The opposition makes two functions answer each other like two poles: the person swings between them or finds one of the two in someone else.
Two forces in the chart face each other: each shows the other its missing part, and the link is sought between them.
An ability to see both sides of a situation and look for the point of balance.
Swinging from one extreme to the other, or attributing to others what you refuse in yourself.
By Thomas Guilhot · updated
A two-seat seesaw, a dialogue where each side defends a legitimate position: the opposition looks like that.
The two planets are at 180°, so in two opposite signs, which share the same modality and complement each other: Aries and Libra, Taurus and Scorpio. They do not collide at a right angle, as in the square; they look at each other. Each represents what the other does not do, and the person feels they need both.
Tradition calls it dynamic. In practice, it is often lived through alternation: a period of intense sociability followed by a need for solitude, spending followed by strict saving. It also plays out in relationships, because we readily meet in others the planet we own the least. Sun opposite Moon, for example, corresponds to a birth around the full moon. The orb used is 8°, widened to 10° when one of the two luminaries is involved.
The challenge is integration. Rather than choosing one pole against the other, the person would learn to make them talk, to find each one’s moment. Modern astrologers associate the opposition with awareness: what you see face to face becomes visible, and therefore workable. A well-lived opposition gives a strong sense of measure and a real ability to understand opposing points of view.
It often describes an attraction to what you are not: a reserved person fascinated by another who is very expansive, a fiercely independent person drawn to someone who seeks fusion.
When it links two charts, the opposition signals strong complementarity and sometimes tugs of war. The bond grows when each recognizes their own part in what they blame on the other, and stops handing over what they could develop themselves.
The opposition gives an aptitude for negotiation, arbitration, and taking opposing interests into account: you find it in people who can present a case from the client’s point of view as well as their own.
It can also create hesitation between two directions, two careers, two ways of working. Organizing both, in alternation or as a team, often avoids sacrificing a part of yourself.
You can sense it in the back-and-forth: very social weeks then very withdrawn ones, an intensive tidying then letting things go, a tight spending regime then a weekend without counting.
This pendulum is tiring when it comes in crises. Making a small place each day for both needs, a moment with others and a moment alone, for example, softens it noticeably.
Ptolemy, in the Tetrabiblos, explains the opposition through the relation of diametrically opposed signs, of the same gender but set face to face, like two adversaries sizing each other up.
Medieval tradition and Lilly held it to be the strongest look of enmity, more marked than the square, associated with quarrels and separations. This vocabulary of hostility is not taken up on the site, which forecasts nothing and prefers to speak of polarity.
For the moderns, the opposition is the aspect of awareness. Dane Rudhyar placed it at the peak of the cycle between two planets, like the full moon: the moment when what began at the conjunction becomes fully visible.
Tradition calls it dynamic: the two functions are said to pull against each other and call for an adjustment, without foretelling anything.
The orb is the margin allowed around the exact angle (see the orb concept); the site uses ± 8°, ± 10° with a luminary.
180° = 6 × 30°: the two planets are usually 6 signs apart.
Between 172° and 188° apart, the aspect counts (± 10° if the Sun or the Moon is involved).
Tradition calls it dynamic: the two functions are said to pull against each other and call for an adjustment, without foretelling anything.
Two planets diametrically opposed on the wheel, at 180°, within the orb. It links two opposite signs of the same modality. Tradition calls it dynamic: the two functions answer each other and seek a balance rather than a victory of one over the other.
Both are dynamic, but in different ways. The square puts two functions at a right angle: they collide and force action. The opposition puts them face to face: they look at each other, alternate, and often project onto others. The square pushes toward action, the opposition toward awareness and a search for balance.
Modern astrologers observe that we often live one pole of the opposition and meet the other in those close to us. A person who represses their anger would attract angry partners, for example. Recognizing this part in yourself lets you take back control and live both poles more freely.
The pairs
Each cell leads to the pair’s page. The luminaries have a slightly wider orb.
| Moon | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | ☌︎Sun and Mercury: impossible aspect | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | |||||||
| Venus | ☌︎Sun and Venus: impossible aspect | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎Mercury and Venus: impossible aspect | ||||||
| Mars | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | |||||
| Jupiter | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ||||
| Saturn | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | |||
| Uranus | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ||
| Neptune | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | |
| Pluto | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ | ☌︎⚹︎□︎△︎☍︎ |
| Sun | Moon | Mercury | Venus | Mars | Jupiter | Saturn | Uranus | Neptune |
Crossed-out cell: an aspect the sky never forms (Mercury stays within 28° of the Sun, Venus within 47°).