Astrology Aspects: Meaning of Square, Trine and the Rest
Planets do not simply stand somewhere. They stand in relation to each other. The lines in the middle of a chart show who talks to whom and who quarrels with whom.
People seeing their birth chart for the first time look at the ring of signs and miss the middle. There lies a web of coloured lines that looks like a sewing pattern. To me it is the part that brings a chart to life.
Signs and houses describe each planet by itself. Aspects describe how the planets deal with one another. Whether your will and your feelings help each other or get in each other’s way, whether your head listens to your heart: that is in those lines.
There are five angles you need to know. At the start you need no more.
What an aspect is in astrology
An aspect is a particular angle between two planets, measured along the zodiac. The full circle has 360 degrees, each sign 30. If your sun is at 10 degrees of Aries and your Mars at 10 degrees of Cancer, there are 90 degrees between them. That is a square, and the two have business with each other.
Not every distance counts. Classical astrology works with five angles, the ones you get by dividing the circle by one, two, three, four and six. They go back to the Greek astronomer Ptolemy and are therefore called the major aspects. These are also the five that the FalciDilara app draws into the birth chart.
The word comes from the Latin aspicere, to look at. Two planets in aspect are looking at each other. Planets without an aspect work side by side without noticing.
Conjunction, sextile, square, trine, opposition
Conjunction, 0 degrees
Two planets stand in the same place, usually in the same sign. They fuse into a single force and can no longer act apart. Whether that is pleasant depends on the pair: Venus with Jupiter is generous, Mars with Saturn drives with the brake on. The conjunction is the strongest aspect.
Sextile, 60 degrees
Two signs apart. The planets are in elements that get along, fire with air or earth with water. The sextile is an opportunity: a gift that is there when you use it. Little happens by itself. It is the quietest of the five.
Square, 90 degrees
Three signs apart. The planets are in signs that are strangers to each other, Aries and Cancer for instance. They want different things and get in each other’s way. The square produces friction, pressure, inner restlessness. It also produces strength, because someone under pressure moves.
Trine, 120 degrees
Four signs apart, the same element. Fire with fire, water with water. The planets understand each other without effort. A trine is a talent so natural that you hardly notice it. Its danger is comfort.
Opposition, 180 degrees
The planets stand exactly opposite, in opposing signs. They pull in two directions like the ends of a seesaw. Often you live one side yourself and meet the other in other people. The task is balance, not victory for one side.
The link with elements and modalities is no accident. Trines join signs of the same element; squares and oppositions join signs of the same modality. If that is new to you, read the article on elements and modalities first.
The orb: how exact an aspect has to be
Hardly any aspect is exact to the degree. A sun at 10 degrees of Aries and a Mars at 14 degrees of Cancer are 94 degrees apart, and it still counts as a square. The permitted deviation is called the orb.
As a rule of thumb, most astrologers allow about six to eight degrees for conjunction, square, trine and opposition, and four to six for the sextile. The sun and moon are given a little more. The figures are a convention, not a law of nature, and different programs set them slightly differently. That is why one app sometimes shows a line that another leaves out.
More important than the limit is the rule behind it: the tighter, the stronger. A square with an orb of one degree shapes a life. One with seven degrees is a tint in the background. When you read your aspects, sort them by orb and begin with the tightest.
Harmonious and tense aspects
Trine and sextile are counted as harmonious, square and opposition as tense or hard. The conjunction is neutral and takes on the colour of its planets. Old books say “good” and “bad” instead. I cross those words out for anyone who learns from me.
A harmonious aspect is something you can do without knowing how. It carries you but asks nothing. People with nothing but trines are often lovable, gifted and in no hurry ever to make anything of it.
A tense aspect is something that will not leave you in peace. Two parts of you do not want the same thing, and you have to find a way to do justice to both. That is tiring. It is also the reason someone starts a business, writes a book or leaves town after twenty years after all. Squares are the engines of a chart.
