Compatibility – whether in love and marriage, family ties, friendship, professional associates – is a major area of study for Vedic Astrology. Relying solely on instincts and intuition to evaluate relationships works well for the person blessed with highly developed instincts and intuition, but for most of us finding and keeping harmonious connections with others is a life-long challenge. Using the time-tested techniques of Vedic Astrology, the skilled practitioner of this ancient science can provide useful guidance for making relationship decisions.

Counseling for relationships begins with an evaluation of the individual birth chart. The astrological analysis has to first answer the question “what is the relationship potential of this chart?” The connections between each of the many astrological factors of your personal chart create overlapping patterns that combine to produce an intricate profile of complex habitual behaviors typical of our complicated psyches. This birth analysis gives a list of characteristics that have to be taken into account when checking for compatibility potential.

For instance: does this person have self-confidence or not? A dominating personality or a submissive one? An adventurer, or a homebody? Is this the chart of someone who sticks it out in relationship or someone who gives up easily? Is he/ she idealistic in partnership or a pragmatist? Is marriage really the priority or is career more important? Is he/ she an independent operator, or expecting a lot of support? Sexually conventional, or something else? These are just a few of the basic questions that need to be answered by the astrologer when evaluating a single chart for characteristics relevant to partnership.

Although the birth chart is a static picture of the potentials we are born with, our relationship with those potentials is not static. It is through applying the various predictive formulas of Vedic Astrology that we can find out when partnership potentials are going to be activated, and whether in a positive or negative way. The astrologer is especially looking for timing that will activate the 7th house of a chart. For instance, Jupiter, the planet of opportunity, transiting the sign of your 7th brings feelings of expansion, optimism, and opportunity to the field of partnership. Nor is the question of ‘when?’ limited to the timing mechanisms of our individual karma. In other words, even if one person is not strongly disposed towards partnership at this particular time, that can be changed if the second person’s potential is being powerfully activated. Then we have a case of one person’s karma overwhelming the others’.

This ‘inter-chart’ activation extends into all areas of chart comparison. How each person’s chart ‘turns on’ potentials in the others’ chart becomes the basis for a lot of the useful information that Vedic Astrology compatibility analysis has to offer. The most direct way to do this is to take the positions of the planets from one person’s chart and insert them in the other person’s chart and see what we get. Some examples: if your Moon is isolated in your own chart you feel the need for nurturance from others. When someone comes along whose Moon is in the same sign as your ascendant, then that person will be experienced by you as sympathetic and nurturing. Someone with Mars in the same position as your own Venus will ‘turn on’ the passion potential of your Venus, but if it is their Saturn that joins with your Venus the effect will be to limit and control Venus’ love nature. On the other hand, if you need a more mature attitude towards love, Saturn’s influence can help.

Another item to be taken into consideration when two people get together is to look into the future and check to see if the two life paths will continue being compatible.By using Vedic Astrology’s Planetary Period System, the astrologer can tell if, for example, someone is soon to be taking a right angle turn in their life. Is the person you are getting involved with going to morph into someone totally different due to certain other karmas ripening in their life? Partners have a powerful influence on each other. Are you ‘hitching your star’ to someone who is going up in their life, or down? Predictive techniques can tell us which way a person’s life is turning, and how long it will last.

Inter-chart influences that lead to harmony in a relationship are wonderful, but they are not really the question. What we really need to know is where are the difficulties, and whether the harmonious interactions are strong enough to compensate for the problems. With Vedic Astrology’s compatibility analysis, we have a short-cut way to understand our own and our partner’s problems, and how we can help each other to grow and thrive in this all-important area of our lives.