Skymates: Love, Sex and Evolutionary Astrology

I enjoyed this book. It was easy to read. Easy to understand and I learned a lot.

This astonishing book is a whole lot more than just a reprint of the Forrests' earlier classic. They discuss the astrology of relationships in so much depth and with such detail, and with such positive, affirming attitudes, that I know I'll refer to this book over and over again. The "cookbook" stuff alone is worth the cover price--what it means if your Venus squares your mate's Sun and all that--but most of all it's the spirit behind this work that is so precious, that committed love can truly work in this day and age, and that it can be improved.

I've always loved my copy of the Forrests' earlier version of Skymates, which has become kind of a collectors item since it went out of print years ago. I kept having to get it back from friends I'd loaned it to. I ordered the new one, not sure if it could be very different. But it's a major re-write with lots of new material. The best part for me are the huge "cookbook" sections where you can just look up what it means if your Venus conjuncts somebody else's Saturn and so forth. Their writing style is mostly simple and easy to understand, but their interpretations are the deepest and the most "real" I've ever seen anywhere. There's a long section about F Scott Fitgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald that actually made me cry, it was so beautiful. That part also shows how to put all the details and techniques the authors describe into a kind of "big picture," so you're left with more than a head full of unconnected ideas. They've got some past-life stuff in the book too - the soul-reasons behind certain issues a person might have in relationships. Everybody will have to make up their own mind about that, but it all rang really true for me. This is the synastry book I've been waiting for. I recommend it totally.

If Shakespeare's lovers had had this book, things might not have ended so badly..."Skymates" doesn't tell you that if you're a Cancer, you should never marry a Scorpio. The Forrests respect our freedom to choose our mates; they use astrology -- with humor, intelligence, and compassion -- to help us make the best of the relationships we have.Early in the book, Chapter Two offers a quick overview of the building blocks of astrolgy: signs, planets and houses -- this way, one doesn't have to be a certified professional astrologer to use "Skymates." The Forrests then cover in-depth the houses that make up the Arc of Intimacy and detail the significance of having planets in those houses. After that, they move into the synastry portion of the book, touching briefly but not boringly on the mathematics of calculating aspects, then what the various major aspects mean: conjunctions, oppositions, trines and squares. Configurations are covered in a sizeable "cookbook" section where couples can look up their charts: Your Mars is square your partner's Mars -- what does that mean? Look it up and find out!They put it all together using famous artistic pairings: Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend of The Who, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.Anyone interested in improving his or her own relationships should pick up a copy of this book.