Mars-Neptune: a lesson in trines and sextiles

[Jim Eshelman]

I'm going to use Mars-Neptune aspects as an example of distinguishing trines and sextiles from hard aspects. At the very least, you'll see that being a trine or sextile doesn't make their outcome any kinder or sweeter.

First, a review: I tell people starting in astrology an open fib, viz., that they should regard trines and sextiles as milder, less intensive - weaker, if you will - than conjunctions, oppositions, and squares. The hard aspects have an intensive need to express energetically that the soft aspects don't have.

But it's deeper than that. I'm currently reassessing the language I use to describe them (by reviewing all the things I know to be true about them and looking at collections of charts anew).

You'll certainly be fine (at least in most cases) if you just think of trines and sextiles as less intensive, or even weaker, and give them 'second class citizen' standing behind the hard aspects - consider them secondary, like modifiers or add-ons once the hard aspects have their say on the main thrust of the energies of the psyche and the life.

But there are deeper things to know about them. One thing I've known for a long time is that trines and sextiles more likely express as mental characteristics than as events. Even if the planets involved don't directly pertain to the mind itself, the aspect essentially reflects "state of mind" or "how the mind works." Examples that don't involve mental planets: Think of Mars-Saturn trines and sextiles as showing someone is "tough-minded," Moon-Mars trine sextiles as "sharp mind," Sun-Neptune soft aspects as "idealistic or artistic thinkers," etc.

I'll apply this to something observable in Mars-Neptune aspects.

[Jim Eshelman]

One interesting observation that can be made about Mars-Neptune aspects is that, in my collection of murderers - especially really gruesome murderers - Mars-Neptune trines and sextiles are far more common than the hard aspects. In fact, they almost own the whole show.

Having close Mars-Neptune trines or sextiles in my 800+ collection of sample charts are Henri Desire Landru, O.J. Simpson, Robert Strack, and Winnie Ruth Judd. These aren't simply murderers - their murders were unusually gruesome. (For O.J., the worst pictures weren't shown to the public.)

For the conjunctions, we find Manson (who engineered from a distance but was pretty messed up anyway) - that's it. One infamous example that people usually think of first when they think of negative Mars-Neptune expressions. For the opposition and square, we get Charles Whitman (the Austin shooter who had an organic defect in his brain building to crisis level) and, I suppose, we should count Phil Spector. While these were bad, they aren't in the same gruesome, horrible category as the trines and sextiles - they were straightforward "clean kills," for example.

What to make of this? The point of this post is to return attention to the way trines and sextiles affect the pattern of the mind. My interpretation is that the Mars-Neptune soft aspects (expressed negatively through the murderers) don't mean just a weaker, milder version of Mars-Neptune - quite the opposite! - but represent primarily a violent, gruesome imagination as their persistent state of mind.

[Jim Eshelman]

Let's look at other (non-murderer) examples of Mars-Neptune trines and sextiles to show how dark images and fantasies - as well as related inflamed imagination, bridging in the best cases to powerful ingenuity, mark these people.

One fine example of Mars-Neptune imagination's "dark imagery" in a positive expression is Elvira! If you took her act seriously, you'd have to be very afraid and, even then, her seductive act is a further inflaming of Mars-Neptune fantasies.

Several people on the list had rarefied minds and contributed important concepts and shifting of our mental patterns, such as Ada Lovelace, George Boole, Albert Hoffman, and Buckminster Fuller, and literary figures like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Falkner. We find powerful musicians like Jimmy Page, George Michael, Roberta Flack, Gladys Knight, and, Kesha, and others who simply fired others' imaginations like Charles Lindbergh, Florence Farr, Helen Mirren, evangelist Marjoe Gortner, Foss Heindel, and a ton of legendary actors. - Among others.

I submit that their prime power was an inflamed imagination, a mindset soaring above the landscape, including one that runs far outside the normal course of things.

[Jim Eshelman]

In contrast, what do we see with the conjunctions? Setting the single volatile case of Manson aside, we see a much more stable set of characters with Mars conjunct Neptune than for the trine and sextile. One thing that definitely stands out, though, is a group of people who actively dive into unusual areas of thought as explorers. There is much more passion in this group - more power and emotional force to their creations, or at least the ability to stir that in others.

One of the real marks (from the list I have in front of me) seems to be that they dive deep into areas others find mysterious or unknown. That's the essence of Havelock Ellis, but we can also add Houdini, Shelley, and John Lennon, each of whom took us along on his own magical mystery tour.


When we move to the oppositions and squares, we get a different flavor again. This list is especially marked by people who exercise great, uncompromising control over others. (That was fundamental to Manson, too, of course.) Names on this list include several U.S. presidents, Queen Elizabeth II (England's longest-reigning monarch), Henry VIII, Ivan the Terrible, and, non-politically, Alfred Krupp, Jimmy Hoffa, and Steve Jobs.

There are also many who are famous for not constraining the intensity of their indulgences in the slightest, such as Swinburne, Baudelaire, Jack Parsons, and Britney Spears; but, also, a couple of saints.

This, of course, is incomplete. I've ignored the enormous emotive musical power of Streisand, Pavarotti, and Jerry Lee Lewis (and poetic power firing people's emotions of Maya Angelou), the stream of Sidereal astrologers with the aspect close, the fantasy of Heinlein, the mental complexity and magnitude of Heidegger. However, I hope I've drawn a bit of a contrast between the different types of aspects, with the particular feature that the soft aspects - which especially own the most horrific, gruesome murders - seem especially aspects of volatilized imagination - a framing of the mind.