Almagest

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The Moon trine Pluto

the Moon trine Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart the Moon trine Pluto is read, like the sextile, as feeling seemingly afraid of nothing: confidence in the face of demanding circumstances, and a sense of feeling most alive while experiencing deep emotion, sharing intimacy, or digging for answers. The tradition describes the trine as the more dynamic of the two harmonious contacts, so that where the sextile's readiness is called upon, the trine's is simply present, an ease with intensity that needs no particular occasion to show itself. Between two charts, one person's Moon trine another's Pluto is read through the same deep-feeling theme the tradition names for every Moon-Pluto pairing, here made strong and focused with the least friction of any such contact: the two can change anything they train their attention on, sources note a tendency toward shared involvement in organizations, and the tradition credits the bond, at its best, with becoming a problem-solving or healing force for the people around it.

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. Persephone offers the clearest mythic bridge between these two: daughter of Demeter, she was gathering flowers when Hades burst through a cleft in the earth and carried her into the underworld with Zeus's consent; grieving, Demeter let the earth grow nothing until a bargain was struck, and because Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds while below, she was bound to spend a third of each year, the winter months, in Pluto's realm and the rest above with her mother, the changing seasons read ever since as the visible trace of her passage. Set at this most flowing angle, the Moon moves toward Pluto's depths the way Persephone moves toward spring, a passage the myth itself treats as assured rather than forced, depth and comfort trading places easily because the way back has never really been in doubt.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Moon:Pluto:trine.