ask jeanna: on romantic compatibility, birth chart interpretation, & book reviews

stick around for spicy hot takes

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It is our second edition of Ask Jeanna, where paid subscribers in the Discord get to ask questions for me to answer publicly in the newsletter. There were so many to choose from, but because I tend to run long (Midwestern, Mercury in Sagittarius, hi hello), I am keeping it to three questions per issue at the present moment!

Today, we are discussing compatibility in astrology and if that’s a thing you should care about (with Valentine’s Day around the corner, this question seemed especially timely). And also: if there is an order of operations to birth chart interpretation when I work with clients (a doozy of a question); and, last but not least, on the publishing side of things, if it’s gauche for authors to write critical reviews of their fellow authors.

Let’s go!

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What's your general advice, or some guidelines to follow, when seeking astrological compatibility in a partnership — romantic or professional! Maybe "compatibility" is a loaded word, but what framework do you follow when approaching synastry?

My honest to god answer is that I don’t advise deliberately seeking or prioritizing astrological compatibility in relationships.

In part, I have arrived at this opinion after writing extensively about astrological compatibility — something that I have come to believe really only exists in the realm of theory. The idea that “compatibility” between two people’s birth charts can be judged and weighed prior to a relationship’s lift-off is a theoretical exercise that quickly falls apart in practice when applied to living, breathing human beings. A birth chart is only a snapshot of potential: one that is inevitably informed and shaped by someone’s epigenetics, environment and culture, positionality, life experience, and so much more. 

At the end of the day, compatibility is compatibility. Maturity is maturity. Above all: someone’s willingness to be vulnerable, to learn how to communicate, to apologize and to learn and to grow in partnership: that is either there, or it straight up isn’t. And a birth chart, frankly, can’t capture that. You’ve got to experience someone in real time to learn them. That’s just being human, baby.

Astrology can’t help you hack your way out of the demanding work of intimacy. 

yes this movie is straight but it is PERFECT and i will hear NO WORD against it! // probably my favorite thing about its friends-to-oops-we-fucked-wait-we’re-in-love arc is that it is so very anti-love at first sight

What a birth chart can tell you is where someone may face, or have been born with, particular challenges. And that’s where introducing astrological literacy into an established relationship can help you better understand each other and mutually grow as a couple. 

The “mutual” is important. Astrology is a mutual consent opt-in, for both and/or all parties. Its primary use should not be as a tool to weed folks out based on some random thing in their chart before understanding how someone lives that placement or aspect, how it has actually manifested in their life, what they’ve done with it of their own freewill. 

FWIW, my most unhealthy relationships — including my first marriage — were with the people I was the most on-paper astrologically “compatible” with. In hindsight, I can see the synastry, the feeling that this was the person: how I interpreted magnetic connections as God’s will or fate and made life-changing choices with people who I now look back on and go, really, younger self? THAT was your king? Because had those exes or my younger self actually done the work (or done enough work) to realize the purported gifts of our “compatibility”? No. So were we really compatible? Those are lesson I could only learn through the doing. 

You can’t predict your way out of pain, which is ultimately what a lot of astrological “compatibility” guess work is seeking to do. 

I will say, very bluntly (and with their permission), that while my partner Meg and I were friends for years before we started dating, I don’t think we would ever have purposefully picked each other off of an astrology dating app based solely on each other’s charts. Our synastry, on paper, wouldn’t dazzle or impress — and yet our relationship is the healthiest, the most intimate, the deepest either of us has ever had. Because of the trust, the vulnerability, and the life we’ve developed together. 

And some of that intimacy has, ironically enough, come from our shared understanding and use of astrology. Not by gasping that our Capricorn and Leo moon placements don’t especially line up and so oh goodness, are we doomed? but rather, by saying, okay, this is what my moon needs and this is what your moon needs, and so how can we, in better understanding each other’s placements, offer support and comfort and tenderness when those areas of life are activated? Astrology has been helpful for our relationship inasmuch as it offers another language to deepen our understanding of each other — and lets us know when we have tough astro-weather coming our way, of course.

At the end of the day, my perspective on applying astrology to intimate relationships is significantly informed by my many (and I do mean many) experiences in couples’ counseling. And as I am not a therapist and have no clinical training, this is why I have declined, over the years, to see couples for synastry readings. I think for relationship needs, reading experts like John Gottman and Esther Perel and, to the aforementioned point, literally seeing a couple’s therapist is almost always going to be a more helpful first check-in for your relationship than seeking out an astrologer. 

~awaits evisceration from my fellow astros in the comments~

How do you (specifically you, Jeanna, since I imagine this will be different for every astrologer) approach a chart for the first time? Is there a PEMDAS-like order of operations you default to? The big three [sun, moon, rising] first? Certain aspects or placements you look for after that? Or does it depend? Maybe different things stand out every time? How do you “meet” a new chart for the first time, I guess?

On the one hand, I love this question, because what the question-asker is very smartly getting at is the technical foundations of astrological practice and why I always, always recommend that folks who are seriously interested in astrology get their natal chart read by a professional before going down a million internet rabbit holes. The question-asker is intuiting and understanding that not all placements and not all aspects are created equal — and they are absolutely, 100% correct.

On the other hand, it’s virtually impossible to answer, except to say, yes, there is an order of operations, but I “meet” a chart differently based on a few things, notably based on the kind of reading they are coming to me for.

I can’t describe how quickly I ingest a chart at this point. Yes, I do sit with it at length, mostly when I’m examining the transits, because Year Ahead readings (which I just finished a long spat of) are incredibly detailed and date-oriented. But the immediate gulp of seeing a new client chart for the first time is like stepping into an environment, be it a forest or a desert, and the air just feels a way. My initial scan of a chart and understanding and prioritizing of major aspects happens in a matter of seconds.

