A reader asks:

“In your style, do you feel composite charts are more, less or just as significant as synastry? I know that every astrologer has a different style & preference. Just wondering what your take on it is. Are they both different but hold just the same weight of importance?”

I think they are both significant but for different things. Synastry shows how two people interact. She feels thwarted by him. He feels supported by her. They butt heads all the time, or whatever.

A composite chart on the other hand, shows the relationship functions. It’s a hypothetical! Because you can put charts of any two people together and if there is no real life relationship, it’s meaningless.

That said, I love composite charts and provided a relationship forms, I can think of a few ways where they may be a better indicator than synastry of how to people are going to fare.

And you see this in life all the time. You see couples where the synastry is so-so but the relationship rocks and if you check the composite…it’ll be blatantly obvious why. And I have an idea why this is.

See, a chart is a map of a person’s energy. And taking two charts and comparing them is like taking two people and comparing them. And it’s supposedly very precise and analytical which is of course ludicrous!

“Okay. Her Saturn is on his Sun, so she’s going to oppress him!” the (beginner) astrologer announces. Say what? How do we know that? How do we know how this person uses their Saturn? How is Saturn aspected in the chart? Is it well aspected or involved in a train wreck with Venus, Mars and that dwarf planet (::winks:: :-)) Pluto? Don’t you think this is going to impact what that gal does with her Saturn? I do. It gets very complicated!

And this is (one of the reasons) why synastry to the letter and by the book sometimes just does not compute. Where I find that the composite is what it is.

~~

I hope this helps! I’ve written on the topic before -> here. And perhaps some others will come on board and share their experience and expertise.

Riley asks:
Just out of curiosity, would having a Venus/Saturn conjunction in a composite chart be something that can be a positive thing? Because I always read that Venus/Saturn is challenging. But also I’ve read that it could mean “stability.” Do you have any thoughts on this particular aspect with regards to composite charts?

Yes I do. I don’t judge aspects as good or bad. How can I? They only describe energy and energy is not negative or positive, but neutral until directed. Take the Mars Pluto energy. One man with that in his chart may beat his wife. Another man with the same energy may run a marathon. Or he may be a surgeon, healing people (Pluto) with his knife (Mars). Who is to say what someone is going to do with their stuff? You can’t tell this kind of thing by looking at a chart.

Specific to Venus Saturn…well having as much Capricorn as I do, I have a lot of relationships with Venus Saturn types, or Venus in Capricorn. And my relationships with these people are very solid and long lasting. So it depends on your perspective, yes? You could say I am “stuck” with these people, or you could just as easily envy my friendships which endure through the decades.

So you see it doesn’t really matter. If you’re more the type to cycle through friends, that has an up and downside as well, right? On one hand, there is more variety, but perhaps less depth and history. So bottom line, who is to judge this? It is what it is and nothing more.

My current man and I are very queer and we have a composite chart that will not quit! And this is a gift and a curse. Because at various times we have very much wanted to quit! And guess what? Too bad! ::laughs:: Too bad, so sad, SUCKERS!!!

Now don’t mistake me. I love the AMF to the point of sheer stupidity. You could not find a woman more enamored with a man. But he is difficult and I am difficult. And 95% of the time we are thrilled with this. But when the other 5% shows itself, well…

::coughs::

So here’s the point: I am a dreamy, ultra loyal, true blue commitment-phobe! He’s too much Scorpio square too much Aquarius, so he’s never sure if he should devour me or move to another country just to get some space!

Gettin’ the picture?

And it works very well most the time. Because I’ve got my 8th house to answer his Scorpio. And I have a very strong Jupiter. He wants space? Fine! I’ll go run with Kathy! I’m going to the gym! And believe me the last thing I want is some guy ringing my cell phone wanting to know what I’m doing every three minutes.

Further, it doesn’t bother him if I talk to my old loves! He is unfazed.

It doesn’t bother me when naked women, gorgeous models no less, come over to his place and strip down so he can paint them. He photographs them in his bed and I am unfazed. So you can see, we’re looking pretty good until all the sudden we’re not. And at that point, all kinds of twisted hell breaks loose and we both want out.

