Which zodiac sign is a match for me?

The question is the commonest of all, and the usual answer — a table of which sun sign suits which — is the weakest that astrology has to offer.

Why sign tables say little

They compare the position of a single planet in two charts and leave thirteen further factors per person out of account. Roughly one twelfth of humanity shares any given sun sign; no one seriously claims that these millions are suited to the same people.

What is right about the tables is the geometry underneath: signs of the same element stand in trine to one another, signs in square and in opposition produce tension. That is correct — it holds for planets, not for people.

How a partnership analysis is built

Classical synastry proceeds in three steps, and the order is essential.

First: each chart on its own. What each person brings — temperament, capacity for relationship, the condition of the seventh house and of its ruler. Anyone who compares two charts without having read them singly is comparing something they do not know.

Second: the comparison. Here is what counts above all:

the aspects between the lights of both — the Sun and the Moon, in both directions;
Venus and Mars crosswise;
the rulers of the first and seventh houses in both charts;
Reception — does a planet of the one stand in a sign that a planet of the other rules? In the tradition reception counts for more than the aspect itself, and in modern accounts it is almost always missing.

Third: time. Two people meet at a particular moment, and each of them is then at a particular stage of their own life. The same bond can hold in one year and not in another.

What an analysis can say

It describes what two people will chafe at and where they come easily to one another. That is usable and open to checking.

It does not say whether a relationship will last. A chart comparison with many tensions describes a demanding bond — not one doomed to fail; many long marriages look exactly like that.

One condition

Both have to know that the analysis is being made. Reading the chart of a person who has not asked for it, in order to learn something about them that they do not tell of their own accord — we want no part of that, and we do not do it.