Almagest

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Mars opposite Saturn

Mars opposite Saturn, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mars opposite Saturn is read the same way as the square: a feeling that desires are denied or blocked, drive meeting a duty that will not simply let it run. Between two charts, this opposition is read among the pairing's more problematic contacts, the same criticism and undermining of confidence the tradition names for the square, Mars trying to regain Saturn's favor before turning angry and rebellious, a pattern sources warn becomes energy sapping for both partners if left unchecked.

The story

An opposition is a hundred and eighty degrees, half the circle, the two bodies facing each other directly across it; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs groups it with the square as discordant, and Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect describes oppositions as prone to exaggeration, their dichotomous quality keeping whatever they touch in a real and often tense relation rather than letting it settle. Cronus and Ares meet here as two kinds of hard force set against each other, the old king's calculating self-preservation against the young war god's blunt, immediate action; it was Gaia, not Cronus, who fashioned the sickle and urged her children to move against Uranus, Cronus only the one son among them willing to lie in ambush when the moment came, while Wikipedia's own page on Mars says his Greek counterpart Ares was often treated with contempt and revulsion in Greek literature, viewed primarily as a destructive and destabilizing force next to Mars's own function of securing peace. Facing each other directly, the old king's patience and the young god's charge hold two ends of the same field, each fully in command only while the other, for the moment, yields it.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mars:Saturn:opposition.