Aversion in Astrology: The Blind Spots the Sky Builds in Us

What Is Aversion in Astrology? The Doctrine of Signs That Cannot See

Start with the classical aspects. In whole-sign tradition, a sign ‘sees’ another sign through five geometric relationships: the conjunction (same sign), sextile (two signs away), square (three signs away), trine (four signs away), and opposition (six signs away). These angles — 60, 90, 120, and 180 degrees — form the visual language of the sky. A concise technical overview of these configurations appears in the Wikipedia entry on astrological aspects, but the ancient framing is more poetic: aspects are lines of sight. Planets in aspect witness each other, negotiate with each other, argue or cooperate — but at minimum, they know the other exists.

Now count the gaps. From any sign, four positions receive no classical aspect at all: the 2nd sign, the 12th sign, the 6th sign, and the 8th sign. Take Aries as your reference point. Aries aspects Gemini, Leo, Libra, Sagittarius, Aquarius — but Taurus, Pisces, Virgo, and Scorpio remain invisible to it. These four invisible positions constitute aversion. The Greek term was apostrophe — a turning away. The signs have literally turned their backs on one another.

This doctrine flourished in the Hellenistic era, roughly the last two centuries BCE through the early centuries CE, when the technical foundations of horoscopic astrology were laid — a lineage summarised well in the Wikipedia article on Hellenistic astrology. Crucially, Hellenistic astrologers did not treat aversion as a minor technicality. They treated it as a primary diagnostic tool for explaining disconnection, ignorance, and estrangement in a life.

Why the Sky Has Blind Spots: The Geometry Behind Aversion

Why can’t these signs see each other? The classical reasoning is beautiful, and it rests on three layers of symmetry that the averse positions fail.

No shared gender: Signs in aspect alternate through a rhythm of masculine and feminine signs that keeps them in polarity conversation. The 2nd and 12th signs break this rhythm — adjacent signs never share gender.
No shared modality: Squares and oppositions connect signs of the same modality — cardinal to cardinal, fixed to fixed. Averse signs never share a modality with the reference sign.
No shared element: Trines connect signs of one element; sextiles connect compatible elements. Averse signs share neither element nor elemental compatibility with the reference sign.

In other words, averse signs have nothing in common — not gender, not mode, not element. They lack every conventional basis for a relationship. Modern astrology later assigned minor aspects to these gaps: the semi-sextile (30 degrees, the 2/12 relationship) and the quincunx or inconjunct (150 degrees, the 6/8 relationship). Yet even in modern practice, these remain ‘aspects of adjustment’ — awkward angles requiring constant renegotiation, never flowing naturally.

The Two Faces of Aversion: Quincunx Strain and Semi-Sextile Silence

Although all four averse positions share invisibility, tradition distinguishes two distinct textures. Understanding which one operates in your chart tells you what kind of blind spot you are dealing with.

The 6/8 Aversion: The Quincunx-Type Blind Spot

The 6th and 8th positions carry the heaviest reputation. These are the classical ‘dark’ houses — illness and servitude on one side, loss and mortality on the other. When two planets sit six-and-eight from each other, their agendas do not merely differ; they operate in incompatible universes. The modern quincunx inherits this meaning: a nagging, chronic maladjustment. Think of the person whose health (6th matters) silently sabotages their shared finances and intimacy (8th matters), and neither domain ever discusses the problem with the other. In relationship astrology, this pairing is considered genuinely challenging — a theme we will revisit through its famous Vedic form, Shadashtak.

The 2/12 Aversion: The Semi-Sextile-Type Blind Spot

The 2nd and 12th positions are gentler but sneakier. Adjacent signs live next door to each other yet share absolutely nothing — like neighbours from different worlds. The 12th-sign aversion is especially significant: the sign behind your reference point represents what has just slipped out of view, the recent past, the unexamined habit. Planets averse through the 2/12 axis produce quiet leakage rather than open conflict. Money dribbles away unnoticed. Energy drains without a nameable cause. The blind spot here is not a locked room; it is a door you walk past daily without registering it.

How Aversion in Astrology Shows Up in Real Life

Theory becomes useful only when you can recognise it operating. Here are the classic real-time signatures of aversion at work in a natal chart:

The forgotten domain: The house whose ruler sits in aversion to it becomes chronically neglected. The 5th lord averse to the 5th house: creativity and romance perpetually postponed. The 2nd lord averse: money matters left on autopilot.
The unintegrated talent: A brilliantly placed planet averse to the ascendant often describes a gift others see in you before you see it yourself. It works for you, but you cannot consciously wield it.
The repeating surprise: Events from an averse domain always feel like they came out of nowhere — because, astrologically, they did. No line of sight means no early warning.
The disconnect between effort and result: You work hard on one life area, yet a logically related area never improves, as if the two refuse to share their gains.