Trines show what you were given. Squares show what you make of it.
The best mixture has both: enough tension to set out and enough ease to arrive. For most people that is how it is. A chart made only of squares is as rare as one made only of trines.
How to read the coloured lines in a birth chart
In the drawing every aspect is a line between two planets, running across the middle of the circle. Each of the five kinds has its own colour, and the legend below the chart tells you which colour means what. You do not have to measure anything.
This is how I proceed when I see the web for the first time.
- Where do most lines run to? A planet at which four or five lines end is a hub. A lot hangs on it, and it deserves your attention first.
- What belongs to the sun and moon? Their aspects weigh most, because they concern will and feeling. After them come those to the ascendant and to Mercury, Venus and Mars.
- Which lines are tightest? Look at the orb. Two or three close aspects tell you more than ten wide ones.
- What shapes appear? Long lines through the centre are oppositions. Three trines forming one large equilateral triangle are a grand trine, a strong gift in one element. An opposition with a third planet square to both makes a right-angled triangle, the T-square. The pressure sits on its point.
- Which colour dominates? Many tense lines show a life with much drive and little rest. Many harmonious ones show a more even one.
Aspects that the slow planets form only among themselves, Uranus sextile Neptune for example, you share with everyone your age. They say little about you as an individual.
Three examples from readings
Sun square moon. You were born at a half moon. What you want and what you need stand at right angles: a sun in Leo wants to be seen, a moon in Scorpio does not want to show itself. Such people are seldom content and seldom lazy. The inner friction keeps them awake. It gets easier when they stop trying to abolish one of the two sides. There is more under sun, moon and rising sign.
Venus trine Mars. What you love and how you go and get it work hand in hand. That gives warmth, natural charm and a good sense of when to take a step towards someone. In love, much comes easily to these people. The other side: they have never had to learn to fight for someone and are at a loss when it is needed.
Mercury conjunct Saturn. Thinking carries weight. Such people speak late, slowly and precisely. As children they often think themselves stupid because they take longer than the others. As adults they are the ones whose sentence stays standing in a meeting. The task is to trust their own mind before everything has been checked three times.
With every aspect you go the same way: first the two planets on their own, whose meanings are in the lexicon, then the kind of angle, then the signs and houses they are in.
A chart with few aspects
Some drawings have only a handful of lines in the middle. That worries many who see it. There is no reason for it.
Few aspects mean that the parts of your character work more independently. Your thinking is not constantly disturbed by feeling, your drive not constantly by doubt. Such people can give themselves fully to one thing and switch between different roles. What they sometimes find harder is joining it all into a whole.
A planet with no major aspect at all is called unaspected. It is not weak. It is unattached, and it often shows itself entirely or not at all: an unaspected Mars is still for weeks and then cannot be stopped. With such a planet, pay particular attention to sign and house, because they are then all that describes it.
Frequently asked questions
Which aspect is the strongest?
The conjunction, followed by opposition and square, then the trine, and last the sextile. More important than the kind, though, is the orb: you feel a sextile exact to one degree more clearly than a square seven degrees wide.
Are squares and oppositions bad?
No. They are demanding, which is a different thing. Tense aspects show where you have to develop and where your drive comes from. Most people who have made a great deal carry several of them in their chart.
What is the difference between a trine and a sextile?
Both are harmonious. The trine joins signs of the same element and works by itself, like a gift. The sextile joins related elements and is weaker: a door standing open that you still have to walk through yourself.
Why does my sun never square Mercury or Venus?
Because, seen from earth, those two never move far from the sun. Mercury is at most 28 degrees away from it, Venus at most about 47. Of the five major aspects, only the conjunction is therefore possible between them and the sun.
Do I need my birth time for the aspects?
For most of them, no. The planets move so little in a day that their angles hold without a time. The exceptions are the moon, which travels twelve to fifteen degrees in a day, and all aspects to the ascendant and midheaven.