☍ Opposition
Moon opposition Mercury
What is felt and what is said pull apart. Read as anxiety, as talking oneself out of a valid instinct, and as the specific frustration of not being able to explain something that is perfectly clear internally.
- Angle
- 180°
- Orb used
- ±6°
- Type
- Hard
- Bodies
- ☽ ☿
What these two are about together
Feeling and thinking. Whether what you feel can be put into words, and whether what you say matches what is going on underneath.
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
What is felt and what is said pull apart. Read as anxiety, as talking oneself out of a valid instinct, and as the specific frustration of not being able to explain something that is perfectly clear internally.
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
Moon: Need, instinct and what settles you
Mercury: Mind, language and how you process
Moon and Mercury at other angles
- Moon conjunction MercuryTwo bodies at the same degree, acting as one
- Moon semi-sextile MercuryThirty degrees apart: neighbouring signs, with little in common
- Moon semi-square MercuryForty-five degrees apart: half a square, and read as half its weight
- Moon sextile MercurySixty degrees apart: cooperation that has to be taken up
- Moon quintile MercurySeventy-two degrees apart: a fifth of the circle, and the odd one out
- Moon square MercuryNinety degrees apart: two things that will not sit still together
- Moon trine MercuryA hundred and twenty degrees apart: the same element, working together
- Moon sesquiquadrate MercuryA hundred and thirty-five degrees: a square and a half
- Moon quincunx MercuryA 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 Moon and Mercury actually make this angle in your chart depends on your birth date, time and place.