But we never get out. It seems we habe an un-killable thing. And I remember some time ago, on one of the worst days, I was looking at the composite chart and it hit me. “There is no way out of this thing,” I told a friend. Kathy, this was, because she studies astrology. “I mean look at that thing. Do you see a door? There’s no fuckin’ door there! What that is right there, is a closed circuit,” I said. And I’ll tell you what it feels like.

We get anywhere near each other and before you can blink a vacuum forms around us. I swear, the day I met him, I saw his brake lights come on when he tapped them while sitting in his car. I hadn’t even seen him and I knew I was in trouble! I knew this was the man like an animal can sense an earthquake. So here’s the thing…

In this case, “the relationship”, the composite chart that is, dominates. We have never been two people exchanging energy like some kind of ping-ponging back and forth. It has always been a blended thing. It has been a synergy from the first minute. Two people with no separation. And frankly, I think after a time, it exhausts us.

It acts as a vortex, see. It’s fun. It’s all kind of things that are very, very good. But it’s like being on a carnival ride, going round and round and round. After awhile it’s as if the velocity builds and it seems every 4-6 weeks or so, we’re tossed off the thing, flying through the air to land SPLAT, in our neutral corners.

Get it? It’s as if we have to escape the composite! The relationship that is. Because once on that ride…once in the composite, well it doesn’t take long before everything else gets shut out. Like scenery passing in the blur and the ride goes faster and faster until everything but the vacuum we are in become irrelevant!

And he has better awareness of this than I do. He says he needs space. He needs to get away from the “noise” so he can hear his own thoughts. That it takes time for his feelings and thoughts to come up and they haven’t a chance in hell when he’s in the vortex!

Over time, I have become aware of how important these periods of separation are for me as well. I like knowing I have a choice! I like knowing I don’t have to do x, y and z, day in and day out. Basically we get tired of thinking of each other every minute of every day so we separate, but it’s been very clumsy at times. To say the least! What do you think it would feel like to be flung from a ride at Disneyland to land on your fuckin’ head? Well, that’s what it feels like.

So I land and he lands and we’re both stunned for a time. Eventually, bruised and dirty, we get up and dust ourselves off. We set about establishing ourselves as individuals with a mixture of dread and relief.

Dread, because we offer each other 95% bliss and now we’re supposed to live without that. Relief, because come on. It ain’t cool to land on your head every six weeks!

So we are separate, but not really. It’s a head fake every single time. Who in their right mind is going to leave someone who gives them virtually everything they have ever wanted and heaps more on top of that? Who is going to walk away from the one who heals them from the inside out? The one who makes every single thing in the world seem okay, with just a kiss? That’s not going to happen.

But this is my point: When in close proximity “we”, the two individuals, become the composite which is so incredibly strong, we lose ourselves somehow. And we literally have to get away from each other in order to have a non-joint thought. In order to reestablish ourselves as individuals! But leave the relationship?

Ha ha ha ha.

Don’t hold your breath.

So one night I went in there and told this guy my boyfriend was going to join Special Forces. That he wanted to, anyway. Because he was in the wrong branch of service for one thing and for another, he was getting kind of old for that kind of training as well.

And you should have seen this guy’s face when I said this. Okay, well it was subtle on the surface, but I could see a switch had flipped. Next thing you know, he took me from the bar where we were sitting to a booth where we could have a private conversation.

And never mind what he said, although I recall it like it was yesterday. He scared the living shit out of me. He said he was an ex-Special Forces soldier himself and proceeded to tell me of violent things in the most graphic way you could possibly imagine. And he was in my face too. Get it? We weren’t sitting across from each other in a booth having a conversation. His total intent was to traumatize me and he was successful in this endeavor for sure. When he finally wrapped up with his lecture, his plead and his diatribe, I grabbed my girlfriend who was busy trying to pick up the owner of the bar, and left there visibly shaken.

Now let me be fair (says Libra). The things he told me were not *wrong. They were right. They were accurate. And I believe he did what he did because he felt it was in my best interest and this may also be true. But the fact is, ultimately he got me pregnant. Pregnant with this disturbing knowledge, that is. And he sent me home to go beg my boyfriend not to join.

