☍ Opposition
Sun opposition Mars
Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.
- Angle
- 180°
- Orb used
- ±6°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♂
What these two are about together
Identity and drive. What you are becoming, and the force you are willing to use to get there. The tradition treats this as the pair that decides whether somebody acts on their own behalf.
What a opposition does
An opposition puts two planets exactly across from one another, in signs that are traditionally paired rather than unrelated. It is read as tension between two things that genuinely belong together, which is what separates it from a square. The tradition frames it as a problem of balance and, very often, as something a person meets through other people rather than alone.
How it reads
Drive and identity argue. Read as somebody who either overreaches and burns out or holds back and resents it, and traditionally as a person who had to learn what to do with their own aggression rather than being taught.
In practice
Read as a see-saw. Whichever end is being favoured, the other end is being neglected, and the aspect tends to describe the swing between them rather than a settled position.
What to watch for
Projection. Oppositions are the aspect most associated with meeting your own unowned half in somebody else and disliking it there.
The two planets
Sun: Identity, vitality and what you are becoming
Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things
Sun and Mars at other angles
- Sun conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared
Find this in your own chart
A reading like this only tells you what the pairing is associated with. Whether Sun and Mars actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.