The Moon trine Mercury
the Moon trine Mercury, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry
What the tradition reads
Within a single chart the Moon trine Mercury is read as this pairing's most dynamic harmonious contact: where the sextile draws on emotional intelligence and logic as needed, the tradition describes the trine as having already incorporated both into the personality, expressed consistently and without effort. These natives blend feeling and reasoning seamlessly in daily life and are named as excelling at both communication and listening, the balance the sextile has to reach for arriving here as a simple fact of temperament. Between two charts, one person's Moon trine another's Mercury is read as an aspect in which Mercury very easily stimulates the Moon toward self-expression: sources describe both partners feeling remarkably comfortable discussing practically anything, a natural ease present from the relationship's beginning, compatible interests, and a satisfying sense of mutual understanding and friendship underneath the conversation itself.
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. Hermes is remembered, in the Homeric Hymn that bears his name, as a trickster from infancy, credited with inventing the lyre and with stealing Apollo's sacred cattle before his first day had ended; his Roman counterpart Mercury shares that same credit for the lyre and, separately, carries the caduceus, the herald's staff of two entwined snakes that was Apollo's own gift to him. Selene, by contrast, is defined by patience, her nightly crossing of the sky and her long love for the sleeping Endymion. A trine between the Moon's steady feeling and Mercury's quick tongue needs no shared myth to explain its ease, the two simply finding, without any resistance, that they already speak the same language.
Written from
- Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, Book I, Chapter XVI (Ashmand translation, Project Gutenberg ebook 70850, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/70850/70850-h/70850-h.htm)
- Wikipedia, Aspect (astrology)
- Wikipedia, Hermes
- Wikipedia, Mercury (mythology)
- Wikipedia, Selene
- Cafe Astrology, Moon - Mercury Aspects in the Natal Chart
- Cafe Astrology, Synastry: Moon-Mercury Aspects
Corpus key aspect:Moon:Mercury:trine.