Mercury trine South Node

What these two are about together

Thinking and what is already known. Associated with fluency in something learned long ago, and with the difference between knowing a subject and still being curious about it.

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

The old knowledge is genuinely useful. Associated with being the person who already knows.

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

South Node: What comes easily, and what you hide in

Mercury and South Node at other angles

• Mercury conjunction South NodeTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-sextile South NodeThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Mercury semi-square South NodeForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile South NodeSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury quintile South NodeSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Mercury square South NodeNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate South NodeA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx South NodeA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Mercury opposition South NodeDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis