Aries and Cancer compatibility

Love and romance comes to 24. The angle weighs most in this facet, and the elements and the rulers split the remainder, so all three weak inputs land here together.

Ptolemy writes that the opposition and quartile “are considered to be discordant, because they are configurations made between signs not of the same kind, but of different natures and sexes”. In his scheme Aries is “masculine and diurnal”, and he assigns “Cancer for the Moon, as being feminine”.

He adds a remark on the two houses of Mars, Aries and Scorpio, “whose relative distances from the houses of the luminaries are injurious and discordant”. Cancer is the Moon’s house, and Aries stands in quartile to it. Taking that remark as a comment on this pair is our step.

Alan Leo says of Cancer people that they “always yearn for the sympathy of others”. Of Aries people he writes: “Their mental sympathies are always quick to respond to the least good which they may find in others.” Set side by side, which is our doing, one portrait asks for sympathy and the other offers a sympathy of the mind.

Trust is this pair’s highest facet at 32, and steadiness is the reason: it supplies close to half of the figure. Two cardinal signs earn the middle value for steadiness, neither the full value of a fixed pair nor the nothing of a mutable one.

William Lilly’s lines show the shared modality. He lists Aries as “movable, Cardinall, Equinoctiall” and Cancer as “Moveable, a Solstice Signe”. Lilly is naming the qualities of signs for judging a chart, not describing people.

Alan Leo calls Cancer people “persistent and exceedingly tenacious” and Aries people “fond of constant change”. Our reading of the two phrases: holding on in one portrait, moving on in the other.

Communication scores 29. The elements weigh most here and they are the pair’s weakest input. The largest single contribution comes from adaptability, again at its halfway mark.

Among Lilly’s qualities for the sign Cancer is “mute and slow of Voyce”. Alan Leo’s Cancer people are “very timid, reserved, and shy, and fear ridicule or disapproval very much”, and he adds: “Being exceedingly sensitive, their feelings are very easily wounded.” His Aries people are “frank and outspoken by choice, but often combative and assertive”. Putting a blunt speaker next to an easily wounded listener is our comparison, not his.

Emotions is the lowest facet, 22. The elements make up nearly half of it, and fire with water keeps little of its value, because by our data the two share neither quality.

Lilly’s wording shows the gap. Aries is “hot and dry”, Cancer “Watry, Cold, Moyst, Flegmatick”. Hot against cold and dry against moist: the pairing of his terms is ours, the terms are his.

Alan Leo describes Cancer people as “impressionable and emotional”. Of Aries people he says they “have great mental energy”. In our reading feeling leads in the first portrait and mind in the second.

Values comes out at 30. Steadiness is again the largest contribution. The elements count for more than the angle in this facet, which keeps the figure low.

Alan Leo’s Cancer is turned towards home and the past. “Their highly sensitive nature makes them feel very keenly everything that affects the other members of the family”, he writes, and “it is no difficulty for them to recall minute incidents of the past”. His Aries people are “loving novelty, romance and speculation and nearly always live in a world of theory”. Placed together by us, one description faces family and memory, the other what is new and untried.

Shared activities scores 28. Adaptability gives the biggest share, and the elements and the angle add little.

“Persons born in this sign are characterised as being slow but sure”, says Alan Leo of Cancer. Aries people he finds “inclined to be very headstrong and impulsive”. The difference of pace is our inference from those two sentences.