☉ Sun ☍ Opposition ☽ Moon

180° · major aspect · challenging · default orb ±8°

The opposition of the luminaries is the Full Moon, the second syzygy of the lunation, and classical doctrine reads it as the pair's significations set face to face: vitality and authority on one side, body, habit, and the common people on the other. Ptolemy counts the opposition obstructive, formed on the diameter, yet the Full Moon is also culmination, the Moon at her maximum light. Sources tie the figure to matters brought to full visibility, to the ruler confronted by the ruled, and, when the syzygy falls near the nodes, to eclipses, the tradition's gravest omens.

Traditional reading

The Moon, immensely faster, applies, completing the opposition once each month at full phase. Sect gives the figure its symmetry, the leader of the day team facing the leader of the night across the whole heaven, each light in its own hemisphere as one rises while the other sets. Hellenistic natal practice took the preceding syzygy, whether New or Full Moon, as a sensitive degree of the nativity, and mundane astrology judged the Full Moons before ingresses and eclipses as charts in their own right.

Classical reading

Ptolemy lists opposition as one of the five Ptolemaic aspects, formed by the diameter (180°). Classically described as obstructive or confrontational.