In astrology, the four elements of fire, earth, air, and water make up the entire wheel. A lot of times, people will have a tendency towards certain elements, or they’ll have conjunctions of two planets at the beginning and ends of a set of signs that make an out of sign conjunction. This means that two planets are conjunct, despite being in incompatible signs.

Looking at the broader elements in a chart is a good way to get a quick read of it, using all our five senses. It tells us things like, what does this chart smell like? Look like? Feel like? Sound like? Taste like?

In this article, we’ll look at element combos and describe them through things that we can imagine using all five senses. Not everyone has a focus on just two elements. You can use this article to look at different parts of your chart and what feelings it creates in your cycle/chart.

You can look at your Sun-Moon combo or Sun-Rising combo. What is the combination that you feel and the combination that you bring into the world. You can look at your Venus-Mar combo: what is the combination that you’re willing to receive? Look at your Mercury-Jupiter combo. What is the combination that activates you into either making up your mind or changing it?

Fire + Earth

This combo is like a small furnace. It’s a protected fire, a fire that is maybe man made and housed within a small structure, whether that’s a small stone fireplace or a wooden scaffolding. It’s an intentional fire, a created fire, and a guarded fire.

Those with this combo are creative, but are structured and careful with that creativity. They may not share all their talents with the world but bring them out when they feel that it will give them some kind of tangible result.

The fireplace, or a fire pit, is also the thing that people gather around in times of need. It’s where we cook our food. It’s the protected warmth and brings joy and survival to the whole household. The fire and earth combo brings others towards themselves because they give off a warmth that you can feel when you huddle with them. In a household, they’re the person that bring everyone else together with their warm energy.

Just because this fire is useful doesn’t mean that it will not burn you. Fire and earth individual needs care and distance. If you’ve ever tended a fire, you know that you must feed and protect it for it to live. Fire and earth people have strong appetites and they can become quickly depressed when there’s too much negativity around them. When they are fed mentally, they can grow to terrifying heights.

The other use of a controlled fire is that of the purge. The witch hunts were mass burnings. When driven by a strong sense of ideology, fire and earth people can be extremely powerful and used by others. Because they are an purposeful creativity, it is worth asking by whose purpose they are operating.

Earth + Air

This sign combo is like looking at a mountain from afar. It is the horizon. There’s a lot of air and there’s a lot of earth. These are elements that are much more meaningful when appreciated from far away, unlike water and fire which can only be experienced from close up.

This combo has a lot of perspective. Think of a landscape painting and why we paint in that way. It is a scene that is about pondering big ideas. A landscape painting creates vantage, space, and time. There’s a lot of room to spare in this combo.

Earth and air people are not interested in laying out blame or bearing tight, personal grudges. They’re big and spacious. They’re much more interested in broad, historical trends. When they talk about the future, they’re not talking about tomorrow or even five years from now, but what kinds of time traveling leaps the entirety of humanity will go through based on technological advances.

If you look at a mountain from a distance, you can feel secure in terms of understanding how it is built. The lay of the land gives a sense of permanence even as the winds whip past. Earth and air people give a sense of bigness because you feel that you trust they’ll be where they say they’ll be, despite all their faraway pondering.

In actuality, air does move earth but it does so through persistent motion, not spontaneous thought. Earth and air people are like the wind patterns on a stone. They have a pattern, and they’re busy figuring out the patterns of the large world that we live inside of.

Air + Water

Air and water together is rain, atmosphere, and condensation. This is an ephemeral combo, because rain always dries and atmosphere always pours and condensation is always wiped away. It’s a necessary combo, because it is how fluid things move in our ecosystem.

One of the things that drive this combo is change, especially social change. Air and water is aware of the circular nature of change and is comfortable with constant shifting, unaware of why not everyone else is. This combo is also aware of the way things tend to come back. They’re aware that history is tomorrow.

Rain creates a kind of magical time, because it’s something that happened before and will happen again. We all have memories around the rain, about the time we were caught in it or huddled under an awning with our mom as a kid. Rain makes a memory potent. When something happens and it rains, we know that we will remember it.

Air and water people remember things because they know how to fuse memory with a touch of magic. They’re a storm, which is never constant, but always a work in progress. Raining on a parade makes people remember the power of the natural, and laugh at each other getting wet. It changes the colors and makes everything a little less banal.

