. You often avoid looking at broad issues because they seem vague and indefinite. They are things you can’t know from experience, that have no “right” answer. However, nothing great was ever accomplished by a person afraid of being proven wrong.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Fourth
You make the most of the lessons you learned from your parents. This doesn’t mean that you let their advice guide everything you do or that you can’t rebel and be your own person. It just means that, when it comes to the most basic issues in your life, these lessons serve as your foundation, as your emotional anchor in a world prone to unpredictability and change.
Though other factors in the horoscope can change this, you have a high regard for practicality and efficiency. This might be something you picked up from a parent, or it might be a reaction against something your parent lacked. At times this emphasis on efficiency can cause you to seem hard and uncaring, but you know better than anyone the power that sentiment can have over your judgment. Your practicality is just a way of offsetting that power and keeping your mind clear.
Because of this innate practicality, most of the decisions you make in your life will veer toward security and stability. You want to keep things simple. Often this means keeping your life free of extraneous variables. However, among those extraneous variables could be an opportunity that will change your life. Don’t be afraid to let a little messiness into the mix. The difference it makes could be worth the risk.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Fifth
There’s a catch in your Sun in the Fifth House enthusiasm. Sometimes it’s caution. Sometimes it’s shame. Sometimes it’s a tendency toward perfectionism that temporarily paralyzes your passionate nature. At its root, however, is a persistent fear that you are moving too fast, that your urge to be creative has caused you to leave out an important detail, forget a significant fact, or expose a disgraceful defect in your nature.
All this makes it difficult for you to just relax and have fun. You possess a unique combination of creativity and perfectionism. Putting these two attributes together in the right measure can allow you to accomplish great things. But in order to enjoy these accomplishments, you have to let go and ride the wave of your passionate nature, and this is a hard thing to do when you can’t stop looking for flaws in your work.
The rest of your horoscope will have much to say about how you can manage this conundrum, but one thing that will help is directing your passionate, creative nature toward service to others. Knowing that you’ve done something good for someone else and seeing their gratitude puts your nitpicking and worry in a different perspective. Most of all, when you’re really passionate about it, helping other people can be a whole lot of fun.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Sixth
You have a special gift. You know exactly what to do in order to quiet the fears and sensitivities of your Sixth House Moon, and you do it well. This allows you to move through the world with a high degree of confidence, particularly when it comes to your skills and physical abilities. Applying those skills not only earns you praise and respect, it also increases your sense of security and helps you conceal all your weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
At the same time, however, this combination could make it more difficult for you to access the intuitive functions and the emotional sensitivity of your Moon. You have a tendency to accept what is apparent as the only reality and to discount the internal, nonrational workings of the Moon. As always, the degree to which this tendency can become problematic will depend on the rest of the horoscope, but it could cause you to overemphasize material gain and ignore your emotional well-being.
At the bottom of all this is the concept of service. The potential for success in terms of the ego and the world is fairly high with this combination. It all depends on the nature of your skills and how hard you are prepared to work. But the primary need with both the Sun and Moon in the Sixth House is to be of service to other people. It makes no difference how much money you make or how many people know your name—if you are not at some level surrendering your ego for the sake of someone else, you will always feel as if your mission in this life has been unfulfilled.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Seventh
You are not into high-maintenance relationships. Relationships should grow naturally out of mutual interests and general compatibility. After that, they should more or less take care of themselves. A tweak here and there might be necessary, and, of course, there has to be the right amount of affection, love, and sex. You are typically willing to compromise—within limits. The one thing you will not tolerate, however, is chaos.
Chaos for you is a partner who makes demands that are irrational and contradictory, who brings emotional baggage into the relationship that he or she can’t handle on his or her own. It is in your nature to be helpful, but it’s hard to help people who won’t listen to reason, who refuse to be sensible. When you feel a relationship going in this direction—toward too much emotion, too much need, too much required maintenance—your first instinct is to head for the exits.
But that’s not always the best plan. With the Sun in the Seventh, relationships are going to be the central issue of your life, and the central issue of your life shouldn’t be tossed aside without serious consideration. This doesn’t mean you have to waste your time trying to resuscitate a bad relationship. It means that you can’t give up on a good one just because someone started crying and you don’t know why.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Eighth
You are not a person to be taken lightly. Your intentions are usually serious, and even when you seem to be joking, there is often a weighty subtext. Depending on what else is going on in the horoscope, this seriousness might be to the point where having fun is difficult. In any case, you dislike wasting time. No matter how relaxed and unconcerned you might seem, your mind is busy sizing up people and situations. You are always planning or, as some people might phrase it, plotting.
