Almagest

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Saturn opposite Uranus

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

What the tradition reads

Within a single chart, Alan Leo reads the adverse aspect of Saturn to Uranus, of which the opposition is one form, as tending "always to bring a complete separation between custom and tradition on the one hand, and originality and independence on the other." The native is forced, sooner or later, to decide whether to go along with the majority or to be, in Leo's own phrase, "in the right with two or three" rather than prove false to a principle, its completion often marking one of the major turning points in a life already shaped by the tension building toward it. Between two charts, one person's Saturn opposite another's Uranus is read, Cafe Astrology groups it with the square, as producing the same tensions at a harder angle still: Saturn feels unsettled by Uranus's changeable or rebellious actions, Uranus reads Saturn as overly cautious, and both partners can turn stubborn, though a workable middle ground remains possible if either is willing to look for it.

The story

An opposition is a hundred and eighty degrees, the full diameter of the circle, standing two bodies at the greatest possible distance; Ptolemy counted it among his four configurations. Uranus is Saturn's own father. Gaia, angered by his cruelty toward their children, fashioned a sickle and persuaded Cronus, the youngest of the Titans and the one the Romans would later conflate with their own Saturn, to use it; it was Cronus who then castrated Uranus and cast the remains into the sea. Standing at the full distance of the wheel from each other, father and son face one another as the two ends of that first overthrow, sky and its unseater each fully visible only from the other's vantage point.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Saturn:Uranus:opposition.