Free Aversion Calculator

Aversion is the condition where two planets occupy signs that share no whole-sign aspect: the 2nd, 6th, 8th, or 12th sign-distance from each other. Hellenistic astrologers said such planets “cannot see” each other and so cannot exchange influence, support, or testimony in the chart.

The doctrine rests on Greek optical theory. Vision was understood to travel along discrete rays, and a planet's sight extended to the five configurations the ancients formalised as aspects: the conjunction (same sign), sextile (3rd sign-distance), square (4th), trine (5th), and opposition (7th). Everything else falls into the gap. Antiochus of Athens treats this in his Summary, preserved through Porphyry's Introduction to the Tetrabiblos and reconstructed by Robert Schmidt in the Project Hindsight translations of the 1990s. Chris Brennan walks through the modern reception in chapters 9 and 11 of Hellenistic Astrology (Amor Fati, 2017).

The practical consequence is that aversion marks a negative in your chart. Where two planets are averse, no testimony passes between them. The houses they rule do not exchange resources. The significations they carry do not collaborate. A planet averse to its own sign is even worse: the lord cannot tend the house it owns.

This tool counts sign-distance, not degree separation. That is the whole point of the Hellenistic method. Mercury at 29° Cancer and Saturn at 1° Pisces look like a tight trine on a modern chart wheel, but in the whole-sign frame Mercury is in Cancer and Saturn is in Pisces, which sit five signs apart, so they form a perfect trine and witness each other fully. Conversely, Mercury at 1° Cancer and Saturn at 29° Aquarius sit ~28° apart by degree but eight signs apart by sign, putting them in aversion, not in any aspect.

This calculator uses the seven traditional planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). Aversion is a 7-planet doctrine. The outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, Pluto) were not in the system the ancients built, and including them complicates the symbolism more than it clarifies.

Three result categories appear, sorted by symbolic weight:

1. Domicile lord averse to its own sign. The heaviest case. The lord cannot tend the house it owns.
2. Planet averse to the Ascendant. A blind spot in the native's conscious reach.
3. Planet pair in aversion. Two parts of the chart that cannot collaborate. Dispositor pairs and luminary pairs are sorted to the top.

If your chart contains the rare configuration in which a planet sits averse to bothMars and Saturn, the tool flags it as “freedom.” That term is from Antiochus, and it is the only positive aversion in the system.

Aversion is symmetric by sign-pair. If Aries and Virgo are in aversion (a 6th sign-distance), they are in aversion in both directions; the symbolic burden often falls heavier on one side, but the geometric fact is mutual. Use the table to look up which signs cannot see any sign you care about.

Read across the row to see every sign that the row's sign cannot see. Notice the pattern: each sign is in aversion to the four signs that share neither its element nor its modality through any aspect-forming distance. The 2nd and 12th sign-distances correspond to what modern astrology calls the semi-sextile (30°). The 6th and 8th correspond to the modern quincunx (150°). The Hellenistic frame collapses both into the same category, because both fail the witnessing test.

The entire Hellenistic doctrine of “good” and “bad” houses descends from one fact: the four houses that share no whole-sign aspect with the rising sign are the 2nd, 6th, 8th, and 12th. Antiochus of Athens and Porphyry both make this explicit. The Ascendant represents the native, the body, the life itself. Anything it cannot see is, by extension, a topic in which the native cannot fully participate.

This produced the classical assignments:

• 2nd house, averse to the 1st. Substance and livelihood. The native owns property here, but the property is “out of sight” of the self; the work of acquiring it has a hidden, mechanical quality.
• 6th house, averse to the 1st. Slaves, illness, subordinates. Affairs over which the native has nominal authority but no direct vision.
• 8th house, averse to the 1st. Death, inheritance, other people's resources. Topics the native cannot witness and cannot fully control.
• 12th house, averse to the 1st. Enemies, exile, hidden sorrows. The classical “bad daimon” house. The native is acted upon here without seeing the actor.

Modern astrology has muted this distinction by elevating the 2nd house into a comfortable possessions house and the 8th into a transformation house. The Hellenistic frame keeps the harder reading: these are houses where the native cannot see what is happening to them, and that is the entire problem.

If you have planets in any of these four houses, the calculator surfaces them as “averse to the Ascendant.” This is not in itself a verdict (lots of charts have something in the 12th and the natives are fine), but it tells you those significations operate at a slight remove from your conscious agency. Brennan covers the practical implications at length in Hellenistic Astrology chapter 11.

