Thinking About Grand Trines (2024)

Among conventional astrologers, trines are lucky aspects, period. The more of them you have, the luckier you’ll be. But to win the Gold Medal, what you really want is a Grand Trine – that’s three planets (or you can include the Angles) arranged in an equilateral triangle. You’re allowed a little slush – the triangle doesn’t have to be perfect, but it had better be close. What orbs to allow? There’s a lot of argument there – say, a few degrees, no more than seven or eight. As usual, if the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant are involved, you’re naturally a little more generous with the orbs. But even a wimpy Grand Trine will put you on the fast track to fame and fortune – that is, if we are to believe those kinds of astrologers.

Rather than labeling trines – and the Grand Trine itself – “lucky,” I prefer the word “easy.” Those two words don’t mean quite the same thing. Grand Trines do open doors and they can definitely roll out red carpets for you. That’s easily demonstrated. Do those doors and red carpets lead to good places and copacetic outcomes? Yes, sometimes. We won’t be completely dismissing the idea of simple good fortune in connection with this aspect pattern – we’ll just be looking at it a bit more cautiously. We must always recognize that like everything else in astrology, your own choices, be they wise or foolish, are always part of the equation.

Let me start with a true story. This is an edgy one about a client of mine from many years ago. I’ll call him Johnny. For the sake of confidentiality, I’m going to be vague about the specifics. I want to make sure that no one would recognize anyone involved unless they were part of my life “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”

Johnny had a glorious Fire Grand Trine involving both his Sun and Moon. He was born lucky – and he felt like he deserved it. For example, he believed that he didn’t need to bother with having a job – why work when his long suffering wife made all the money he needed? Meanwhile, he filled some of his many spare hours with an affair he was quietly having with a much younger woman who lived some miles away.

To those of us who knew Johnny, it seemed that he was skating on thin ice and that sooner or later his karma would catch up with him. Sure enough, the young woman he was secretly seeing turned up pregnant and wanted to have the baby. When Johnny’s wife learned the truth, she left him. So there he was – penniless, unemployed, and about to become a father. It looked like his karmic chickens were finally coming home to roost. We all sat back, somewhere between concerned and entertained, waiting for the ax to fall on poor Johnny’s head. How could he possibly get out of this one?

Here’s how: right then, Johnny’s father unexpectedly died and left him several million dollars.

There’s a Grand Trine in action. But here’s the question that separates the wizards from the game show hosts: was Johnny actually lucky? Certainly from a worldly, practical perspective, those millions arrived at an opportune moment. Taking a deeper, evolutionary view however, we might ask serious questions about whether his soul actually benefited from “getting away with it” that way.

I promise we won’t be turning Grand Trines into negative things! Like everything else in astrology, the critical factor is not the configuration itself, but rather how we use it. We will see plenty of positive expressions of the Grand Trine – but we just encountered our first hint of one of its possible darker sides: with Grand Trines, you can “get away with it,” at least for a while.

Here’s another example along similar lines. This one is public knowledge. On April 10, 2024, O.J. Simpson died. He was 76. This was just short of thirty years after his ex-wife and her lover were found stabbed to death in her home in Los Angeles. What followed was “the trial of the century.” The evidence pointed strongly to a jealous Simpson being the murderer. I’ll spare you the details, but as most of you probably know, he “got away with it,” mostly due to what appeared to be police misconduct. He lived for another Saturn-cycle.

No surprise, O.J. Simpson’s chart shows a dramatic Grand Trine involving both his Sun and Moon, along with an angular Jupiter.

Was O.J. Simpson lucky? Again, so much of the answer rests on exactly what we mean by the word “luck.” A Grand Trine does strongly correlate with an ability to “wiggle out of things,” which Simpson certainly appeared to do. In fact, history’s “master wiggler” – escape-artist Harry Houdini – was born under a Grand Trine. His Sun and Uranus formed trine aspects both to each other and to his Sagittarian Midheaven. Google him if you’ve never heard of him. He makes the “getting out of it” signature of the Grand Trine extremely literal.

image from Libraryof Congress

BEYOND “GETTING OUT OF IT”

Once again, we’re not going to make a Grand Trine into something bad! We just have to be careful about sorting out what is truly good fortune from things that might glitter but are definitely not gold, at least from the perspective of the evolving soul. That’s why I chose to begin with these edgier examples. I wanted to set a more cautious tone before we dive into the more simply “lucky” examples.

