Kite
A grand trine with a fourth body opposite one corner and sextile the other two: ease given a direction and a purpose.
Meaning
A kite is a grand trine with a tail. To three bodies about 120° apart a fourth is added, opposite one of them and sextile the other two, at the point halfway between them. Drawn on the wheel, the figure looks like a kite: the triangle is its body, the opposition its spine.
The kite answers the grand trine’s weakness. A grand trine flows in a closed circle; the opposition running through the kite brings tension and awareness, and gives the ease of the trines somewhere to go. Many astrologers count it among the most constructive figures a chart can hold: talent with a purpose, and the drive to use it.
The opposition is the place to look first. Its two ends, one corner of the triangle and the fourth body at the tail, show what the figure aims at and what keeps it moving. The two sextiles from the tail tie that tension back into the trine, so that effort and ease feed each other instead of pulling apart.
In practice
- A grand trine in water joining the Moon, Mars and Neptune, with Saturn opposite the Moon and sextile the other two: deep sensitivity given structure, an intuition that learns to build.
- The house of the tail shows where the gifts of the trine are put to use.
- A kite still contains its grand trine: read the triangle first, then what the tail asks of it.
Origin and history
In the Tetrabiblos (2nd century), Ptolemy calls the trine and the sextile harmonious and the opposition discordant. The kite holds both kinds in one figure, three trines and two sextiles around a single opposition, and it is read accordingly: as tension that has found its use.
How Ulune calculates it
- Ulune looks for a grand trine and a fourth body opposite one of its corners and sextile the other two, with the birth chart’s orbs: 8° for the trines and the opposition, 6° for the sextiles, and 6° and 4° for a trine or a sextile to an angle.
- It searches among the ten planets, Chiron, the Ascendant and the Midheaven.
- In the Table’s Patterns part, the corner of the triangle that the fourth body opposes is named as the kite’s focal body. The grand trine inside the kite is listed as well.
- Without a birth time, a figure that may not hold all day is marked ~.
Correspondences
| Bodies | Aspects | Signs, as a rule |
|---|---|---|
| four | three trines, two sextiles, one opposition | the triangle in one element, the tail in the element that completes it |
Related
- Grand trineThree bodies each 120° from the other two, usually in one element: a closed circle of ease, talent and self-sufficiency.
- TrineTwo bodies 120° apart, a third of the circle, usually in signs of one element: the aspect of ease, talent and natural flow.
- SextileTwo bodies 60° apart, a sixth of the circle, in signs whose elements suit each other: an opening that rewards initiative.
- OppositionTwo bodies on opposite sides of the zodiac, 180° apart: a polarity whose two ends ask to be held in balance.
- Mystic rectangleTwo oppositions joined by two trines and two sextiles: tension held in a frame of support, practical and balanced.
- YodTwo bodies in sextile, both quincunx a third: a narrow, pointed figure that asks the planet at its apex for constant adjustment.
Sources
- Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos, c. 150