Mars Opposition Mars Synastry: When Two Drives Face Each Other

Every birth chart has a Mars. It is what drives you: your energy, your effort, your initiative, what you go after and how you go after it. In this contact your Mars and their Mars are about 180° apart, half the circle, directly across the zodiac.

An opposition usually joins two opposite signs, which lie on one axis and face each other. (Usually, not always: near the edge of a sign, the pattern can shift.) That is the geometry. The reading built on the 180° angle and the facing axis is that each of your drives is seen from straight across: your way of going at things is in plain view of theirs, and theirs of yours. The difference of pace or manner in the summary above is the reading offered for this family of contacts; the angle itself shows only that the two signs face each other.

Both of you have a Mars, so the contact is mutual. It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, a parent and their child, or partners, and it is just one of many contacts in any two charts.

Living near someone whose Mars faces yours can mean that your way of going at things is in view much of the time. You may notice it in a glance across a room: how they begin a job, what they do at a stuck step, when they decide it is done. They may notice the same of you.

Starting something has a visible side. One of you names a first step and the other, seeing it from the front, may name another. Neither version is hidden from the other, and each may find it easier to say what they want when someone else's alternative is already in the room.

The difference may show up over speed, or over method, or over both. You may pull against each other over the pace of a plan or the order of its parts, while each of you also adds something to the other's effort just by being there to be looked at.

Because each of you is in view of the other, you may see your own style more clearly: how soon you start, how long you keep on, what you do when something is in your way. It is a little like hearing your own voice on a recording. You may also find yourself watching how the other handles a stage you find awkward, and learning something from the way it looks from outside.

One thing this contact can give is a clear view across. Each of you can show the other what their approach looks like from the opposite side of the job, and either of you may come away able to describe your own way of working better than before.

Each of you can also give the other an answer that is genuinely different. A proposal made to someone who shares your approach may simply be approved; a proposal made to someone who faces it may be tested, adjusted or returned with a variation, and the version that comes out may be one you would not have reached alone.

What each of you may want is for your drive to be taken seriously as drive. Your speed may matter to you more when it is respected as a speed, and your method more when it is treated as a method. Either of you may also want a say in the order of things, and a moment to give your reasons.

Part of this contact may be being looked at while you work. You may find that steadying or a little exposing, and either can come and go from one day to the next.

You may find that you notice the other's start before they notice yours, and the reverse. A pause shows: when one of you stops to think, the other sees the stop, and may read it as hesitation, care or a change of plan before it has been explained. A burst of effort shows too, and can look from across like a decision already made.

Because your drives face each other, each of you may become curious about the other's order of working, and noticing it can be one way of learning what your own habits are.

What follows are sketches, not reports: made-up moments from different kinds of pairs.

• Friends. Two friends in a village pantomime rehearse a chase across the stage. Each runs the width of it toward the other, and each, seeing the other's route, shifts their own mid-run.
• Siblings. Two siblings are on a night walk across a moor with one torch. Each has picked a different line, and each can see the other's line in the beam more clearly than their own.
• Flatmates. Two flatmates empty the airing cupboard. One takes everything out at once and sorts on the floor, the other takes a shelf at a time, and each stops now and then to watch the other's pile grow.
• Parent and child. A parent and their child build a birdhouse. The parent has already started on the roof; the child has laid the base pieces out in a row. They look at each other across the workbench.
• Colleagues. Two colleagues dress a shop window for the winter sale. They stand on opposite sides of the glass, each seeing the display from the street while the other works from inside.
• Partners. Two partners cross a stream from opposite banks on stepping stones, each placing the stones in a different order. Both stop at the middle stone.

In each sketch one person's way of going at things is in plain view of the other's, and the next move is open.

The facing shows in ordinary things.

A plan is made. One of you offers a sequence and the other offers one that faces it, and a third version may come out of the exchange. On another day the one who offers first may be the other.

A decision comes up. Each of you may see it from where you stand, and putting the two views next to each other can make the choice clearer to both.

A tiring week. Both of you are stretched, and each sees the other's way of coping from across the table. That can be a surprise, or a recognition, or a little of both.

A disagreement over how fast or in what way may arise while a job is still in progress, and may stay open for a while.

An evening with nothing on. You may each be at a different task on opposite sides of the room, each aware of the other's pace, and find the room has an even sound.

The older sources used here say nothing about a Mars and a Mars. The one passage in them about the same planet in two charts is James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381). It is about the same place, which is a conjunction, so nothing from it is used here. The same page, and William Lilly's *Christian Astrology* (1647, Book III, p. 638), do speak of an opposition, but as a rule about the Sun or Mars opposite Mercury or the Moon. A Mars opposite a Mars is not among those pairs, so nothing from them is used here either. Nothing in the sources used here tells an opposition from a square.

The distinction this page makes rests on the 180° angle and the facing axis of the signs. It is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about Mars and Mars. The same goes for everything else on this page: what the contact is like, what each of you gives and may want, the ordinary-day scenes and the sketches, which are illustrations.

• Early on, you can see how differently the other has set about a job.
• One of you proposes and the other counter-proposes, and the plan you settle on shows a trace of each of you.
• Each of you has become more aware of your own speed from working near the other.
• You catch yourself watching how the other begins.