Is a trine the best aspect?

It is the easiest, which is not the same thing. A trine is a strength the person did not have to build, and what comes without effort gets little attention, so trines are often the least developed part of a chart. Astrologers tend to say a chart needs a square somewhere to put its trines to work.

What angle is a trine?

120 degrees, a third of the circle, so the two planets are four signs apart. In a birth chart this site counts a trine within 7 degrees of exact; by transit from Jupiter outward, within 2; for the Moon on a given day, within 7. At 120 degrees the pair is nearly always in one element, fire with fire or water with water, which is where the trine's ease comes from.

What does a grand trine mean?

Three planets each trine the other two, a triangle across the chart, usually all in one element. It reads as a closed circuit of ease: the three functions feed each other and need nothing from outside, which is comfortable and can settle into inertia. It is rarer than a single trine and read the same way, amplified.

Astrology basics · The five aspects

The trine in astrology: what a 120 degree aspect does in a chart

A trine is two planets a third of the zodiac apart, 120 degrees, four signs from each other and nearly always in the same element. Tradition files it as soft, the easiest of the five. In a birth chart it describes a talent that never met resistance, so the person does not count it as a talent, and is surprised to hear that it is one.

Exact angle: 120 degrees
Natal orb: 7 degrees
Transit orb: 2 degrees
Daily orb: 7 (Moon), 1 (Sun to Mars)
Hard or soft: Soft

A third of the circle

An aspect is the angular distance between two planets, taken as the difference of their positions along the zodiac, and the trine is 120 degrees of the 360. The two stand four signs apart, which puts them in the same element in nearly every case: fire with fire, earth with earth. The exception is a trine out of sign, where the orb carries one planet over a boundary. That orb, the margin either side of exact, is 7 degrees for a natal trine on this site, the same as the square.

A talent nobody counts

The two functions in a trine run together without friction, and have done so since before the person could watch themselves. There is no habit to see, because nothing was ever in the way; the person does the thing and assumes everyone can. That is the trine's cost: an ability that goes unpracticed because it never needed practice, and is discovered late, usually when someone else fails at it in front of them.

Two trines in ordinary use

Sun trine Moon, where someone feels most themselves and how their feeling settles, in agreement: they take a hard decision at work, sleep, and wake up still agreeing with themselves, and treat this as what everyone does. Venus trine Jupiter: what draws them and where they expect more, in the same element. They host eleven for dinner on a Tuesday with no plan, run out of chairs, and nobody minds, and they do not file it as a skill. Asked about it, the person shrugs.

What a transiting trine does

A transiting trine is made when a moving planet reaches 120 degrees from a natal position. The orb for the five slow planets is 2 degrees here, so Jupiter trine the natal Sun lasts a few weeks per pass, and Jupiter's retrograde often gives three passes in a year. A transiting trine lends the moving planet's function to the natal one and asks nothing back: the Moon trine a natal Mercury, and the words come in the right order all afternoon, which the person puts down to coffee.

See Trine in your own chartA free birth chart, with the reading, from your date, time and place.

Questions

Is a trine the best aspect?: It is the easiest, which is not the same thing. A trine is a strength the person did not have to build, and what comes without effort gets little attention, so trines are often the least developed part of a chart. Astrologers tend to say a chart needs a square somewhere to put its trines to work.
What angle is a trine?: 120 degrees, a third of the circle, so the two planets are four signs apart. In a birth chart this site counts a trine within 7 degrees of exact; by transit from Jupiter outward, within 2; for the Moon on a given day, within 7. At 120 degrees the pair is nearly always in one element, fire with fire or water with water, which is where the trine's ease comes from.
What does a grand trine mean?: Three planets each trine the other two, a triangle across the chart, usually all in one element. It reads as a closed circuit of ease: the three functions feed each other and need nothing from outside, which is comfortable and can settle into inertia. It is rarer than a single trine and read the same way, amplified.