Notice how this differs from affliction. A planet squared by Saturn suffers visibly — there is friction, delay, struggle you can feel. A planet in aversion does not suffer; it is simply absent from the conversation. In consultation practice, this distinction matters enormously. Affliction calls for remediation; aversion calls first for awareness. This is also why aversion pairs so naturally with the derivation logic we explored in the Bhavat Bhavam Principle — both techniques reveal structural relationships between life areas that surface reading misses.

The Vedic Mirror: Shadashtak (6/8) and Dwirdwadash (2/12) Relationships

Readers of this site know our home tradition is Jyotish, so a fair question arises: does Vedic astrology recognise aversion? The answer is a resounding yes — under different names and with a distinctly practical application in marriage matching.

Shadashtak Dosha: The 6/8 Relationship

In kundli matching, when the Moon signs of two partners sit six and eight from each other, the combination is called Shadashtak (shat = six, ashtak = eight). Classical texts treat it as one of the more serious compatibility flags, associated with chronic friction, health strain, and mutual misunderstanding. The deeper logic is precisely the Hellenistic one: the two Moons cannot see each other. Emotional signals sent by one partner simply never arrive at the other. Notably, tradition also distinguishes friendly Shadashtak (where the sign lords are friends, softening the dosha considerably) from hostile Shadashtak — a nuance every careful matchmaker checks before raising alarms.

Dwirdwadash: The 2/12 Relationship

When two Moon signs sit two and twelve from each other, the relationship is called Dwirdwadash. The classical concern here is financial and energetic drain between partners — the 12th is the house of expenditure, after all. Yet practitioners have long observed that this dosha behaves exactly like its Hellenistic cousin, the semi-sextile blind spot: not open warfare, but a slow mutual invisibility in which each partner’s priorities remain quietly illegible to the other.

The remedial logic in both traditions converges too. Where doshas like these appear alongside afflicted marriage significators, Jyotish prescribes targeted graha shanti — much as we detailed in our comprehensive guide to Malefic Mars Remedies for the Mangal Dosha context. But for aversion specifically, ritual alone is never the full answer. The bridge, as we shall see, is built from awareness.

How to Find the Aversions in Your Own Chart: A Five-Step Method

You do not need software wizardry for this. A simple whole-sign scan reveals every blind spot in about ten minutes.

Step 1 — List your placements: Write each planet with its sign. Include the ascendant sign as your anchor.
Step 2 — Check each planet against the ascendant: Count the sign positions. Any planet in the 2nd, 6th, 8th, or 12th sign from your ascendant is averse to your rising sign — and thus partially hidden from your conscious self-image.
Step 3 — Check each house ruler against its house: Find the sign a house occupies, identify its ruler, and count from the house to the ruler. A ruler in aversion to its own house cannot ‘supervise’ that department of life.
Step 4 — Check planet pairs: For any two planets whose affairs should cooperate — say, Venus and Mars for romance, or Mercury and Jupiter for learning — check whether they see each other. Aversion between natural partners explains many lifelong puzzles.
Step 5 — Rank by importance: Prioritise aversions involving the ascendant lord, the Moon, and the rulers of the houses that dominate your current questions. Not every blind spot deserves equal attention.

A worked example makes this concrete. Suppose Capricorn rises, and Mercury — ruler of the 6th and 9th — sits in Sagittarius, the 12th sign from the ascendant. Mercury is averse to the lagna. The native may be genuinely intelligent yet chronically unable to see their own communication habits; colleagues notice the sharp tongue long before the native does. The mind runs constantly but out of the self’s line of sight — a pattern remarkably close to what we described in our popular article on The 3rd House and Overthinking.

Bridging the Blind Spot: How Aversion Gets Repaired

Here is the most hopeful part of the doctrine, and the part most modern summaries omit entirely. The Hellenistic astrologers catalogued specific conditions under which averse signs regain a connection. The sky, it turns out, builds a few secret passages between rooms that cannot see each other.

1. Shared Rulership (Homozonia)

Some averse sign pairs share the same planetary ruler. Aries and Scorpio — a 6/8 pair — both belong to Mars. Taurus and Libra — another 6/8 pair — both belong to Venus. Capricorn and Aquarius — a 2/12 pair — both belong to Saturn. The shared lord acts as a messenger walking between the two rooms. In practice: if your blind spot involves such a pair, working consciously with the common ruler (its house, its significations, its remedies) opens the hidden corridor.

2. Equal Rising Times and Equal Power

Sign pairs equidistant from the solstitial axis — for example, Gemini and Cancer, or Sagittarius and Capricorn — rise for equal lengths of time and were called ‘hearing’ or ‘seeing’ signs despite formal aversion. Tradition granted them a sympathetic channel: they perceive each other indirectly, like two people who have never met but correspond through letters.

3. Antiscia: The Shadow Bridge

Antiscia are mirror degrees across the Cancer–Capricorn axis. Two planets averse by sign can nevertheless occupy each other’s antiscia degrees, creating a hidden, shadow-level connection. When this occurs, the blind spot behaves differently — the domains influence each other secretly, through synchronicity and indirect consequence rather than open negotiation. Charts with antiscia contact across an aversion often describe people whose ‘forgotten room’ keeps sending them anonymous letters.

4. Reception by the Averse Sign’s Lord

If a planet sits in aversion to a house but the lord of that house welcomes it — through friendship, exaltation, or shared dignity — the estrangement softens. The room may be out of sight, yet its owner still leaves the door unlocked for you. Vedic practitioners will recognise the parallel logic in the friendly versus hostile Shadashtak distinction discussed above: lordship relations can redeem a hostile geometry.

5. The Human Repair: Deliberate Awareness

Finally, the repair no ephemeris can supply. Aversion describes a default setting, not a prison sentence. The entire purpose of learning this doctrine is to override it manually. Identify your averse domain, then schedule it — literally. Put the neglected finances, the unexamined health habit, the silent friendship into your calendar with the same seriousness you give your visible priorities. What the sky refuses to connect, a reminder on Tuesday morning connects perfectly well. Awareness is the bridge aversion will not build for you; discipline is the toll you pay to cross it.

Aversion in Relationships: When Two Charts Cannot See Each Other

Synastry gives aversion its most poignant stage. When one partner’s Sun, Moon, or ascendant falls averse to the other’s, whole regions of each personality remain mutually invisible. Neither partner is hiding anything — the geometry simply never delivers the signal. Common signatures include:

Sun averse Sun: mutual respect without mutual comprehension; each admires a stranger
Moon averse Moon (the Shadashtak and Dwirdwadash cases): emotional needs broadcast on frequencies the other’s receiver cannot tune
Venus averse Mars: attraction that flickers unpredictably, because desire and affection never occupy the same room
Ascendant averse ascendant: lifestyles that co-exist in parallel rather than intertwining

The constructive response mirrors the natal one: name the invisibility instead of moralising it. Couples who learn that their disconnect is structural, not personal, frequently stop blaming and start scheduling — regular explicit check-ins that substitute conscious communication for the missing line of sight. Where the aversion compounds other stress markers in the charts, a full compatibility reading becomes worthwhile; our guide to Rising Sign Red Flags covers several adjacent warning patterns worth checking in the same sitting.

Quick Reference: Your Blind-Spot Signs by Ascendant

For every rising sign, four zodiac signs sit permanently averse — the 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 12th from the lagna. Planets occupying these signs in your chart operate partially out of your conscious line of sight. Locate your ascendant below and note its invisible quartet:

Aries rising: Taurus, Virgo, Scorpio, Pisces
Taurus rising: Gemini, Libra, Sagittarius, Aries
Gemini rising: Cancer, Scorpio, Capricorn, Taurus
Cancer rising: Leo, Sagittarius, Aquarius, Gemini
Leo rising: Virgo, Capricorn, Pisces, Cancer
Virgo rising: Libra, Aquarius, Aries, Leo
Libra rising: Scorpio, Pisces, Taurus, Virgo
Scorpio rising: Sagittarius, Aries, Gemini, Libra
Sagittarius rising: Capricorn, Taurus, Cancer, Scorpio
Capricorn rising: Aquarius, Gemini, Leo, Sagittarius
Aquarius rising: Pisces, Cancer, Virgo, Capricorn
Pisces rising: Aries, Leo, Libra, Aquarius

Two observations sharpen this table. First, notice the shared-ruler repairs hiding inside it: Aries rising finds Mars-ruled Scorpio in its blind zone, so Mars himself becomes the corridor between the visible self and the hidden 8th. Second, benefics in averse signs are gifts you underuse, while malefics there are risks you underestimate — both deserve a deliberate audit.

Aversion vs. Affliction vs. Combustion: Do Not Confuse the Three

Students routinely blur three very different planetary problems, and the confusion leads to mismatched remedies. Keep the distinctions crisp:

Affliction is visible damage — a planet squared, opposed, or conjoined by malefics. You feel the struggle. Remedy: pacify the afflicting planet and strengthen the afflicted one.
Combustion is absorption — a planet swallowed by the Sun’s proximity, its agenda merged into the ego’s glare. Remedy: strengthen the combust planet and consciously separate its voice from your pride.
Aversion is invisibility — no damage, no absorption, simply no line of sight. Remedy: awareness structures first; ritual second, and only where lordship analysis supports it.

A single planet can suffer more than one condition at once, of course. A combust Mercury in aversion to the ascendant describes a mind both drowned out by ego and hidden from self-observation — a chart signature that practically begs for journaling as its first remedy.

FAQs on Aversion in Astrology

Is aversion the same as the quincunx or inconjunct aspect?

They describe the same positions from different eras. Aversion is the older, whole-sign doctrine covering all four non-aspecting positions (2, 6, 8, 12). The quincunx (150 degrees) and semi-sextile (30 degrees) are modern minor aspects measured by degree within those averse zones. The Hellenistic view is broader: the entire sign relationship is blind, whether or not an exact minor aspect perfects.

Is aversion always bad?

No — and this surprises people. Aversion to the 12th can mercifully hide old wounds from daily consciousness. A malefic averse to your ascendant troubles you less directly than one staring straight at it. Invisibility cuts both ways: you lose access, but you also gain insulation. Judgement depends entirely on which planet, which houses, and which repairs exist.

Does Vedic astrology use aversion?

Functionally, yes. The 6/8 (Shadashtak) and 2/12 (Dwirdwadash) relationships in kundli matching encode the same geometry. Additionally, Parashari aspect rules already imply it: several sign positions receive no graha drishti at all from a given planet, reproducing the blind-spot effect within Jyotish’s own grammar.

Can transits activate an aversion?

Beautifully, yes. When a transiting planet enters a sign that aspects both averse signs simultaneously, it acts as a temporary translator between the two estranged domains. These windows — often lasting weeks — are golden opportunities to do the integration work consciously while the sky lends you a bridge.

What is the single most important aversion to check first?

Your ascendant lord’s relationship to the ascendant itself. If the very planet steering your life sits in a blind spot relative to your identity, self-knowledge becomes the central life project — and the highest-yield place to begin any remedial or coaching work.

How does aversion relate to the planetary joys?

Elegantly, and the connection reveals how deliberately the Hellenistic system was engineered. The doctrine of planetary joys assigns each planet a house where it ‘rejoices’ — Mercury in the 1st, the Moon in the 3rd, Venus in the 5th, Mars in the 6th, the Sun in the 9th, Jupiter in the 11th, and Saturn in the 12th. Strikingly, the malefics rejoice precisely in averse houses: Mars in the 6th and Saturn in the 12th. The tradition, in effect, quarantines its most difficult forces in the rooms the ascendant cannot see — trouble managed best at arm’s length. We unpacked this whole architecture in our dedicated guide to the Planetary Joys in Vedic and Hellenistic Astrology, which makes an ideal companion read to this article.

Can a dasha or planetary period activate an averse planet?

Yes, and these periods are life’s great curriculum for the blind spot. When the mahadasha of an averse planet begins, the forgotten room suddenly becomes the room you live in. Natives often describe such periods as disorienting precisely because the activated domain has no established connection to their self-concept. Knowing the aversion in advance transforms the same period from ambush into apprenticeship — you walk in with the lights already on.

Conclusion: Turn the Lights On in the Forgotten Room

Aversion in astrology is ultimately a doctrine of compassion. It explains why intelligent, sincere people carry stubborn blind spots — not from laziness or denial, but from a geometry written into the sky at birth. The signs that cannot see each other describe the conversations your life does not have by default. Yet every repair mechanism the ancients catalogued, from shared rulers to antiscia, whispers the same conclusion: the disconnection is a starting condition, never a verdict. Find your forgotten rooms. Walk into them deliberately, on a schedule, with the lights on. The sky built the blind spot; you build the bridge.

Want to know exactly which domains of your chart sit in aversion — and which secret passages your chart offers for repair? Book a personalised consultation with Dr. A. K. Tripathi at astrologertripathi.com and turn your blind spots into a map.