Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members! Download the app.
We live in a realm of duality. That means everything holds an opposing truth, intention, and way of being. According to the law of polarity, not only is there opposition to everything, but everything is the perfect expression of its opposite. As day opposes night, left opposes right. It is only through opposition that there can be completion.
Astrology is no different. It channels all of existence into a system in which everything is mirrored by 12 zodiac signs and their corresponding constellations. Each of these 12 signs exists on an axis with its opposite zodiac sign, which are typically depicted altogether in a circle with the Sun at center. If one sign sits at the top of the circle, its opposite sits at the bottom. If one is on the left, the other is on the right.
Like different ends of the same pole or flip sides of the same coin, these opposite zodiac signs explore the very same intention and theme from different vantages. They fall into six sets, each of which represents two fundamentally different yet complementary approaches to life that desire the same outcome yet approach it in a different manner.
An aspect of astrology that is not often explained is that for each zodiac sign to achieve its highest expression, its opposite sign must be explored, understood, and, to some extent, integrated.
What Your “Opposite Zodiac Sign” Means in Astrology
Aries-Libra
We cannot have the self without the other. Yet we cannot come into true relationship with the other without first coming into relationship with ourselves. Aries explores the self side of this riddle and Libra explores the other.
Aries is self-directed and self-focused. It is here to claim itself, its desires, its passions, its ideas, and its whims of inspiration. Libra, sitting on the other side of the axis, takes us beyond ourselves. It shows us that there is always another side, another perspective, another way of being, another pathway, and it does so by looking not just toward the other but as if it was seeing through its eyes.
Aries supports Libra by building its selfhood and unique direction through life, by encouraging courage and strength, and by claiming space in the world. Libra supports Aries by showing it more than the self and taking it beyond itself, and viewing the many pathways, perspectives, experiences, and truths that exist simultaneously outside of the self.
Aries acts, moves, and claims with speed and passion. Libra creates space, invites balance, and takes time to weigh all of its options. Libra reminds Aries of the beauty in coming together with another, while Aries supports Libra in maintaining the self while in that partnership.
Taurus-Scorpio
To maintain and to continue, no matter the waves around us. To know safety and to feel secure, no matter what life brings us. Both Taurus and Scorpio build a sense of lastingness in the world. While Taurus explores through the tangible and the material, Scorpio experiences through the intangible and emotional.
Taurus, an earth sign, looks to the environment around it to create security, grounding, and safety. It does so through essential resources such as a house, groceries, money, and more. Scorpio, however, seeks this security internally. It strips away all that is externally real to return to what is truly real. Scorpio is here to reclaim its inner power, to invite us to consider that it is only through building our own emotional security that we can be with whatever life may bring us.
Taurus offers a beautiful simplicity and steadiness to Scorpio along with a safe space for the body and nervous system to begin to unwind and calm. It shows this water sign the beauty inherent in slow and steady building and the bounty offered by this tangible world and its solid foundations.
Scorpio, on the other hand, draws Taurus away from its comfort zone and incites an inner transformation. It shows Taurus that real power comes from within, from our ability to birth ourselves anew through reaching into metaphoric death. As Taurus offers Scorpio grounded foundations through which it can channel its immense energy, Scorpio supports Taurus in reaching toward and navigating the unknowns of life.
Gemini-Sagittarius
What is truth? What is reality? What is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? Does truth come from logic or intuition? What is the meaning of life? Are questions intended to be answered or to open us to something more? Does every question have an answer or can some things simply not be known? As Sagittarius seeks to find meaning through higher truths and wisdom, Gemini offers it a beautiful openness through endless curiosity and questioning.
Gemini and Sagittarius each exist within the realm of learning, truth-seeking, and meaning making. Hemispheric lateralization is the theory that the two hemispheres of the brain function differently. The left hemisphere thrives with strategy, speech, problem solving, and analyzing, while 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 objective reality, relaying information while living outside of it, Sagittarius lives within subjective truth and cannot be separated from its beliefs.
Gemini invites Sagittarius to anchor its intuitive meaning making with logic and rationality and brings new ideas into the mind if it becomes too fixed.
On the other side, Sagittarius invites Gemini to bring its cognitions and information into lived wisdom, offering experiential learning so that facts can become embodied knowing. It invites Gemini to soften its objective approach to seeing reality, reminding it of the color between the lines and the nuance within truth. Sagittarius asks Gemini to sink into one direction, one truth, one area of knowledge, especially if ever it finds itself jumping from place to place, fact to fact, without creating any kind of personal meaning from it all.
Cancer-Capricorn
The axis of this foundation is the contrast between the foundation of self and the foundation needed to bring our dreams out into the world. Cancerian is emotional foundations and Capricorn is tangible foundations. It is the axis of legacy, a merging of what we receive from our lineage and what we choose to leave behind long after we are gone. Cancer and Capricorn are throughline bridging the past and the future.
Cancer is the inward pull that allows for the outward push of Capricorn. Cancer is our roots and where we come from, the meaning we find by exploring our emotional waters and the currents of our body. Cancer brings us home, inviting us inward, asking us to nourish and tend to ourselves however we may need.
Capricorn takes us outward. It is our future and our legacy, our roles, our responsibilities, and our ambitions. Capricorn directs 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-realization, 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 safely. Capricorn offers the waters of Cancer direction, focus, and a sense of responsibility to create something with its desire to nourish, love, and support itself and others.
While Cancer is our inner child tending to our sensitivities, Capricorn is the loving father figure that shows us how to be strong in the world. Only when our inner foundations are supported can we climb the mountain that is ours to climb.
Leo-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 creates self-expression and the evolution of its personal identity, Aquarius offers sustenance to the collective and the evolution of society. This axis 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 so 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 of opposite zodiac signs 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-Pisces
Whether within music, prayer, yoga, scripture, quantum physics, and healing traditions such as reiki or acupuncture or surgery, there is a space where the mystical seems to meet the mundane. Where spirituality and science come together. Where energy flows through and into form. While Virgo grounds us in tangible, practical, daily action, Pisces floats us into all that exists, beyond time and space, into formlessness and the mystical.
Virgo is the vessel for Pisces to flow through and become realized. It offers boundaries and discernment of the physical body to the water sign’s boundless, imaginative, and spiritual energy. 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.Through tangible steps, routine, and the organization 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.
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. We cannot organize everything, we cannot plan for everything.
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. There is an aspect of surrender that Pisces brings into the realm of Virgo, and it is through this balancing of form and formlessness, of structure and surrender, that we find the beauty of this axis.
RELATED: What the New Moon in Scorpio Means for You
Learn more about the influence of astrology in your life, including astrological events the Moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with the current influences, and more with Jordane Maree at Girl and her Moon.
RELATED: What the Elements in Astrology—Fire, Earth, Air, and Water—Mean for You and Your Sign
About Our Contributor
Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.