We live within a realm of duality where everything holds an opposing truth, intention, and way of being. As day has night and left has right, the law of polarity states that everything in the Universe has an opposite, and everything is the perfect expression of its opposite.
Astrology is no different, for Astrology seems to only mirror life, bringing all of existence into its system of understanding and seeing the world through.
While there may be 12 zodiac signs, each of these zodiacs exists on an axis in opposition to its astrological partner, giving us 6 pairs or 6 axis that represent a different aspect of being alive. Like different ends of the same pole or each side of the same coin, these opposite signs are exploring the same themes yet from different directions, desiring the same outcome yet opposite in their approach.
For each of these six axis, poles, or coins to come alive and reach their wholeness, both sides must be explored.
For the highest expression of each zodiac sign to be reached and embodied, we look to its opposite sign on the zodiac wheel for support.
We all have each zodiac sign living within us – each of these polarity points exist within us, or when we are ‘dominant’ on one side, we often find the opposite appearing in people around us. Perhaps that’s where the saying “opposites attract” comes from?
* This is applicable for your Sun sign, Moon sign, and Rising or Ascendant sign, or any zodiac that you have an emphasis on in your Birth Chart.
Opposite Zodiac Signs in Astrology
Aries and Libra
We cannot have the self without the other, and we cannot come into true relationship with another without first coming into true relationship with ourselves. As Aries explores the self-side of this truth, Libra explores through the other.
Aries is self-directed and self-focused. A fire sign, it is here to claim itself, its desires, its passions, its ideas, and its whims of inspiration. Libra, an air sign sitting on the other side of this axis, takes us beyond ourselves. It shows us that there is always another side, another perspective, another way of being and pathway, and it does so through to looking toward another and seeing through its eyes.
Aries supports Libra in the building of its selfhood, encouraging courage and strength to claim its space in the world and its unique direction through life. Libra supports Aries in showing it more, taking it outside of only itself and viewing the many pathways, perspectives, experiences, and truths that exist simultaneously. Aries acts, moves, and claims with speed and passion. Libra creates space, invites balance, and weights its options while considering more than itself. Libra reminds Aries of the beauty in coming together with another, while Aries supports Libra in maintaining itself while in that partnership.
Taurus and Scorpio
To maintain, to continue – no matter the waves around us. To know safety, to feel secure – no matter what life brings us. Taurus and Scorpio are both building a sense of lasting in the world, and while Taurus explores through the tangible and material, Scorpio, a water sign, does so through the intangible and emotional.
Taurus, an Earth sign, looks to its environment around it to create security and safety. And it does so through building resources such as food, home, skills, money and more. Scorpio, however, looks internally for this security. It strips away all that, in its eyes, is not real, only to return us to what is. Scorpio is here to reclaim an inner power, inviting us to consider that it is through building our emotional security that we can be with whatever life may bring us.
Taurus is a grounded sign, it offers a beautiful simplicity and steadiness to Scorpio and a safe space for the body and nervous system to begin to unwind and calm. It shows this water sign the beauty in slow and steady building, and the bounty offered in this tangible world and solid foundations.
Scorpio, on the other hand strips Taurus away from its comfort zone, brings it towards inner transformation and shows it that real power is from within, and from our ability to birth ourselves anew through reaching into metaphoric death. Taurus offers Scorpio grounded foundations through which it can channel its immense energy, and Scorpio supports Taurus in reaching into the mystery and navigating the unknowns of life.
Gemini and Sagittarius
What is truth, and what is reality? Does truth come from logic or intuition? What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom and what is the meaning of life? Are questions here to be answered, or to open us to something more? Does every question have an answer, or can some things simply not be known?
Gemini and it’s opposite zodiac pair Sagittarius exist within the realm of learning, truth seeking, and meaning making. Hemispheric lateralization theorises that the two hemispheres of the brain function differently. While the left hemisphere thrives with strategy, speech, problem solving and analysing, the right hemisphere lives within the realm of creativity, intuition, imagination, and emotion. Gemini represents the left hemisphere. It collects and gathers facts, information, and data. Sagittarius is connected to the right hemisphere. It seeks wisdom and creates meaning. As Gemini lives in the objective reality, relaying information while living outside of it, Sagittarius, a fire sign, lives within subjective truth and cannot be separated from its beliefs.
As Sagittarius seeks to find meaning through higher truths and wisdom, Gemini offers it a beautiful openness through endless curiosity and questioning. Gemini invites Sagittarius to anchor its intuitive meaning making with logic and rationality and brings fresh air into the mind if ever it becomes too fixed.
