Sun trine Moon

What these two are about together

The two lights, and the oldest question in a chart: whether what you are becoming and what you actually need are pulling in the same direction. Every tradition treats this pair as the most important relationship in a birth chart.

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

What you want and what you need agree. Associated with an unforced sense of self and, in the tradition, with a comparatively settled early home life.

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

Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming

Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you

Sun and Moon at other angles

• Sun conjunction MoonTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Sun semi-sextile MoonThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Sun semi-square MoonForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Sun sextile MoonSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Sun quintile MoonSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Sun square MoonNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Sun sesquiquadrate MoonA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Sun quincunx MoonA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
• Sun opposition MoonDirectly across the chart: two ends of one axis