Mercury trine Mars

What these two are about together

Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.

What a trine does

A trine puts two planets in the same element, and the tradition reads it as the easiest relationship in the chart. What the two govern agree with each other and need no negotiating. It is usually experienced as a natural facility, which is exactly why it is also the aspect most often taken for granted.

How it reads

Mental energy that goes somewhere. Associated with people who think clearly under pressure and who finish what they start explaining.

In practice

Read as ability rather than luck. Trines describe what somebody can do without effort, and consequently what they may never have bothered to develop.

What to watch for

Complacency. The traditional caution about trines is that nothing here demands anything, so nothing here necessarily grows.

The two planets

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Mercury and Mars at other angles

• Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Mercury square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Mercury opposition MarsDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis