Ever wonder why you’re such a huge walking contradiction? Why different facets of your personality are so radically different? Why there are glaring disparities between the way you treat yourself and the way you treat others? Between what you feel deep inside and what you are able to actually express and share with the world?
It may be that you have a radically different mix of zodiac signs in your natal chart, meaning you have such different and conflicting forces pushing and pulling within you that it’s sometimes difficult to know who or what is the ‘true you’. You may have very different and very distinctive approaches to different areas of your life which may confuse and even hurt others. You may find yourself struggling with conflicting energies – one moment being overwhelmed by a flood of deep emotion, and the next feeling detached, dissociated and unable to connect with others.
It’s okay! Chances are, that is exactly the way you were designed, and it’s one of your challenges in this life to learn how to integrate these different energies healthily and in a way that is true to you.
Those of us who were born around the time of a full moon, were born when the moon was at the furthest point away from the sun on its ellipsis. When you look at the wheel of the zodiac, the twelve signs make up a circle of 360 degrees, with each sign occupying 30 degrees of that circle. When the moon is opposite the sun (as it is during the full moon phase), you have these two celestial bodies in *opposite signs*. Some examples of opposite signs are fiery, dominant Aries and cool, level-headed Libra, grounded and practical Taurus and dark, mysterious Scorpio, glamourous leader Leo and social misfit Aquarius, motherly and loving Cancer and cold, work-obsessed Capricorn etc.
Opposite signs represent very different energies which work in very different ways. It’s not an easy or harmonious combination. Therefore, if you are born around the time of a full moon, your sun sign (let’s say for example that it’s practical, earthy Virgo) is in direct opposition to your very different moon sign (let’s say dreamy, deep-feeling, other-worldly Pisces). And that is TOUGH. You’re being pulled in two completely different directions internally and it can be really hard sometimes to reconcile the wants and needs of your outgoing ego drive (sun) with your inner world of your emotions and subconscious (moon).
And this doesn’t only happen with opposing signs. It can also happen with signs that are adjacent to one another on the zodiac wheel or signs that are 90 degrees apart on the wheel (square). Such combinations also carry energy which doesn’t mix easily. For example, one of my closest friends is a Pisces sun with an Aries moon. Those are adjacent signs and wildly, wildly different. Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and it’s cardinal fire (in some ways, the most powerful energy in the zodiac), whereas Pisces is the very last sign and it is mutable water, making it the most slippery, undefined and difficult to understand (also the most spiritual) sign of the zodiac. Such a combination gives you a person who has massively different energies at work within their persona. You have the outward Pisces sun element of the personality: kind, flexible, giving and nurturing, wants to fit in and be friends with everyone, a people-pleaser, has few boundaries and will change themselves for others, liable to being treated as a victim by others and seen as a pushover – as someone with a malleable (mutable) identity that struggles to be firm with others and themselves about boundaries and can be prone to escapism in various forms. And then, on the inside, you have this force of nature – the formidable moon in Aries. Aries moon is warrior energy. You cannot ever tell an Aries moon what to do. They will do the absolute opposite thing, no matter if it hurts them, just for the joy of laughing in your face as you watch them defy you. An Aries moon will look down the barrel of a gun with a look of disdain and say, “F***ing come on then if you think you’re hard enough.” Aries moon is impulsive, it’s got swagger, it’s afraid of nothing, it loves HARD and it wants what it wants and it wants it NOW. Cardinal fire energy. Dominant, leader, warrior energy.
Now, when you put that Aries moon warrior inside the gentle Pisces sun person, you get quite a volatile mix of pretty incompatible energies. Especially if this person has other gentle energies in their chart too that also conflict with that Aries inner engine (think Dom’s dad’s car in The Fast and the Furious – the engine was too powerful for the chassis and ripped it apart). Our moon is our inner engine because it is our subconscious. Our instinct. Our emotional drive. Aries moon operates really well in people who have a lot of other fire signs in their chart to harmonise with it – then you’ve got the 6L V8 engine inside a pretty bulletproof chassis that will handle that power with joy. But it’s unhelpful in someone who has a lot of water or earth in the rest of their chart and feels there’s something wrong with them because they want to be kind, calm and gentle in this world, yet there is this raging fire inside them that makes them act crazy sometimes and they’re not comfortable with it.
The Pisces sun will allow others to treat them like a doormat. But all the while, that Aries moon is getting geared up for catastrophic payback. The Pisces sun will allow their boundaries to be violated and will bend over backwards to please others and, in the background, the Aries moon is sharpening the knives. A relatively switched-on person with this dynamic will find a healthy outlet for the inner beast, whether that’s through the gym, sex, sports, or a dynamic career such as the military. They’ll use the force of the Aries moon to support the Pisces sun and give it a hand in setting boundaries and saying no to people by expressing their feelings and speaking their truth and pushing aside those people-pleasing tendencies. But the younger / less evolved / less confident person with this dynamic will allow their resentment and hurt towards others to build up until that Aries moon one day explodes.
So this is what I mean by incompatible sun and moon signs. That inner tension between your emotional reactions to things, and the person that you want to be and share with others. The only way to deal with this is to integrate those energies. You can’t deny either one of them; it won’t work. My friend wouldn’t be true to herself if she was all Aries moon and didn’t indulge the nurturing, loving, gentle, earth-mother side of herself embodied by the strong Water sign energies in her chart. Nor would she be true to herself if she spent her life doing nothing but giving to others and never stood up fer herself, rebelled, asserted herself and lived out that warrior spirit of the incredibly strong woman she is inside.
As we get older, thankfully, we tend to become more forgiving of our inner contradictions and more accepting of ourselves – in all our irrational glory. But it’s my belief that an understanding of our astrological placements and energies is a useful extra tool in the journey towards understanding ourselves, and the journey towards accepting that we are precisely who we are because that’s exactly who we were meant to be and those contradictions and conflicting energies within us are not burdens to bear but opportunities for evolution as we learn to balance, integrate and heal all that was once at odds within us.
If you would like me to tell you about your sun and moon signs and how they work together, you can book a mini profile or full natal chart reading with me – see the Services tab on this page.
(Written by someone who does indeed have their Sun in opposition to their Moon, and who always seems to somehow find and fall in love with other Sun opposition Moon people 
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