Gemini and Cancer compatibility

Love and romance scores 35. No input weighs more in this facet than the angle, and the angle is where this pair is weakest.

Ptolemy leaves neighbouring signs out of his configurations: “All parts which are distant from each other in the space of one sign only are considered inconjunct, because they are averted, as it were, from each other”. He also sorts the two signs differently by sex. Gemini’s triplicity is made of “masculine signs”, while of Cancer’s he says “the signs which compose this triplicity are feminine”.

Alan Leo writes of Cancer people: “They are rather approbative, love to be approved of, and always yearn for the sympathy of others.” Of Gemini people he says “they must have diversity”. A wish for sympathy next to a need for diversity: the pairing of the two sentences is ours.

Trust is the lowest facet, at 32. It rests equally on the angle and on steadiness, and both are low. Cancer, a cardinal sign, counts for half in steadiness and mutable Gemini for nothing, so the pair’s average is a quarter.

William Lilly gives the two signs different words in his quality lines, which list qualities for judging a chart and do not describe people. Cancer is “Moveable, a Solstice Signe”; Gemini is “common or double-bodied”.

Alan Leo’s Cancer chapter has two sentences on constancy: “Persons born in this sign are characterised as being slow but sure.” And: “They are persistent and exceedingly tenacious”. His sentence on Gemini comes with a condition: “when they live the unbalanced personal life, they become very diffusive, indecisive and unreliable”. Reading the tenacious portrait against the conditional one is our choice.

Communication is the highest facet, 44, though not a high score. Adaptability has a quarter of the weight and stands at three quarters. The elements weigh most and count only in part.

Lilly calls Cancer “mute and slow of Voyce” and Gemini a “humane Signe”. Alan Leo’s Gemini is quick: “They are certainly quick-witted and mentally impulsive”. His Cancer people are “very timid, reserved, and shy, and fear ridicule or disapproval very much”. Quick wit in one chapter and fear of ridicule in the other: the contrast is our reading.

Emotions comes out at 37. The elements have the largest weight in it.

Lilly’s lines show which quality the two elements share. Gemini is “aerial, hot, moyst, sanguine”; Cancer is “Watry, Cold, Moyst, Flegmatick”. Moist stands in both lines, and hot stands against cold.

Alan Leo uses one word in both chapters. Of Cancer: “Being exceedingly sensitive, their feelings are very easily wounded.” Of Gemini: “they are very sensitive and have the ability to reason upon and analyse their sensations”. Noticing “sensitive” in each is our doing. What follows the word differs: wounded feelings in one sentence, analysis in the other.

Values scores 33, just above trust. Steadiness counts again with a smaller weight, and the elements weigh most.

Alan Leo ties Cancer to the household: “for them domestic affairs become a kind of brake on their own individual progress”. His Gemini faces two ways: “They are conservative and progressive, and altogether quite dualistic subjects”. Setting a family-bound portrait beside a divided one is our step, not his.

Shared activities comes to 43, just below communication. Adaptability counts here too, with a smaller weight.

Ptolemy places the bicorporeal signs, Gemini among them, “intermediately placed between the fixed and the tropical signs”. Cancer is one of his two tropical signs, where the Sun seems to turn; in the northern hemisphere that turn brings summer. He is writing of seasons, not of people.

Alan Leo says of Gemini people: “These persons are rarely content with a single occupation or pursuit, and seem to delight in having two things in hand at the same time.” Of the Cancer individual he says “it is no difficulty for them to recall minute incidents of the past”. One sentence is about variety and the other about memory, and placing them together is our choice.