This is the heaviest form of aversion in the system, and most modern interpretations miss it entirely.

Take a Cancer-rising chart. Saturn rules the 7th and 8th houses, by ruling Capricorn and Aquarius. Suppose Saturn sits in Leo. Saturn is now in the 12th sign-distance from its own Capricorn (the 7th house) and in the 8th sign-distance from its own Aquarius. Both are aversions. Saturn is the lord of marriage and inheritance for this native, and Saturn cannot see either of the houses it rules.

The metaphor the ancients used is governance. The lord is “away from home.” The house can still operate (the affairs of marriage and inheritance still unfold), but it operates without its rightful authority on site. Sahl ibn Bishr, working in the Abbasid period and preserved in the Latin tradition, frames it bluntly: a planet whose lord is averse “has no one to provide for it,” and the affairs of the house “are managed by strangers, or by no one at all.”

Sect changes which malefic matters more here. In a day chart, an averse Mars is the heavier diagnosis; in a night chart, an averse Saturn carries more weight. The Sect calculator tells you which of the two to read first.

Vettius Valens treats this in AnthologyBook III, where the testimony of the lord is the primary diagnostic for whether a house's significations will manifest constructively. A lord in aversion is not a death sentence for the topic, but it changes the prognosis. The native usually has to construct what the chart should have provided naturally, often through a substitute (mutual reception, a planet in the house that takes over the management, a benefic that throws a ray to the absent lord).

The calculator surfaces ruler-in-aversion cases at the top of your results. Read those first.

The terminological mess around these three words has confused readers for two centuries. Here is the distinction that actually matters.

Both frames describe configurations on the chart that are not classical aspects, but they reach opposite conclusions. The modern quincunx says: this is a real aspect, with real psychological dynamics, that demands adjustment. The Hellenistic aversion says: this is not an aspect at all; the planets simply do not communicate.

Patrick Watson made the case for the Hellenistic reading in his essay “Why the Quincunx Aspect is a Load of Codswallop.” His argument, briefly: when astrologers report quincunx delineations that ring true, the planets are nearly always also in aversion by sign, and the resonance is coming from the absence of aspect (the felt blind spot), not from the presence of a 150° tension.

There is one wrinkle worth knowing. A degree-based 150° quincunx and a sign-based aversion usually coincide (the 6th and 8th sign-distance ranges contain most 150° configurations), but not always. A planet at the start of one sign and another at the end of a sign five away can be 150° apart by degree while being in a 5th sign-distance trine by sign. In that case the Hellenistic frame counts it as a trine (witnessing) and ignores the degree count entirely. The calculator does the same.

Antiochus and Rhetorius both note a configuration the ancients called “freedom” (Greek: eleutheria): a planet that sits averse to both Mars and Saturn at the same time.

The logic is mechanical. Mars and Saturn are the two malefics. Their harm is projected through the rays they cast, which is to say through the whole-sign aspects they form. A planet that neither malefic can see is shielded from both. There is no ray of malefic testimony reaching it. The planet is free to do its own work without interference.

This is rare. To qualify, a planet has to occupy one of the four sign-distances of aversion (2nd, 6th, 8th, 12th) from Mars and one of the four from Saturn, simultaneously. In practice it shows up in maybe one chart out of twelve, depending on the configuration of the malefics. When it does occur, the ancients considered it a significant chart strength and a counterpoint to whatever generally afflicted the nativity.

The calculator flags this case explicitly when it occurs. You will see it labelled as “Freedom from the malefics” with the planet name and the two sign-distances involved. If your chart has it, that planet is doing more for you than its dignity alone would suggest.

Aversion is structural, not decorative. Read it before you read aspect quality, modern or otherwise. Here is the order Hellenistic practitioners actually use.

1. Find every domicile lord averse to its own sign. These are the heaviest cases. The native usually has to build by hand what the chart should have given naturally.
2. Find every planet averse to the Ascendant. Note which houses they sit in. The significations of those houses operate at a remove from the native's conscious agency.
3. Find the luminary aversions. A Sun or Moon in aversion to the Ascendant lord, or to its own dispositor, signals a structural disconnect between the native's vitality (Sun) or conditioning (Moon) and the conscious self. These read more strongly than ordinary planet-pair aversions.
4. Read everything else last. Generic planet-pair aversions matter, but they are the least load-bearing. Cover them in delineation if asked, but do not lead with them.

The calculator sorts your results in this order automatically. Work top-down. By the time you reach the bottom of the list you will have most of what the Hellenistic frame can tell you about where your chart cannot communicate with itself.