Reframing The Trine: Don’t Believe The Hype

This may be welcome news for some of you and potentially unwelcome news for others. But only if you subscribe to the “trines = goodWOWawesome” version of astrological reality.

Yes, trines represent planetary interactions that feel second nature, that are well integrated and run smoothly. They run so smoothly that they can operate in the background of our awareness. That’s why they produce talents or success— we don’t have to try. The goodies are just *there.*

But what if that background processing has been compromised? What if malware has inconspicuously started running the show?

To make sense of this, I think of a newsletter Steven Forrest once wrote about the nature of trines. In it, and to paraphrase, he likened the potential sneakiness of the trine to two alcoholics supporting each other’s drinking habit by agreeing that neither of them drink too much. Yes, technically in that hypothetical interaction, the two parties agreed. That’s a harmonious interaction. But the result of that interaction isn’t actually that great. It’s actively damaging even.

It is possible that planets involved in a trine can aid and abet each other in manifesting as negative behaviors. Planetary enablers. Unlike a square or an opposition, there is no friction to jam up the airwaves, no internal struggle, no negotiation, no pause. Even conjunctions relay a heavy vortex of energy that sticks out in our awareness. With a trine, the faucet is always running without obstruction.

If you’ve heard the idea that “difficult” aspects can create very successful people, then you may understand that some level of internal conflict or struggle can help push us to overcome. And sometimes with stellar results.

But with trines, there is no adversarial force that can emphasize or make obvious a potentially damaging behavior (or perspective, belief, attitude, etc.). There is no struggle.

As a result, some trines manifest as major blind spots. Unless there is a proactive hijack of the background processing, by understanding the nature and potential of the planets, signs and houses involved, some trines can infect your life with malware, and you wouldn’t even know it.

And yes, I know the totality of a person and their chart is more than just one aspect. But understanding parts of the chart in isolation cand build towards better understanding of the chart as a whole.

Let’s look at some examples, hypothetical and real.

Trines involving Jupiter are perhaps the most illustrative. Left unchecked, Jupiter trines can manifest as flagrant excesses. Let’s say someone has Jupiter trine Mercury. Their mind is chalk full of inspiring ideas and vast amounts of knowledge. Maybe they can easily convey their messages to the masses or wrap their head around abstract or philosophical concepts.  But the trine that supports their intellectual growth is the same trine that can contribute to unchecked idealism, rigid and dogmatic perspectives, or constant spiritualizing. You may imagine that this person thinks big but easy spirals when their ideas don’t play out well in reality, or when their intellectual talents are questioned by others, or when they cannot spiritualize themselves out of real-world problems. The blind spot? Potentially thinking that you know it all and thus closing your mind to other perspectives. Potentially deluding yourself or thinking with unfounded grandiosity. Sure, this may not ruin their lives – but it may periodically jeopardize their relationships, reputation, or mental health.

Let’s look at a Moon – Saturn trine. In popular astrological literature, these folks are responsible and mature down to the bone. That is true and it is a handy asset for survival in the material world. But if trines are free-flowing faucets of energy, we can imagine that the more gnarly archetypes of Saturn bleed into a person’s emotional landscapes too. They are hard on themselves, deny themselves, or suffer from chronic inadequacy that makes them feel unlovable. These lemons can become lemonade. Or they can sour a person’s spirit with a practically automatic and constant stream of negative feelings.

Kurt Cobain had both trines mentioned, between the signs of Cancer and Pisces. And let’s also throw his Pisces Venus into the mix (he had a Pisces stellium with Mercury, Venus and Saturn forming trines to his Moon and Jupiter in Cancer. His Sun was also in Pisces but wasn’t, by degree, as tightly involved in these trines). It goes without saying that Cobain was supremely gifted and influential. But also supremely troubled in ways that appeared inescapable. He had an unquenchable desire to love and be loved by others, a romanticism that led to much heartache. His struggled with his attempt to just be a bachelor and was pulled into the orbits of women he was infatuated with for better and worse.