The ultimate goal of all your plans and plots is to make the maximum use of your lunar instincts and intuition while limiting the risk of someone really getting to know you. The first part comes easily for you. You tend to be in touch with not just your own feelings, but the feelings of people around you, and you understand the power those emotions can exert. The second part, on the other hand, is often more of a challenge.
It’s a challenge because you have trouble knowing when to stop hiding. There’s a part of you that tends to expect the worst from people, and this can become your excuse for shutting out those who seek to get close to you. Your vulnerabilities are hidden deep inside the routines of your life and work. Often the people who know you best are the people who work alongside you. It is with these people that you are most likely to overcome your defensiveness and share your true feelings.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Ninth
It’s hard to be humble when you have a mind that ranges as far and sees as much as yours does. You think in broad terms, and your idealism raises you above the herd and into the rarified realms of the great philosophers. Why would you bother with the minutia of daily life? Why would you worry about those poor souls locked in the commonplace, let alone seek to rub shoulders with them?
Unfortunately you have no choice, because it is only in the land of the commonplace, in the routines and necessities of everyday life, that you feel emotionally secure. You find comfort in humility and you get nervous, irritable, and sometimes physically ill when you are separated from the earthly realities of ordinary life. Your mind might want to reach toward the intellectual heavens, but, emotionally, you like to keep both feet firmly planted on the ground.
This might cause you to feel frustrated. It may seem to you that you’re not living up to your potential. However, by constantly pulling you toward the earth and forcing you to deal with people as they actually are, your lunar instincts are helping you apply your idealism toward specific acts of service. And what better way could there be to realize the potential of your grand ideas?
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Tenth
Do you really deserve to be successful, to be respected and praised by the people around you? This is the question you ask yourself. You ask yourself this because the roots of your emotional security are buried deep in the soil of humility and service. In roles like this—in the background, behind the scenes—you can feel safe and protected. In the glaring spotlight of the Tenth House, you are always going to be ill at ease.
This in no way means that you cannot be successful. You are an ambitious person. You will strive to achieve recognition. However, a part of you will always withdraw when the attention becomes too intense or too personal. Instead of pride and accomplishment, you are more likely to feel panic. In some cases, the greatest impediment to your rise in life is your distaste for being noticed.
On the other hand, there are also instances when your humility can become your greatest asset. It keeps you in contact with what is really important in life. The commonplace routines that are so essential to your emotional security and psychological stability give you respite from the struggles for position and acknowledgement that come with your Tenth House Sun. They keep you sane. They keep you centered. When you have your inner life in order, nothing that happens or fails to happen in your outer life can harm you.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Eleventh
It is unlikely that anyone would ever call you a rebel, but you do have a way of blowing apart expectations. You do this by paying attention to the minutia even when you are identifying yourself with big ideas. Being part of something larger than yourself is essential to your identity and sense of self. However, even within the most idealist, idea-driven group, your gaze is always directed downward toward the commonplace and mundane.
You need to feel that you are useful, particularly to people fighting what you see as the good fight. If that means taking on the grunt work and doing the dirty jobs, that’s okay. In most cases, you will be the hardest working member of your chosen community—the person holding things together—mostly because you’re the one who’s paying attention to the practical details that make everything else work.
Within the confines of your community, you don’t mind revealing your weaknesses and inconsistencies. You assume that in this environment, they will be accepted and excused. However, that should not be all you ask from this group. You can be a leader, a planner, a person who sees the big picture and still understands the importance of the specific. Don’t let your emotional need for routine and order keep you from realizing all your potential.
The Moon in the Sixth House with the Sun in the Twelfth
You are usually pretty good at living with your weaknesses and limitations. One reason for this is that you are so good at getting the most out of what you have. No matter what sort of limitations life has handed you in terms of your background, upbringing, education, or physicality, you manage to find something you can work with. Often, you are able to transcend these limitations through sustained effort and skill.
People might think that you are driven by ambition. However, what really motivates you is the need to keep people from noticing that the limitations they can see, the ones you seem to have overcome, are just part of the story. There are other impediments: secret demons that you prefer not to talk about. It is these deeper psychological and spiritual issues that really challenge you and turn your attention inward.
Of course, you don’t have to answer this call. You can choose to ignore those secret impediments and focus on the more apparent ones that you can handle by means of your intellect and hard work. That’s easy for you. It feels safe and reinforces your emotional security. However, if you refuse to make the inward journey that is the mission of the Sun in the Twelfth House, those hidden limitations will continue to grow until no amount of skill or hard work can keep them from invading your daily life.