SPECIAL TALENTS

With Grand Trines, sometimes people are born with a unique talent or personal quality that simply opens doors for them. “Red carpets” are rolled out for them. Their lives seem to be running on automatic pilot and bound in unstoppable fashion for paradise. To probe a little more deeply, it’s helpful to take a moment to wonder how they actually feel about that – a person might be swept into “a golden carriage drawn by six white horses” when they might have preferred a quiet bicycle ride. Still, with Grand Trines, the sense of a soft touch from the “hand of fate” can be palpable.

As we proceed into this “glittery” territory, I want to offer you a ton of examples – too many to include all of the actual charts. Most are available in astrodatabank. Not all are A-data, but unless a Grand Trine involves an Angle, that doesn’t matter. I drew some of these examples from my own files, but I also found a celebrity website that has a list of over 4000 people with Grand Trines. Here it is if you’re interested – and while I’m at it, let me apologize for the relative lack of younger people in many of my examples. I’m not as up-to-date on the state of current popular culture as I might be. (Despite appearances, Taylor Swift doesn’t have one.) This website can fill in some of those gaps in my own knowledge.

SOME ILLUSTRATIONS OF GRAND TRINE MAGIC

In terms of physical attributes opening Grand Trine doors, here are two examples. Think of Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Marilyn Monroe. They both worked on their bodies, but obviously they won the genetic sweepstakes and it paid off materially for each of them. Marilyn’s life of course triggers some of the deeper reflections I have been suggesting – it’s hard to make the case that hers was a happy life.

What about being born with massive athletic talent? Try LeBron James, Serena Williams, Arnold Palmer, Mickey Mantle, Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, and Babe Ruth. Note how all these athletes are (and were) not only highly talented – they have also become iconic within the history of their various sports. They seem to inhabit some kind of cultural Mount Olympus, while others with similar levels of skill are forgotten after a couple of seasons.

• This potential for achieving an iconic quality seems to be a prominent feature of Grand Trines.

We need to be careful in thinking about it though. Lots of people who have lived and died and been forgotten to history have naturally been born with this configuration too. Most of us never get famous regardless of our charts. In practical astrology, the other features of Grand Trines we are exploring are more important – but when we combine real talent, a public profile, and a Grand Trine we often get more than the simple reality of success. Such people can become symbolic in an enduring, public way – “iconic,” in other words. There are beautiful blonde movie stars, then there’s Marilyn Monroe. There are great basketball players, then there’s Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

I was struck by the enormous number of people with impressive, natural musical talent who were born with Grand Trines. Try Frank Sinatra, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, Prince, Leonard Bernstein, both Bono and The Edge, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Muddy Waters, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, Snoop Dogg, and Tina Turner. Again, note not only the talent, but also that telltale iconic quality. Of course, many fine musicians and athletes are born without Grand Trines! That’s not the point really – the point has more to do with signing a soul-contract to be born with some natural talent or personal quality that can do two things:

• Open doors for you.
• Potentially sweep your life down roads you might not really want to travel – all the while allowing you to “get away with things” if that’s what you choose.

That’s a fuller picture of this aspect pattern – one that brings our understanding into deeper waters than merely babbling about “good luck.”

There are arts other than music of course. Grand Trines are common among people born with other kinds of life-defining creative talent. For a few examples, think of chess-master Bobby Fischer with his nearly perfect Air-sign Grand Trine of Mars, Neptune, and Uranus. Think of Michaelangelo, Ridley Scott, and Morgan Freeman. The list goes on: Max von Sydow, Judi Dench, Lucille Ball, Dustin Hoffman, Chris Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Jack Nicholson, Rembrandt van Rijn, Eddie Murphy, Stephen King, Martin Scorsese, Maya Angelou, and Leonardo Da Vinci (if we allow Chiron).

Ludvig von Beethoven had a particularly glorious one – he was born under a rare Grand Trine of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. That epochal astrological event also brought us William Wordsworth and Napoleon Bonaparte.

In the history of oratory – the ability to move people with the magical, hypnotic power of our words – think of Winston Churchill and Barack Obama, both born with Grand Trines. Personally, my favorite poet is William Butler Yeats, who had a tight Air sign Grand Trine of his Sun, Moon, and Saturn.

Speaking of having a way with words and how it can open doors for someone, what about Oprah Winfrey? She has a loose Grand Trine of Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune.