His mother’s divorce and unstable childhood also impacted him greatly. With the Moon (nurturing, childhood, mom) as his most elevated planet and trine his chart ruler Mercury, this early seed of unhappiness imperceptivity directed his life. Moon – Mercury trines contribute to great artistic and creative talent, but also muddy a person’s ability to think objectively. Feelings can become facts for these folks, and negative impressions can easily infect the way you view yourself and the world.

Let’s look to his Venus – Jupiter trine. Again, responsible for behemoth creative talents and adoration from others. But this trine also inflames indulgence and the need to feel good all the time. In a person like Cobain, this made drugs an obvious and easy escape hatch. In everyday people, it may create shopping, gambling, or food addictions. Or straight up laziness.  

Pluto trines are also tricky. Yes, for instance, a Moon – Pluto trine can endow a person with deep emotional resolve and resilience, even a psychic capacity that can be used suss out helpful information others would miss. The capacity for positive transformation of self and others is tremendous. But Pluto deals in darkness. A constant flood of subliminally intense material can easily overwhelm a person and create a gloomy outlook on life or make them act on their darkest impulses.

Pablo Escobar had Moon in Aries trine Pluto in Leo and is obviously known for the lengths he went in order maintain his drug empire, with some biographies estimating he killed people in the thousands. He grew up in poverty and resolved to, in response, become a powerful person. This evokes the Moon’s involvement—early childhood experiences which compel one to overcorrect or cope in extreme ways (Pluto).  And with trines, that reaction is natural and automatic. Vladmir Putin and Kim Jong-Un, two famous dictators, have Mars – Pluto trines, which has an enabling influence on coercive or violent actions, and can spur powerful propaganda machines and cults of personality.

In our own lives, Mars – Pluto trines can manifest as steely willpower that helps us beat the odds and accomplish great feats. Or as profoundly destructive behaviors like substance abuse, a trigger-happy temper, or taking masochistic pleasure in self-sabotage.

This is in no way an attempt to subvert the nature of squares or oppositions, to paint them as universally positive or easy to deal with. Rather, this is about correcting the trine PR machine, and all machines that deal in this = good or that = bad binaries. But I also don’t intend to spook you out about your own trines. When a simplistic and blindly positive narrative is counterbalanced by a more cautious and thoughtful one, I think neutrality, or at least perspective, can be achieved. And from there, chart analysis becomes less paint-by-numbers and more coloring in the shapes, shades and shadows that actually match your life experience.

In my own life and astrological practice, I’ve found it helpful to work with the entire universe of possibilities that aspects can create. This means not biasing myself or my clients into thinking anything about their chart is overwhelming good or bad – but rather, looking at the chart as a complex and malleable matrix of potential.

 😊

Jupiter Conjunct Pluto Through the Houses

This configuration is all about how you define personal success. Jupiter is where we expand, where we go to develop ourselves along the lines of faith, spirituality, philosophy and other facets of the high mind. Jupiter aligns us with our personal brand of luck and opportunity, and the mindsets that make it possible. Jupiter shows talents that manifest with ease. Pluto is the principle of power, of urge, of obsession. It is the energy of digging in, unraveling, of going to the edge, looking over it, and laughing. After all is said and done, the Plutonian plunge acquaints us with personal power. Not in the brute and obvious way, not like Mars. This is a silent and soulful power.

 When Jupiter and Pluto conjoin, we get breadth and depth. Sometimes in devastating ways. Like the spread of COVID-19 and the Spanish Flu (Pluto representing virus and germs—microscopic death. Jupiter representing spread, travel, and proportion). But in our charts, Jupiter conjunct Pluto can tell a personal story as well. Pluto has been grinding away in Capricorn and the house that contains Capricorn for a long while. Its changes are subtle and far reaching. But the introduction of Jupiter, known as a trans-personal planet, may have made aware to you some of underlying motivations you have for achievement. The drive for power is strong. Jupiter may have made you aware of the power you lack, want, have, etc.— and those realizations can shape your actions and tinker your compass moving forward.  It all goes back to that definition of personal success. For some, it is money, power, and fame—an obsession with worldly status that is apropos for Capricorn. Any way to get a leg up, even if it breaks others’ legs. For others, productive avenues of power—like wanting for due recognition, respect, and betterment—can take hold. Power becoming empowered. A success that maybe only you see or know. Perhaps a combination of all the above.