On the other side, Sagittarius invites Gemini as an air sign to bring mental information into lived wisdom, offering experiential learning so that it can become embodied knowing. It invites Gemini to soften its objective approach to seeing reality, reminding it of the colour between the lines and the nuance within truth. Sagittarius asks Gemini to sink into one direction, one truth, one area of knowledge, if ever it finds itself jumping from place to place, fact to fact, without creating any kind of personal meaning from it all.
Cancer and Capricorn
The Axis of foundation – foundation of self and foundations to hold our dreams out in the world. Cancerian emotional foundations and Capricorn tangible foundations. The axis of legacy – what we receive from our lineage and what we choose to leave behind far after we have gone. Cancer and Capricorn are through-line bridging together the past and the future.
Cancer is the inward that allows for the outward of Capricorn. It is our roots and where we come from, the meaning we find through exploring our emotional waters and the currents of our body. Cancer seeks to brings us home inviting us inward, asking us to nourish and tend to ourselves however we may need. Capricorn instead take us outward. It is our future and our legacy, our roles, responsibilities, and ambitions. Capricorn directed us into who we are here to become and challenges us along the way, inviting us to create the emotional strength and determination required for big dreams to move through us.
Cancer journeys through emotions as if they were the doorway into awareness, self-realisation, and a roadmap forward for Capricorn to follow. Cancer offers Capricorn the emotions to drive its forward movement, and the meaning that guides and inspires it. Cancer invites Capricorn to know itself, so that it may know its direction.
Capricorn, on the other hand, creates the form, structure, and boundaries for the emotions of Cancer to be held within safely. Capricorn offers the waters of Cancer a direction and focus, and a sense of responsibility to create something with its desire to nourish, love, and support both itself and others.
While Cancer is our inner child tending to our sensitivities, Capricorn is the loving and healthy father figure that shows us how to be strong in the world. When our inner foundations are healthy, loved, and supported – we can climb the mountain that is ours to climb.
Leo and Aquarius
Creation moves uniquely through each of us. Creation is what allows for change, for connection, for expression of the self and evolution of all that exists. As Leo, a fire sign, creates for self-expression and the evolution of its personal identity, Aquarius, an air sign, creates for the collective, offering sustenance to the whole and evolution of society. This axis and these two signs reminds us that a healthy society is made up of healthy individuals.
Both Leo and Aquarius represent a healthy expression of authenticity and individualism. While Aquarius desires to hold its community and bring it forward into its next potential, Leo reminds it that it cannot do this without first stepping outside of the group and deeply into the self. Leo is individual, it is here to be all the self can be, and to express all the self can be. Leo offers Aquarius the courage to step away from current collective thought and to anchor itself deeply within its personal identity, so that it can then create the space for the creations, ideas, and perspectives that are here uniquely for it. Aquarius reminds us that these creations and expressions of self are often just what the collective needs so that it may move forward, giving Leo the opportunity to pour these expressions as healing libations into the society that holds it.
This axis is an exploration of expression of the self, and expression of the collective. It is the journey within self-identity and group identity. We are both influenced by, and have the power to influence, the society and groups we find ourselves within.
Virgo and Pisces
Whether within music, prayer, yoga, or maths, within healing traditions such as reiki, acupuncture, or surgery, or within scripture and quantum physics – there is a space where the mystical seems to meet the mundane. Where spirituality and science come together. Or where energy flows through and into form. While Virgo, an earth sign, grounds us into the tangible, practical and daily action, Pisces, a water sign, floats us out into all that exists beyond time and space, into formlessness, and into the mystical.
Virgo is the vessel for Pisces to flow through and become realised. It offers this boundless, imaginative, and spiritual energy boundaries and discernment in the form of the physical body, and through the act of tangible steps, routine, and the organisation of repetition and clear direction. Just as we must commit with consistency to the art of making music before the magic that is song writing flows through our fingertips. Virgo invites this Pisces into structure for its dreams and creativity to land in the world and to become realised. And Virgo offers Pisces the logical, structured, and practical answers to its intuitive knowing, just as science often speaks to perhaps what was already known, or at least, felt, in the spiritual.
Pisces, on the other hand, offers Virgo acceptance, compassion, and a feeling of wholeness exactly as it is. Pisces invites Virgo to stand back, create space from within the small details and be reminded of the perfection in all, no matter how far it may feel from its ideal self. Pisces reminds Virgo of the magic within the unknown, or perhaps, what we call the unknown because we cannot prove it in numbers and statistics just yet. It invites us to release control, and allow movement to move as it does. We cannot organise everything, we cannot plan for everything – there is an aspect of surrender that Pisces brings into the realm of Virgo, and it is through this balancing of form and formless, of structure and surrender, that we find the beauty of this axis.
