Aspect

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Moon Opposite Mercury

With the Moon opposing Mercury the native splits head from heart and hands one half to somebody else, usually a partner who is cast as either the cold one or the emotional one.

The division is felt as an internal disagreement long before it is understood. One part of the native wants the matter analysed and settled; the other wants it acknowledged and held, and neither will accept the other's method. Since holding both is uncomfortable, the aspect does what oppositions do and finds a volunteer. The native marries or works closely with someone who carries the missing half, then spends years complaining that this person is either unfeeling or incapable of a rational conversation.

Family life is the usual theatre. A mother or spouse who talks too much, or not at all; a sibling who is all intellect while the native is all reaction, or the reverse. In arguments the native reliably changes station mid-dispute, becoming coolly logical when the other is upset and aggrieved when the other turns reasonable. It is maddening to argue with and is not manipulation. Both positions are genuinely theirs, and they occupy whichever one is currently vacant.

The work is to hold the two ends at once, which in practice means naming the feeling and the argument in the same breath, out loud, however awkward it sounds. Natives who manage this become exceptional mediators and interviewers, since they can follow both the content and the undertow of what is being said. Those who do not keep recruiting the other half from outside, and are always slightly at war with the person nearest to them over a division that was never located in the right place.

What It Gives

  • ◆sees both argument and undertow
  • ◆genuine skill at mediation
  • ◆articulate about emotional matters
  • ◆drawn to complementary minds

What It Costs

  • ◆position switched mid-argument
  • ◆missing half outsourced to a partner
  • ◆reason and feeling treated as rivals

This is one line of a whole chart. The rest of it — every placement, house and aspect at once — is a birth date away.

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Feeling and speech share one channel in this conjunction, so the native thinks in moods and says what they feel almost simultaneously, having no interval in which to reconsider.

Moon Sextile Mercury

The sextile between the Moon and Mercury makes it possible for the native to say what they actually feel, accurately and without drama, whenever they are willing to attempt it.

Moon Square Mercury

Squared, the Moon and Mercury argue with each other inside one head: the mind wants an account of the feeling and the feeling refuses to give one that stays still.

Moon Trine Mercury

Words come to feelings without effort under this trine, giving an easy fluency in ordinary human matters that the native assumes is common and therefore never refines.

Sun Opposite Moon

Born at the full moon, the native carries purpose and instinct at opposite ends of the chart, and usually meets the missing half in a spouse, a rival or a parent before finding it inside.

Sun Opposite Mercury

Mercury cannot stand opposite the Sun from the Earth's vantage; at greatest elongation it reaches about twenty-eight degrees, so this opposition is the most obviously impossible of all the solar aspects.