Almagest

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Mercury opposite Mercury

the transiting Mercury's periodic pass opposite its own natal place, or one person's Mercury opposite another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Mercury opposite itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit, at the point in Mercury's own fast orbit roughly opposite its own natal place. Cafe Astrology's own transit page reads this pass as a time likely to bring a conversation with someone holding a genuinely different perspective on the matter at hand. Between two charts, one person's Mercury opposite another's is read as two minds that often hold opposite views on a subject, sources noting these differences are not likely to lead to major conflict and, more often than not, serve to complement each other rather than to divide, provided neither side turns dogmatic about being right.

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. Hermes meeting Hermes, or one chart's herald meeting another's, has no single myth of its own, since the god does not typically appear twice in the same story except as messenger to himself; the tradition instead reads the doubling as a mark of the god's own particular gift, recognition. Mercury is named a god of boundaries, commerce, communication, eloquence and travel, patron of the marketplace and the road where strangers meet as equals and come to understand each other's terms. Facing his own former place directly, the herald meets a version of himself speaking from the opposite side of the same marketplace, the same gift for terms and boundaries now used to state a wholly different position.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mercury:Mercury:opposition.