The other thing about atmosphere is that is gives life. Rather, it protects life and creates the environment that life needs to grow. Air and water gives the encouragement needed for life to happen and it doesn’t do so by creating any kind of structure or casing, but through the creation of constant change and cycling.

Water + Fire

This is a fizzy combo, with a lot of steam involved. It’s a reactionary combo and a fluid one. Both water and fire are super fluid mediums. It’s also a personal combo, since water and fire are experiential mediums. Fire and water is not a scene. It’s a feeling.

Heat up a pot of water and hear it crackle and fizz on the stove. Leave it too long and it’ll blow over. Can you imagine what rain feels like on an active volcano? If you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Our bodies are 70% water and our spirits fire. Fire and water is the stuff of animation, not of corporeality but of movement. Fire and water combos are ready to be alive, in a personal and self centered way, because what can center the universe besides the self?

This is a combo of instant reaction, of gut feeling, of always moving and always decision making. It’s a combo of always burning yourself out because water drowns fire and fire evaporates water. Fire and water people are never still. They don’t do something to maintain it. They do it to get the thing done so that it is gone and over with, so that something new can start. They’re constantly inprovising.

This is the volatile combo, because the change described by fire and water is not cyclical change nor developmental change. Instead, it’s reactionary change. It’s the dream of the apolcalypse. Fire and water, fire and ice, is the end of the world. It’s divine will ordering a grand, big flood to clean out the world.

Fire and water people are here to end and begin things. There is something very pointed about this combo, so they have a bit of tunnel vision at times. In all instances, they’re not here to flesh out a prospect nor appreciate a return. They’re here to cut out the bullshit and take the core values with them to the next step of the journey.

Fire + Air

This sign combination is wildfire, encouraged. Wildfire is an agent of confusion. If you’ve ever prepared for an exit strategy in case of fire, you know that it’s super important to know where the doors are because fire creates panic and confusion. You stop knowing where you are and how to get out.

This is an abstract combination, an ideological rampage. It is the witch hunt, death camps, and the incited revolution. It’s mass fervor and rage. It’s the power of a great, big horde of people all getting to describe something the same way, with the same slogans and words, and going out to do something about their sense of frustration.

Fire is frustration. Air is communication. You can’t have revolution unless you feel the same frustration, and you can’t have revolution unless you understand you see things the same way. Fire and air combos have both things going for them. They’re able to translate spirit and words into movement.

Once a wildfire gets going, there’s no way to stop it until it runs out of resources to burn. The spirit described by fire and air is not one that encourages the growing of life. Instead, it’s the conversation of animated life matter into raw energy. What’s leftover is ash and smoke.

We burn things to bring them into the spirit world. We speak with the spirit world to find purpose. Revolution gives us a purpose but the drive to revolt doesn’t give us structures for feeding ourselves, for taking care of our children, and for living our lives. Fire and air is the prospect of death. It’s the destroyer principle. The drive to revolution is not one of creating government or civil life but one of tearing down what can be no longer.

Earth + Water

This is the life principle. It’s the developing/ment principle. It’s rain being soaked by the roots of trees to produce bits of sweetness in the world’s palette. Earth and water is growing life. It needs a lot of time and space to work.

Earth and water is concerned with, not only how we get today’s breakfast, but with tomorrow’s dinner and the daunting prospect of sustaining life. It is concerned with childcare, which is the thing that our revolutions never want to think about sustaining. It is concerned with care. It is domestic labor, never finished, always expected, and always ignored.

After the wildfire is burned out, after the revolution, full of insightful words, is over and done with, we still have the matter of sustaining life to life through. If the question revolution asks is of how we don’t want to life, then it’s aftermath is about the ways we do want to live. This is a perfectly unanswerable, unutopian question. Life is a lifelong process and we don’t have all answers today.

If earth and water people move slow, it’s because they’re working on their life’s work. They don’t have to get it done today or tomorrow because a life’s work isn’t done for a lifetime, at least.

Women have always been left out of heady topics such as revolution and nationalism. Queers and people of color are anti-nationalist simply by existing. Earth and water people are just here and that act doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be just.