DUMB LUCK

You don’t have to be dumb to have what appears to be “dumb luck” play a life-shaping role in your biography. Think of 1950s actor Grace Kelly – she wound up marrying Prince Ranier III of Monaco and becoming a fairytale princess. Think of Jackie Kennedy becoming zillionaire Jackie Onassis after “Camelot” came crashing down. Then there was a certain Englishman – he was a humble sound engineer, mostly doing hack work producing popular comedy albums. One day, much to his reluctance, he was assigned the task of producing records for an unpromising bunch of moptops with the improbable name of The Beatles. His name was George Martin. He had a Grand Trine too.

Martin’s is a particularly interesting case in that one point of his Grand Trine is the Moon’s north node, which was working with Saturn and Uranus. This gets into some deep territory, but the basic point is that I believe that the north node can only be part of a Grand Trine when it has been intentionally activated. Otherwise it’s a rather inert point that can’t really hold its own in an aspect pattern. In George Martin’s case, the north node lies in Cancer on his 3rd house cusp – to his credit, in choosing to nurture (Cancer) and teach (3rd house) young John, Paul, George, and Ringo, he “turned his north node on” – and rest, as they say, is history.

Is it fair to say that George Martin was lucky? Who could argue against that? The doorway to destiny opened before him. Like so many others, he has become iconic. He may have played his cards well – but it certainly helped to have been dealt four aces.

THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME

Finally, sometimes the “luck” of a Grand Trine takes the form of simply being at the right place at the right time. Think of Henry Ford and Louis Chevrolet. Their surnames tell the whole story. Both were men born with Grand Trines, and both were born at the perfect time for seeing the potential of the “horseless carriage.”

We can go back over the biographies of many of the people I have mentioned and make that same connection. Along with whatever other qualities they brought to the table, many of them were also “at the right place at the right time.” George Martin, for one example, illustrates this “lucky” dimension of the Grand Trine. If you’re selling paint brushes, it helps to be born on the cusp of the Renaissance.

GOOD ASPECTS?

When I am teaching, I always encourage people to stop using the term “good aspects” and replace it with “easy aspects.” That second word is simply a lot more accurate. As we have seen, Grand Trines can also be a kind of Trojan Horse with all sorts of trouble waiting inside them. Still, they often make things easy and who doesn’t like that? There’s nothing wrong with feeling happy and grateful when things go as we want them to go. Trines and sextiles often correlate with those kinds of happy, flowing circ*mstances – and Grand Trines put that merry principle on steroids.

What’s not to like? Well, I was once told on great authority that the process of becoming addicted to heroin is the easiest, happiest six weeks you will ever spend in your life. Less dramatically, what’s “easier” than deciding not to clean your house, do your taxes, or get yourself to that yoga class? “Easy” doesn’t mean good nor does it mean bad. It just means effortless.

Everything in your chart is there for a purpose – with a Grand Trine, there’s an evolutionary need to have the experience of being in the flow, with the wind at your back, and God in Heaven, so to speak. It’s just that as with everything else in astrology, there are ways to get that lesson right and ways to get it wrong.

• When it goes wrong, a Grand Trine can lead to a dire fascination with escapism. What is more seductive than the path of least resistance? Who doesn’t like “easy?”

In one form of that soul-cage, people with Grand Trines can become dangerously self-contained, unavailable, and defensive – I don’t have famous names to name there because you really have to know somebody personally to sense that kind of dysfunction. I can’t help but remember “Johnny” when we questioned him about the way he was treating his wife.

When it comes to more overt kinds of escapism and the other temptations of a “stress-free life,” examples are abundant. Let me start with Keith Richards – the jokes about his incredible talent for cheating death are everywhere. Keith seems to have landed on his feet – and I can’t help but wonder how many times his Grand Trine saved him during his long years of addiction.

Others with Grand Trines have not been as fortunate: John Belushi, Carrie Fisher, Heath Ledger, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin . . .

TO GO FURTHER

For a more technical exploration of Grand Trines from the evolutionary perspective, I’d refer you to chapter fifteen of my 2020 volume, The Book of Air. One of the points I delve into there – and which I’ve totally ignored here – is the important distinction we can make among Fire, Earth, Air and Water Grand Trines. Each one functions rather differently. That book also contains a fuller exploration of the possible role of the lunar nodes in Grand Trines.

By the way, in that same chapter I also explore two other aspect patterns in similar detail – Yods and Grand Crosses.

Still, if you have a Grand Trine, no matter what Element it’s in, just remember to temper your good luck with some self-knowledge, humility, and wisdom, and you’ll prosper. Remember – from the astrological point of view, you’re driving a 600-horsepower Lamborghini.

Drive carefully.

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