Mercury opposition Mars

What these two are about together

Mind and drive. How fast thinking becomes speech, and how sharp that speech is.

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

Thought and drive collide. Traditionally read as arguing for its own sake, as impatience with slower thinkers, and as saying the true thing in the most damaging available way.

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

Mercury: Mind, language and how you process

Mars: Drive, anger and how you go after things

Mercury and Mars at other angles

• Mercury conjunction MarsTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
• Mercury semi-sextile MarsThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
• Mercury semi-square MarsForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
• Mercury sextile MarsSixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
• Mercury quintile MarsSeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
• Mercury square MarsNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
• Mercury trine MarsA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
• Mercury sesquiquadrate MarsA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
• Mercury quincunx MarsA hundred and fifty degrees apart: two things that cannot be compared