Because it’s second nature at this point. Because it’s what I do for a living. Because I do it all day, every day. Because this is not my hobby, it’s my work.

Let me try to explain a different way:

The theory an astrologer is grounded in significantly informs how they approach a chart and prepare for a reading.

For example, what planets do you prioritize? Hellenistically-grounded astrologers, like myself, don’t acknowledge the outer planets (Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) as ruling any signs, and so those planets will also not rule any houses or areas of life in readings I give. So when I look at a client who has Mars in Scorpio, I look at that planet as being powerful in its home sign — not as answering to, or having co-rulership in, Pluto.

Also relevant: the house system someone uses. Different houses signify different things in different systems; planetary joys, for example, are a Hellenistic technique. What orb distance, for aspects, do you use? My modern foundations show in that I tend to prioritize closer, >10* aspects over the whole-sign aspects that are most traditional to Hellenistic.

And if an astrologer is Hellenistically informed, like myself, a client chart reading is also likely to prioritize timing techniques like profection years over or in addition to planetary transits, whereas those are not techniques that work within what is called a “modern” framework. And so “meeting” a client chart also includes looking at what profection year they are in, what their last profection year was, what their time lord is, as a way of setting up their year.

It would be all too easy to answer this question as, you start with the Big Three, because those are always the most important. But the truth is that, unless you’re doing an introductory natal chart reading in which you’re setting up and discussing the condition of a new client’s sun and moon and other personal planets (and planetary condition is not something every astrologer works with! it’s something I am very tetchy with, myself, actually, when it comes to the luminaries), the big three are not necessarily the most important things in a chart reading. They inform the background environment, of course, but they don’t necessarily take center stage. In my readings — year aheads, writing-specific third house readings — it’s very hit and miss whether the luminaries will come up at all.

I’ll end with this: the order of operations becomes intuitive to the professional, but it is not itself entirely intuitive when starting out on your astrological studies. Understanding how and what to prioritize depending on the client question or situation comes most especially from studying with more seasoned elders in the field, especially through 1:1 mentorship. Classes, of course, can also be huge, but that 1:1 attention when rigorously running through the order of operations in example charts is invaluable. There are too many variables for even the most advanced books to cover. At some point, if folks want to do this professionally, you need to study with someone.

This is all to say: I do not expect my clients to know “what” in their chart is most important for varying situations, because it is not your job to know the weirdly specific and strange things that belong to different houses that are never discussed in horoscopes. That’s my job. And the job of other professionals. Just trust that when you get birth chart readings, we all have flow charts in our heads going constantly. Like a weird Cosmo quiz.

What are your thoughts on reviewing books publicly as a writer? It never occurred to my pea brain as controversial or a way to alienate people before I read this (paywalled) Courtney Maum piece [from 2022]. I'd love at least one other author’s thoughts on it. Is it always asking for trouble? Does it feel weird to be both an author and a person who writes criticism nowadays?

This question sparked a lot of conversation in the astrology for writers Discord, but I still wanted to address it here. And full disclosure, I haven’t read the paywalled portion of Maum’s piece (but I love her book and advice, generally, which is why I’ve still linked to it). My take, however, since you asked:

I think there are absolute galaxies of difference between the book reviews written by critics at, say, the New York Times Book Review and contemporary literary criticism offered by academics vis a vis the rest of us sending out newsletters and social media posts. The former are reviewing books and synthesizing media as their jobs; theoretically, it is culture-making.

This isn’t to suggest that proper book reviews are pure. Anything but. Industry politics and relationships shape which books get reviewed, and how, just as much as anything else. But at a baseline, there is a tremendous — and appreciated — difference between being an author who also has a job as a critic and being an author who, for pleasure, and entirely of their own volition, writes critical reviews of other authors.

Because we are published writers, the reviews we write personally, individually, are inherently are going to read differently than those of a random Goodreads reviewer. Not to say they carry more weight; I don’t think that’s necessarily true (unless you’re someone like Roxane Gay, who now has her own publishing imprint and yet continues to deny the impact of her critical Goodreads reviews).

But our reviews are coming from an industry peer. They aren’t coming from a random reader. They are coming from someone who does know about craft and does know [insert genre specifics here]. They are coming from someone who knows just how fucking hard it was to get this book made in the first place, who knows firsthand the sting of a bad review, the self-punishing urge to read all of your bad reviews in one sitting and mire in the self-hatred. In that, it can feel much, much more personal when other authors write critical reviews. Because… why? We all know that the option is just to DNF, say nothing, and move onto a book we like better. What was it you hated so much about my book that you had to put it on Goodreads?

(I do want to say that I think there is also a world of difference between critical reviews that flag important content warnings for other readers, or are criticizing a book or author for tackling subject matter that was not theirs to tackle, a la American Dirt, and an everyday, run-of-the-mill, “I did not like this,” “this part of the book did not work for me,” “the author could have done this,” etc.)

So, yes. tl;dr you absolutely risk alienating people and experiencing some kind of professional fallout by writing critical reviews of their work as a fellow professional in the field, especially if you are negatively reviewing folks in the genre you write in. This industry is small. You never know who is friends with who. You never know if you’re going to end up on a panel with someone, or with their best friend, after having written that bad review that you thought was innocuous but got secretly passed around their entire group chat and now they consider you their nemesis.

The fallout could be small and inconsequential. Alternately, it could be big, unexpected, and appear years down the road after you forgot you ever wrote that. Best to avoid it altogether.

IMO, the more important question here is: if writing reviews is not your actual job that you’re getting paid for, why is it so important to be writing negative reviews in the first place? Why are we finishing books we don’t like? DNF, baby! Let it go, let it go!

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