Almagest

The library · The aspects

Mars trine Neptune

Mars trine Neptune, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mars trine Neptune is read, like the sextile, as a powerful sense of mystery, nuance and drama. The tradition names the trine the more dynamic of the two harmonious Mars-Neptune contacts, this same sense of drama expressed naturally and consistently rather than called upon only when useful. Between two charts, Mars-Neptune contacts are generally read as indicative of sexual attraction, sources say, an attraction the same sources reserve their disruption warning for difficult aspects only, a caveat the trine is not named as falling under.

The story

A trine is a hundred and twenty degrees, a third of the circle; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs calls it, together with the sextile, harmonious, since the signs it joins are of the same kind, all masculine or all feminine, and Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect calls the trine extremely beneficial, indicating harmony, ease and what is natural, one of the two aspects the tradition sets against the square and opposition's discord. Mars and Neptune are bound to the horse very differently. Roman tradition consecrated the Campus Martius to Mars as horse pasturage and an equestrian training ground, held the October Horse chariot race and Rome's only known horse sacrifice in his honor, and sent Roman cavalry parading from his temple every July; Neptune's own tie to the horse came later and secondhand, Wikipedia's page on his mythology says, through the Roman god Consus, whose festival featured horse races and who was reinterpreted as Neptunus equestris under the influence of the Greek Poseidon Hippios, Neptune himself having no such direct connection with horses of his own. Set at this most flowing angle, the war god's own horse cult and the sea god's borrowed one ride together as naturally as the October races Mars was given every year, force and current moving as one animal rather than two.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Neptune:trine.