Volume VII ◆ Two Charts
Two births, compared degree by degree. Every contact between the charts, ordered by how much it actually governs between people, and read one at a time.
A Short Primer
A natal aspect is one person arguing with themselves. A synastry contact is one person's planet falling on another's, and it describes what happens between them rather than inside either. The Moon of one landing on the Venus of the other is not a fact about either character; it is a fact about how those two behave in the same room. This is why a chart that looks difficult alone can be easy alongside somebody, and why two straightforward people can be impossible together.
Most compatibility calculators count aspects and divide. That treats a Jupiter-Neptune sextile as equal to a Moon-Venus trine, which no astrologer would. Here each contact is weighted by what the two bodies actually govern between people — the Moon and Venus carry the most, Mercury less, the outer planets less again — and by how close to exact the angle falls. A contact a tenth of a degree from exact counts for far more than one at the edge of orb.
The hard contacts are usually where the pull is. Venus square Mars, Sun opposite Moon, anything involving Pluto — these produce friction and they produce interest, and a comparison with none of them often describes two people who like each other and never quite catch fire. What the easy contacts do is make a relationship liveable once the interest is there. A high score means comfortable. It does not mean inevitable, and a low one does not mean doomed.
Saturn contacts are the ones worth reading twice. Saturn between two charts is what makes a relationship durable, and it is also what can make it feel like an obligation. The Saturn person tends to experience the contact as responsibility and the other as being judged or constrained, and neither usually recognises the arrangement while it is happening. Where Saturn is prominent between two people, the relationship will either last a long time or end very deliberately.
Both charts are computed with the Swiss Ephemeris and Placidus houses. Nothing entered here is stored — the comparison is calculated and returned, and that is the end of it.
Elsewhere in the Almanac