And I did beg my boyfriend not to join although I knew in my heart it would be fruitless. He had his destiny and further, what would I be doing with a man who would let a woman run his life? ::laughs::

So here’s the thing. I did not marry this man in large part because of what this third person said to me…who my boyfriend did not even know existed. See that? There was a third party involved. The relationship was penetrated! And there would be no marriage but I ran with that guy for another year, getting along famously before he successfully transferred branches of service to pursue his goals.

It was horrible, the day he drove away because I loved him very much. And after this many years passed.

More than 20 years passed before we got in contact again. We took up right away, comparing notes and catching up our lives. And sure enough, I learned he had made it into Special Forces and he’d had a very long and decorated career.

Now this was intense as hell for reasons outside the scope of this particular story but check out how history repeats:

Caught up in the intensity of this whole thing, I was chatting about the whole situation with another pal, and you guessed it. He was also an ex- Special Forces soldier. And these men track things, you know? And they have insight or think they do. And I respect them!

So anyway, my pal had some thoughts about my ex and his interaction with me which he shared with me. His thoughts were pretty profound and sure enough it happened. I got pregnant again! With a seed that disturbs of course!

::shakes head::

And ultimately the same thing that happened the first time, happened the second time. I guess you could say I am not so stable when impregnated!! You know how those first few months are!

So there was a separation with my ex, shortly after this other conversation and here again, the whole scene behind the scene took place without his knowledge.

So both times he’s talking to me - we’re engaged in one way or the other and another man comes to undermine the situation! Not just a man, but the same kind of man, but a soldier. And not just a soldier, but a Special Forces soldier!

And not some jackass, either! Someone I like and trust for very good reasons. And it is this is the kind of thing that shows up in a composite chart.

See, these events have nothing to do with how he and I interact. It was an attack on the relationship from the outside that did us in. Non-malicious, mind you! And I think this is uncanny.

I also think it illustrates the difference between synastry (how two people interact) and a composite chart (the facts of the relationship itself). And for the record, this story has a happy ending.

See he and I get along, we always have. This would be the “synastry”. We like the interaction and it’s not important to either one of us to have a certain outcome outside of he wants me happy and I want him, same.

But I am not meant to be his wife, and he is not meant to be my husband. And if we try to align like that, to me it’s a given, the universe will send yet another soldier to plant another seed that leaves me tortured, and ultimately liberates us from one another, and why is that?

Well when we were kids, obviously our destinies took us down different paths. And now, same thing! But it doesn’t stop us from liking each other…from loving each other for that matter. And do you want to know what the composite chart looks like?

Well there is a Mars (soldier) Pluto (underground) conjunction in the 7th house (open enemies). Uranus is also conjunct that on the 6th house side…disrupt, disrupt, disrupt!

The rest of the chart shows a very sweet love that is permanent and powerful. But try to land there? Forget about it. And we both know this and that’s the happy ending part.

We both feel very grateful for each other. It’s nice to know there is someone out there in the world who loves the hell out of you and always will. It’s hard to complain, you know? So that’s that. And now I’ll come back with the opposite scenario.

Meantime, have you ever experienced something similar in a relationship?

Regarding the “DNA of a relationship” it brings another thing to mind. If you read here a lot, you may have noticed I tend to stay in at least intermittent contact with some ex-loves. And frequently it’s significant. It is more than “Hi, you how are you”. Like with Scott. I am sitting there with him listening to him talk to his dead grandmother via a recording made decades earlier. That’s a big deal. But this isn’t about Scott. It’s about another old love who I never name.

I don’t name him because he’s ex Special Forces. I also don’t name him because he has a Scorpio Moon! But in whatever case he asked me to marry him many years ago, when I was seventeen years old, to be exact. And I would have liked to marry him, that’s for sure. But I had the unfortunate problem of having lied to him about my age. He thought I was 21, I guess. I don’t really remember specifically how old I said I was. But I vividly recall being completely enamored with him and terrified of losing his respect when and if he found out my true age and more succinctly, that I had LIED about it.

So anyway, wanting to marry me he bought me an airline ticket so I could fly home with him and meet his parents. He spent something ridiculous on it, like two months salary (military) but I would not go! For one thing, I had never been on a plane, and was scared to death and intimidated, but mostly I thought meeting his parents would be the kiss of death.

