Sun Opposition Mars Synastry: When Who One of You Is Faces What Drives the Other

Every birth chart has a Sun and a Mars, and they do different jobs. The Sun is who you are: your core self, what you want, the direction you steer by. Mars is what drives you: your energy, your effort, your initiative, what you go after and how you go after it. In this contact, one person's Sun is about 180° from the other person's Mars, directly across the circle of 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 polarity: who one of you is and what drives the other face each other, which can bring plenty of energy and the occasional need to adjust plans.

It can turn up between friends, siblings, colleagues, flatmates, a parent and their child, or partners, and it is one contact among many in any two charts.

In this contact one of you brings the Sun and the other brings Mars, and the two face each other from opposite sides. Call them the Sun person and the Mars person.

If you are the Sun person, you are mostly just being who you are and wanting what you want. The Mars person's way of setting about things may face yours directly, so that what you want and how they go at it can feel like two answers to one question. You may see your own intentions more clearly when they are acted on from the other side.

If you are the Mars person, you are mostly just going at what you are going at: the task, the plan, the training session, the repair. The Sun person's sense of direction may face your energy squarely, and your effort can feel noticed in a way that is new. You may see your own style more clearly when it is set beside someone else's purpose.

If the link also runs the other way, from the Mars person's Sun to the Sun person's Mars, each of you is both.

One thing this contact can give is a clear view across.

Each of you can give the other a sight of how their own approach looks from the other side. Either of you may be the one with the plan and the one with the energy for it, and either may propose and be answered with something different from what you expected.

What each may want is plain. Either of you may want your direction taken as a direction, and your effort taken as effort. In an opposition these wants can go unsaid, since a difference of approach can seem too ordinary to mention.

On ordinary days this can show in how a plan is made. One of you proposes something, and the other proposes something that faces it, and on another day the order is reversed. A bad mood in one of you may meet an energy in the other that is just a little different. A quiet evening may find the two of you doing different things on opposite sides of the room.

These are sketches, not reports: illustrations of how two directions facing each other might show up across different kinds of pairs.

• Siblings. Two siblings stand either side of a map pinned to the wall, planning a free Saturday. Each has marked a different place, and they begin by saying why.
• Friends. Two friends plan a fishing weekend by the coast, each with a favourite spot. The map is spread between them, and each traces a route with a finger.
• Parent and child. A parent and their child build a domino run across the dining table from opposite sides, each laying toward the middle. A gap a hand's breadth wide is still open when they notice they planned different turns.
• Colleagues. Two colleagues set up a stand for a careers fair. Each has a layout in mind for the table, and they stand on opposite sides and walk through the two.
• Flatmates. Two flatmates carry a wardrobe up the stairs and pause on the landing. Each has a view of which way round it will fit the turn, and each shows theirs with a tilt of the hands.
• Partners. Two partners begin a game of boules at dusk. Each has an idea of where the jack ought to go, and they take a first throw each way to compare.

In each sketch two plans face each other across a small decision.

An opposition joins two signs on a single axis, 180° apart, so they face each other directly across the circle of the zodiac. The signs on an axis also fall in complementary elements, fire across from air and earth across from water; the reading here does not rest on that. What sets an opposition apart from the other aspects is the angle and the facing line.

At 180° the two points are as far apart as two points on a circle can be, and the distance is the same going round either way. Neither is ahead of or behind the other. So the geometry is symmetrical, and the contact is too: from the Sun person's side Mars is straight across, and from the Mars person's side the Sun is straight across.

The reading is polarity: who one of you is and what drives the other face each other along that line, and each way of acting has its counterpart straight across.

Facing each other is a particular way of being in contact, and it may show most when a choice is being made.

When two directions face each other, both can be laid out in plain view: what one of you wants to do, and what the other would put energy into. A purpose said to someone across from you may get said plainly, and an effort set against another way of working may get noticed. What follows may be one of the two, or a plan with a turn in it that belongs to both, and a timing disagreement can turn out to be about the same few minutes seen from two sides.

Because the two ways face each other directly, an adjustment may be a small turn instead of a rebuild. A day with both of you in it may hold a good deal, and a way of acting set straight across from your own may be easy to see and interesting to watch.

The same symmetry applies to timing. If the link also runs the other way, each of you is across from the other twice over, and a question such as when to start or how long to take can be seen from both positions at once. The reading is of a shared view, not of one person's position being the right one.

The older sources used here do not name a Sun and a Mars half the circle apart. The only stored passages that name Mars with the Sun, William Lilly's (*Christian Astrology*, 1647, Book III, p. 638) and James Wilson's (*A Complete Dictionary of Astrology*, 1819, p. 381), do name an opposition, but of the Sun or Mars to Mercury or the Moon, not the Sun opposite Mars, so nothing from them is used here. Two general passages elsewhere, on the Sun in another planet's place and on the Sun and Moon, are too general, and too much at odds with each other, to use; they are not stored as extracts. Nothing in the stored passages tells an opposition from a square.

The opposition reading on this page rests only on the 180° angle and the facing axis. This is an editorial reading, not something the older books say about the Sun and Mars, and the same goes for the rest of this page, including the sketches, which are illustrations.

• One of you proposes something and the other proposes something that faces it.
• You may each see your own way more clearly because the other's is so plainly across from it.
• A plan can be reshaped in a minute, and you may both find the reshaped one interesting.
• Your disagreements can be lively and about how, not about whether.
• A day with the two of you in it may hold a good deal of energy.
• Others may describe you as an energetic pair.