Jupiter came to conjunct Pluto two times this year already and will make a third conjunction tomorrow. April 5th, June 30th, November 12th. These days coincide with a beginning, middle, and end to the Jupiter-Pluto narrative. Of course, not in any tidy way. But those three dates are helpful ballparks for events that show the fingerprint of Jupiter and Pluto’s energy for you. Below are brief descriptors/themes regarding the transformation and opportunities that may have befallen you or will.  

Aside from knowing which house these conjunctions are in for you, it is also helpful to keep in mind which houses Jupiter rules for you to further contextualize internal or external events. Jupiter rules Sagittarius and Pisces.

1st house: These conjunctions brought to the forefront your very identity in the world, how your personality, affect, and interactions could use more punch, power, and flair. Scaffoldings that forced you to play small have crumbled, and it may not have felt great. You have experienced loss, death, and hardship in literal and figurative ways. You have been reborn to yourself this year, in ways that empower you to play big and take up space. To rise to the occasion of life. Your physical body, with all its pains and warts, perceived or real, have forced you to realize you are more than flesh and bone. You are the energy that animates it.

2nd house: These conjunctions had you reckon with your value systems. In the most literal way, income, material resources, the balancing of assets versus liabilities became throughways for financial power and freedom. When your security is ensured, life opens up, opportunities can be capitalized off of, and monetized. Your material life can empower you to take on life in a safe way. The imbalance of such things, the mismanagement of them, causes disempowerment. Scarcity mindset. The ravenous need to keep up with the Joneses. So, too, have intangible forms of value crept to the surface this year. Where you give too much, take too much. Where you are depleted or substantiated. You have been drained and devalued in devastating ways, with the lesson being intentional procurement of the things that truly fill you up. And the pruning of things that do not.

3rd house: These conjunctions worked hard on your mindsets, your communication, your comings and goings in the community, and the actors you share that stage with. Opportunities to share your ideas and take full advantage of your mental abilities seemed to be been co-present news, information, and perceptions that were disturbing and uncomfortable. It is only in fully cultivating every corner of your mind, even the dark and dusted places, the scary places, that you come into profound understanding of yourself and your voice. Saying the things that need to be said, adhering to ruthless honesty, and exploring complexities will galvanize life in a direction that speaks your truth to power.

4th house: These conjunctions felt like the Earth was reorganizing itself beneath your feet. The places where you root yourself—in homes, in traditions, in family—were subject to quakes and quivers. This is the midnight house, the most private, the seat of our soul. You have been reset. Psychological and soul stirrings seemed to have accompanied the changing of the guards in your life. You moved and were moved. Familial tapestries perhaps felt outgrown or were grown upon. Places and people of comfort became uncomfortable. In sorting through the structures that broke down, and also the ones left upstanding in the wreckage, you can piece together the foundations worthy of your continued growth. And can trust they can hold the weight.

5th house: These conjunctions played on your creative contributions, and how they serve your character. We create in all types of ways: through art, through children, through romance, through play. Anywhere where we create evidence of our life. Though, do these pleasures consume you or emancipate you? There have been opportunities to exercise your imagination and the personal power it gives you. In your quest to project creative confidence and authority in your offerings, resistance from others or from an outgrown need to shrink have compelled you forward. Keep in mind the difference between power and empower—is what you do uplifting or is your motive to exert importance? Your capabilities are profound and evergreen when you let them flow and let them go.

6th house: These conjunctions have retooled your service, routines and health. The need for a job well done, to perform duty and responsibility in ways that compel recognition may have eaten you up, exhausted you. To be a background player in the results you help to create may have moved you into spaces where your ethic, problem-solving and service are valued and rewarded, or into mindsets that produce movement in that direction. Offers and opportunities for upward mobility (relatively) have presented themselves, yet so has the excruciating desire to find work that…works for you. The systems you have in place that feed your body have been magnified and tested—for better or worse. A sound body, an enriching lifestyle, and a set of habits that uplift the upward movement are sources of meaning. And in turn, it creates a meaningful life.