Because by all accounts they were genius as was he. So I figured I had him fooled! He was in love with me. But his parents? I was sure they’d take one look at me and know in an instant I was a teenager! You know. The emperor has no clothes! And I just could not take this chance.

See, he and his entire family were integrity personified and I just couldn’t bear the idea of being found out a liar and losing face like that. So what I did was refuse to make the trip. And ultimately I refused to marry him, but on this, I had some help.

He wasn’t in Special Forces when I met him, but he aspired to be. And being from the desert, I had no idea what Special Forces was. At all!! I just knew I had this dreamy boyfriend who played me love songs on his guitar, see. I have Venus Neptune, so that’s all I knew.

But anyway as destiny would have it one night I went out. I was underage of course and almost no one knew it. But I was friendly with this dark haired wiry guy in one of the bars I frequented. He was inordinately bright, a sci fi freak actually and he knew how old I was. He knew because he had guessed and anytime anyone asked if I were lying about my age, I always copped right away, “Why, yes!” I’d say. I was relieved, see. It was a relief.

But anyway we really liked each other. I was 17 and he was in his 30’s but that didn’t matter. The whole thing was above board. We just liked each other and he was very supportive of me. He used to recommend books for me to read for example, good books and this was our relationship.

He also tracked my boyfriend. He’s never met him, but he knew of him, knew his name and so forth. He knew he was a good man. See, this guy would ask all these probing questions and true to form, I would answer then candidly so he had a pretty good fix on me and my life.

And he approved of my relationship which meant a lot to me. He was sort of a father figure, actually. I respected him so when he voted thumbs up on my boyfriend, well this felt really good.

Skip to part two.

Still on this topic, with Saturn transiting my 7th house (relationships), I am learning about how people relate. And I didn’t mean to, but I came across the name, John Gottman who is a psychologist who wrote among other things, “The Mathematics of Marriage”.

Now this guy studied the hell out of relationship in an effort to be able to predict who would divorce and who would not with very limited data.

And he came up with a super effective formula. If he listens to a couple talk about *anything, for an hour, he can predict with 95% accuracy if they will be married or divorced within 15 years. If he listens for just 15 minutes, he can still predict this with 90% accuracy.

Now eventually he got so good at this, he found he could eavesdrop on a couple eating dinner in a restaurant and have a pretty good idea where they were headed.

In short, he found that marriages have a sort of DNA. In other words, the way we relate to another is hardwired! And in terms of astrology, this is very interesting.

I thought of the composite chart as the DNA of a relationship. Because it’s my experience if you are hooked up with someone, the composite chart is inescapable. For beginners, a composite chart is a chart of the relationship between two people.

And I just thought it was cool science is making now making the same kind of claims astrologers are punished for. That is, that these things are predictable! And I don’t know why this makes people so uncomfortable.

Personally, I’d just as soon have this guy listen to me talk to my lover and tell me in advance the relationship was going nowhere! That it was not going to satisfy!

And if he said, “You two are very fortunate,” I would like that as well! In whatever case, I think this is enormously interesting and what do you think?

How do you feel about a guy being able to predict the future of your relationship after sharing lunch with you and your partner?

What about an astrologer looking at a few charts and doing same?

Dear Top,

What an interesting question. You make him sound like a glutton, shoving food down his mouth. I believe I’d be disgusted as well! I have this picture of Dom DeLuise with a turkey leg in each hand! And you. A skinny, healthy diet conscious Virgo. Yeah, it’s probably not accurate, but amusing just the same.

I checked both charts to find out who the control freak is. And in spite of your concern over what goes into another person’s mouth, you do not seem especially controlling to me. Either does he, so this led me to check your composite - which revealed all.

For the novices, a composite chart is a merge between the charts of two individuals. It’s the chart of the relationship. And these things are static! You get what you get. So Top, what I’m telling you is this intensity between the two of you is hardwired. So is the control! And I realize this does not solve your problem, but it may provide guidance.

It means you can stop looking at what you are doing (should I or shouldn’t I), and refocus instead on the fact that this is what constellates between the two of you, period.

So the real question is, can you stand it? Can you transcend it? Because this boy is a Sagittarius rising. He is supposed to be bigger than life and telling him not to go overboard is never going to work. It would be like him telling you to enter a hotdog eating contest. That’s not going to happen, is it?

Good luck.

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