Almagest

The library · The aspects

Mercury opposite Pluto

Mercury opposite Pluto, within one nativity or between two charts in synastry

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart Mercury opposite Pluto is read the same way as the square: a native so perceptive, and digging so deep for answers, that they become their own worst enemy, suspicion and second-guessing turning debate into a battleground. Facing each other directly, the opposition is read as placing the wish to investigate and the wish to simply let a matter rest at two genuinely different poles, neither able to fully win out over the other. Between two charts, this opposition is read as frequent battles of the mind, the Pluto person pushing the Mercury person toward their own view, sources warning this can turn to abusive words and wear the relationship down, the same difficulty the tradition names for the square, here felt across the full width of the opposition's own distance.

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 carries one office among the Greeks that suits this pairing exactly: psychopomp, the guide who leads the souls of the dead down to Hades's own kingdom, a role his Roman counterpart Mercury keeps as well, leading newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Facing each other directly, the will to speak plainly and the pull to stay down with what is hidden hold opposite ends of the same crossing, each fully in charge only while the other, for the moment, lets go.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Mercury:Pluto:opposition.