Sun opposition Saturn

The Sun stands opposite Saturn today. The Sun sits at 11 degrees of Libra and Saturn at 11 degrees of Aries, exact to the degree and now beginning to separate. For a short run of days, the source of warmth and the planet of cold face each other straight across the wheel.

That facing has a particular place in the tradition, because Ptolemy builds his scheme of planetary houses on it. He gives Leo to the Sun and Cancer to the Moon because those signs rise nearest the zenith and bring heat. Saturn, he says, is cold and inimical to heat, and moves in the orbit most remote from the luminaries. So Saturn is given the two signs directly opposite theirs, Capricorn and Aquarius, for their cold and wintry nature, and "because the configuration by opposition does not co-operate towards the production of good." In Ptolemy's reading, Saturn opposite the Sun is not a chance meeting. It is the very relationship the houses were arranged to express.

Ptolemy also says what the Sun brings. The Sun's period of life is where "authority of action" begins, a career is entered, and distinction is sought through more orderly conduct. Sepharial supplies Saturn's side. He links Saturn with privation in agreement with its nature, and calls it the Destroyer, set against Jupiter the Creator. An opposition joins the two at full distance. On one side stand the wish to act and be seen. On the other stand the cost and the limit, each in full view of the other.

Sepharial adds an observation about timing. Working with annual charts, he found that what an aspect of Saturn to the Sun signified tended to come to the fore when the Sun passed Saturn's opposite point. On his account, this crossing is when Saturn's side of the ledger is presented.

The lines differ on what follows. Ptolemy holds that the opposition produces no good. Where opposition shapes our own readings, we treat it as two things held in balance and weighed against each other, not as a fight one side must lose. We follow that line here, without pretending Saturn is anything other than cold and costly.

Sepharial, writing on the choice of an occupation, borrows Emerson: "Take what thou wilt, but pay the price." That is today's practice. Take one aim you are pursuing and write its cost beside it in plain terms: the hours, the refusals, the slower pace it asks for. Look at both columns together. Then decide whether to pay, to narrow the aim, or to wait. The opposition loosens over the coming days. While it is close, it offers a clear view of both sides at once.