☍ Opposition
Sun opposition Saturn
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
- Angle
- 180°
- Orb used
- ±6°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☉ ♄
What these two are about together
Identity and limit. The pair the tradition associates most strongly with authority, with fathers, and with the difference between what you are and what you have proved.
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
Identity meets a rule that will not move. The traditional reading is self-doubt, delay and a difficult or absent authority figure, and the traditional consolation is that what is built under this aspect tends to last.
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
Saturn: Limit, structure and what has to be earned
Sun and Saturn at other angles
- Sun conjunction SaturnTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Sun semi-sextile SaturnThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Sun semi-square SaturnForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Sun sextile SaturnSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Sun quintile SaturnSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Sun square SaturnNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Sun trine SaturnA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Sun sesquiquadrate SaturnA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Sun quincunx SaturnA 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 Saturn actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.