7th house: These conjunctions have brought a surplus of movement and opportunities in your one on one relationships. Yet, the people we let in close have the power to significantly alter us, move us into pain, move us into rapture, and move us into objective understanding of ourselves, our roles. This is hard and visceral work. You desire to be on good terms with all your counterparts, romantic, platonic and professional. But you can keep bumping up against what feels like shadow work, power plays, and a reverberating examination of true motive. After all is said and done, these foils to your main character show you more about yourself, move you into alignment with the dynamic and complex offerings of others, and ultimately, harness compromise and understanding as a life tool. This peace is your power. As is the ability to stand alone where company disappoints and dissolves.

8th house: These conjunctions have turned your mind inward with a close examination of your human condition, and the human condition in general. There is a profound gift in being able to face your fears, traumas and pain, in forcing sunlight into your broken places. Flaws build character build a richly lived life. Wabi Sabi. Your dealings with others have felt karmic and moving on a soul level, most of the lessons touching a sensitive nerve you never knew was exposed. You have been given opportunities to share of yourself, to reckon with how you are indebted, to look at how you manage assets and forces that are behemoth. Resources have flowed. This energy has introduced to you your own strength and weaknesses. To be softened, to surrender, to give up, to cry out for help—these are all fast tracks to a spiritual understanding life. Your power is in the expansion of consciousness.

9th house: These conjunctions have erected plot twists into your hero’s journey. Your faith in life is outsized yet seems to constantly bump up against forces that challenge it and seek to demolish it. And perhaps demolition has occurred, forcing you to rebuild with freshened perspective, with more grit and experience. Your appetite for adventure, for experience, for education, for sampling all that life has to offer has increased. Your higher mind is the gateway for true power. In confronting the big Why’s of life, you have been met by doubt, loss, and setbacks—but so, too, have those things clarified your answer. A high concept, a quest for information that is inherently subjective and spiritual moves you into a more holistic interpretation of the story unfolding for you. You’re writing the interpretation as the narrative unfolds.

10th house: These conjunctions for you have perhaps been the most deeply felt and transformative. Power playing out in a status-defining house. Your prominence and star turn on the world stage has been met with applause, with increased visibility, and with a hunger to get more, do more, and be more. Confidence is a natural byproduct of this transit, but ambition is a double-edged sword. Increased responsibility is a signpost of success, but mismanagement of that power can be devastating. Even the small ways you have sought to exert influence or be in control could be damaging to the humanity you carry. You don’t always have to be achieving, setting goals, or winning to be important. More so than any other house, how you determine your personal success weighs heavily. Will it ring hollow but win trophies? Or can it allow for meaning, rest, and reflection as well?

11th house: These conjunctions have expanded upon your desire to stand out from the groups you belong to and use them to further a goal. Because of that, your social networks may have dwindled dramatically, or else your perception of the players that actually matter has sharpened. The people you place around you during this time have real potential to move you forward, and to do that, you may have faced the loss of longstanding friendships and other social fixtures that no longer serve. Your specific drive to move, shape, and change humanity using your gifts has come into focus, as have the unique, perplex and saddening societal structures to battle along the way. You empower yourself through the people you choose to share this dream with. They must be mission critical.

12th house: These conjunctions have sensitized you, made you tender, made you receptive to your disowned needs, and the needs of others around you. The compassion and empathy this house offers are usually through a fraternity of pain and suffering. You feel kinship with those who have felt in similarly hard ways, or else have grown into a personal fraternity of self by allowing your pain to have a seat at the table. The way you relate with and understand others is profound though probably informed by your own losses. Events that force your self-sabotaging and victimized ways to the surface have been plentiful, yet a spiritual understanding and compassion for these drives often lurked and offered transcendence. Your power is in forgetting yourself and in separating from a bruised ego by diving into subconscious and soupy states. Letting the Universe move you instead of having to control everything yourself. The information may feel vague but holds value. Alone time, literally or not, sets the stage for rebirth, like how a cold and barren winter always foretells of a brighter spring.