The 12x12 chart
How the rating is worked out
The twelve signs sit at 30 degree intervals around a circle, and classical astrology cares about the angles that circle produces. Those angles are called aspects, and each one carries a fixed reading that predates every compatibility quiz on the internet.
Two signs of the same element land 120 degrees apart, the trine, which the old texts treat as the easiest angle there is. Signs whose elements support each other (fire with air, earth with water) land at 60 degrees, the sextile. Signs that share a mode but not an element land at 90 degrees, the square, and that is where the tradition expects arguments.
So the score on every page here is arithmetic, not editorial. Aries and Leo are four signs apart, a trine, so they get a 5, and so does every other same-element pair. Nothing was nudged to make a popular pairing look better than the rule says it is.
- 4
- 2
- 4
- 2
- 5
- 1
- 3
The twelve easiest pairings
Start from one sign
What the chart is honestly good for
Compatibility astrology has been tested. The best-known attempt, a study of thousands of marriage and divorce records, found no relationship between sun signs and who stays together. Later work on birth dates and partner choice reached the same nowhere. If you want a chart that predicts a relationship, this is not one, and neither is any other.
What survives is a vocabulary. Cardinal, fixed and mutable are a compact way of saying who starts things, who holds a position and who adapts. Fire, earth, air and water name four ways of processing the same evening. Reading a pairing through those terms can be a useful mirror, in the way any structured description of temperament is useful, which is roughly where personality quizzes live too.
How to read a pair page
Each of the 78 pages opens with the aspect and the rating, then works through love, friendship and work, and ends on the section that matters most: where the pairing goes wrong. That section is written from the classical clash between the two signs rather than from a list of nice adjectives, so a 5 rated pairing still gets a candid account of what a doubled element overdoes.
Zodiac compatibility — frequently asked
In the classical scheme, signs of the same element: Aries with Leo or Sagittarius, Taurus with Virgo or Capricorn, Gemini with Libra or Aquarius, Cancer with Scorpio or Pisces. Those twelve pairings sit at 120 degrees, the trine, and are the only ones rated 5 here.
The angle between the two signs on the zodiac wheel, nothing else. Count how many signs apart they sit, look the separation up in the aspect table on this page, and you have the number. Because the rule is mechanical, every pairing at the same angle gets the same rating, and none of the 78 scores was decided by taste.
Not in any sense that has survived testing. Studies of birth dates and marriage or divorce records find no effect. What the tradition does well is give people a vocabulary for describing how two temperaments meet, which is why these pages spend as much space on friction as on romance.
Because Aries and Leo is the same pairing as Leo and Aries. Each pair gets one URL, slugged alphabetically, and the reversed spelling redirects to it.
They are included, all twelve of them. Tradition reads a doubled sign as a mirror: instant recognition, and no second element in the mix to balance out whatever the sign overdoes. That gets a 4 here, not a 5.
Sun-sign compatibility is the coarsest layer of astrology, ignoring the moon, the rising sign, and everything else a chart contains, never mind the two actual people. A 1 in the chart above describes an awkward classical angle. It does not describe anyone's relationship.