Cancer and Aquarius compatibility

Love and romance comes to 35. The angle carries the largest weight in this facet, and for these two it is the quincunx.

Ptolemy writes that “All signs, between which there does not exist any familiarity in any of the modes above specified, are inconjunct and separated.” Signs five apart fall in that class, he says, “because they divide the whole circle into unequal parts”.

Alan Leo writes of Aquarians: “They are faithful in their love until the end, the love generally living in the higher mind.” Of Cancer people: “They are rather approbative, love to be approved of, and always yearn for the sympathy of others.” A love that lives in the mind beside a wish for approval: the pairing of the two sentences is ours.

Trust is the highest facet, at 47. Steadiness weighs as much as the angle here, and one fixed sign with one cardinal sign takes it to three quarters.

William Lilly’s quality lines name each sign’s modality; setting them side by side is ours. Cancer is “Feminine, Nocturnal, Moveable”; Aquarius is “sanguine, fixed, rational, humane, masculine”. Lilly is listing qualities for judging a chart, not describing people.

Alan Leo says Aquarians “are persons one feels one can depend upon, and they inspire trust by their equable dispositions”. Cancer people, in his account, “are persistent and exceedingly tenacious”. Reading both as constancy is our doing, not his.

Communication is the lowest facet, 31. A quarter of it is adaptability, which this pair has at a quarter; the elements weigh most and count only in part.

Alan Leo’s Aquarians “seem to readily take to strangers, and rarely consider that others are in any way strange to them”. His Cancer people “are very timid, reserved, and shy, and fear ridicule or disapproval very much”. Ease with strangers set against shyness is our contrast.

Emotions scores 37. Nearly half of this facet is the elements, and water with air shares one quality of the two.

In Lilly, Cancer is “Watry, Cold, Moyst, Flegmatick” and Aquarius “an aierial, hot and moyst Signe”. Set side by side, which is our doing, moist is in both lines; cold is in one and hot in the other.

Alan Leo writes of Cancer: “Being exceedingly sensitive, their feelings are very easily wounded.” Of Aquarius: “They are noted for the integrity and sincerity they possess; the intense and fixed love nature of the fixed signs combined with the refined mental quality of the airy signs.” Our reading places a feeling that is quickly hurt beside a feeling joined to the mind.

Values is the second highest facet, at 46, just under trust. Steadiness counts here too, with a smaller weight, and the elements weigh most.

Alan Leo’s Cancer chapter has a sentence on the household: “Their highly sensitive nature makes them feel very keenly everything that affects the other members of the family, and for them domestic affairs become a kind of brake on their own individual progress.” His Aquarius chapter has one that looks outward, under a condition: “When fully individualised, they have a great love for all humanitarian undertakings and concerns that produce harmony for the many”. The family on one side and the many on the other is a contrast we draw.

Shared activities comes to 33, the second lowest. Adaptability is a fifth of this facet, and the pair holds a quarter of its full value.

Ptolemy names Cancer as one of his two tropical signs, where the Sun appears “to change his course towards a contrary latitude”, bringing summer in the northern hemisphere. Signs that follow a tropical sign he calls fixed, since the season begun there “is then more firmly established”. Aquarius follows Capricorn, so the rule makes it fixed; applying it is our step.

Alan Leo credits the Cancer individual with “the most remarkable memory of any given by the twelve signs”. Of the other sign he says “the Aquarian individuals are born character-readers, and they are rarely mistaken in their judgment”. One portrait recalls the past and the other reads people, as we set them side by side.