Opposition

Half the circle lies between the two bodies, and their signs face each other across the wheel, such as Aries and Libra. Ptolemy, in Ashmand's 1822 translation, treats this distance as needing no argument and calls the diameter clear in itself. Lilly 1659 calls it bad and tells beginners to memorize the sign pairs, since the whole chart is drawn with them.

The orbs for it show how far the authorities wander. Ashmand's footnote, Raphael 1828 and Raphael's Guide 1877 give figures by planet, up to 17 degrees for the Sun, and Alan Leo, before 1917, allows 12 degrees only between Sun and Moon. The calculator holds to 8 degrees, its own setting.

Modern popular astrology reads an opposition as a tug between two things and sometimes as other people mirroring what a person disowns. Those ideas are modern, and the old texts record only the discord.