‘So synastry is a waste of time, uncle ?’ ‘In the way it is done, for the reasons for which it is done, most certainly. To use synastry to answer the question of whether two people will fall for each other or not is to misuse it. But there are also many technical reasons for it not working. One of these is the failure to consider temperament. There are any number of things that will strike a spark of attraction between two people - your own dear aunt even found one or two of them in me, once upon a time. But if we want to know how likely those two people are to hold together once those attractive sparks have faded, we must begin our enquiry with their temperaments.’ ‘Birds of a feather, then, uncle ?’ ‘So you might think. But answer me this: suppose a very hot dry person, a choleric type, gets involved with another choleric type. What will they do ?’ ‘Fight !’ ‘Of course ! That’s That’s what choleric choleric types do best. This can be useful useful so long as you can get them organised to go and fight somebody somebody else, but as soon as they’ve won won the war, war, what will they do next next ? What do soldier-boys do when they’re left alone in barracks ?’ ‘Fight !’ I repeated. ‘They brawl, brawl, yes. Or to try to balance out all that heat, heat, they go to a pub and ingest a great deal deal of cold moist stuff. Which, of course, only fuels the heat. It may not be obvious, but there is nonetheless a close relationship between liquids like the ocean, or wine, and fire. Those liquids may look cold and moist, but they have fire within.’ within.’ I was beginning beginning to think about moving moving the brandy bottle out of his reach. reach. ‘These liquids, the watery stuff: for us they are phlegm, the cold/moist, which is why our hot/dry soldier boy will reach for this to try to achieve an inner balance. But phlegm is derived from the Greek word for flame. So although it is water - or wine: much the same thing really - for us it derives from fire. Fire creates phlegm.’ I must have looked at least as baffled as I felt. He had totally lost me. ‘Think about it,’ he explained. ‘What happens if you eat too much chilli ? You suddenly produce a great deal of phlegm, to balance it out. What happens if you burn your finger? You get a little white bump full of phlegm. Or think back to the creation of the four elements, how it is the heat of the Divine shining upon the cold/dry of earth that calls forth moisture.’ _‘OK, uncle: so they consume this cold/moist stuff, but because of the fire it only makes them fight more.’ ‘That’s right. So if a choleric type hooks up with another choleric type, there will be trouble. Fine so long as they can make common cause against someone else, but take that away and they will fight each other.
‘What happens when a sanguine type gets together with another sanguine?’ ‘Too much talking ?’ ‘Yes! “Who’s going to phone for a take-away?” “I don’t know. Let’s talk about it for another six hours first.” By which time they’ll have both starved. ‘Or if you put two cold/dry, melancholic types together, what happens ?’ I had no answer. ‘Exactly. Not much! They bore each other to death. He’s been sitting at one end of the table for four years; she’s been sitting at the other end for four years, and they haven’t exchanged a word. Occasionally a breeze enters the house and blows some of the dust off them both.’ ‘And if you have two phlegmatic types together?’ ‘There’s not enough wine in all the world! A wild flood of desire, sinking into lethargy. So with all four types, matching with their own doesn’t hold much promise.’ ‘You talk about balance, uncle. They can match with their opposite type: that will create a perfect balance.’ ‘So it might seem. And that’s a good suggestion, my boy: you’re clearly getting the point here. But it’s not how it works in practice. A melancholic type could hook up with a sanguine type. The melancholic’s cold and dry would be balanced out by the sanguine’s hot and moist to produce a beautiful union, covering all four points: hot, cold, moist, and dry. But imagine: there’s our melancholic farmer, out in his field, knee-deep in manure, staring into the sunset with a blissful contemplative grin on his face, happy as Larry. Suddenly along comes a perfumed little scribe from the town hall, with his Blackberry in one hand and the book of rules in the other, wanting to add up every grain of wheat in the field, divide by the number of pigs, then take away the number he first thought of. What will happen? They look at each other with incomprehension. The farmer thinks, “Why does this madman want to add up my grains of wheat and divide by the number of pigs?” The scribe thinks, “Why is that madman standing in a big pile of manure ?” Total incomprehension.’ ‘OK, so being the same doesn’t work; being different doesn’t work: how about half and half?’ ‘Yes. I am of course talking basic principles here: no one is entirely choleric or entirely melancholic. We all contain something of all four types, else we should not be human. But the more strongly we conform to the nature of one type, the more we will find these problems. For a lasting bond, it makes better sense, in principle, for a cold/dry person to unite with someone who’s either cold/moist or hot/dry. This gives them one element in common - enough to give them some understanding - and one element different, so they
don’t replicate each other. Do remember, my boy, replicating each other is not what a relationship is about, tempting though it may seem at times. ’I looked at him, then at my aunt. No, replicating each other was definitely not what their relationship was about. ‘Let me tell you a story,’ he continued. ‘This illustrates the power of the drive we have within us to achieve balance. You have perhaps heard of William Reich. He was a big name when I was young. He was born on a farm in Austria. I know nothing about his father’s birthchart, but from the accounts of Reich’s youth, his father was obviously extremely choleric.’ I interrupted: ‘Shouldn’t he have been melancholic, being a farmer?’ ‘Perhaps he should, but he was not. Of course, people don’t always follow the career paths that fit with their types. The world might be a happier place if they did. He ruled his farm with a rod of iron; the people who worked there lived in terror of him. ‘One day, when Reich was quite young, he found his mother in bed with one of the farm-hands. He thought about this for a couple of weeks, then decided to tell Dad. This was not a wise decision. Dad picked up a gun and went after the farm-hand, while his mother swallowed poison and died. The father was devastated. It was as if he was suddenly confronted by the consequences of his own nature: “Look what this choleric nature of mine has done! This woman I love, my wife, has destroyed herself because of this!” So he decided to kill himself. ‘Now, he’s got the gun. That would seem to offer a straightforward method of killing himself. But that would have been killing himself in a choleric kind of way. That was no good: that wouldn’t satisfy the drive for balance at all. So what did he do, in remorse for the consequences of his hot/dry nature? It was the middle of winter. He went and stood up to his waist in a freezing pond. He stayed there for hours, hoping to catch tuberculosis. Eventually, he did fall ill, but at first not fatally. It took him three years to die of the cold/moist disease which he had deliberately contracted in this desperate attempt to balance out his hot/dry nature. This is a remarkable illustration of how deep-seated this drive is within us.’ ‘Do you think being a farmer exacerbated the problems he had with choler?’ ‘Likely so. Finding a suitable outlet for the temperament is a regular issue in consultations. It’s a particular problem for choleric types, because they find it most difficult to integrate into modern society. The choleric is the warrior, but it is no longer socially acceptable to go pillage the next village every time you want to work off a bit of choler. In principle, pillaging is to be encouraged: it keeps the choleric types happy
and prevents them making a daily nuisance of themselves. It’s just, of course, that we’d all rather it was someone else who got pillaged. ‘Mr Virgil has some wise words on raising and dealing with the different temperaments. Have you read his Georgics ?’ ‘It’s all about farming techniques isn’t it? No, thank you!’ ‘Oh, what you are missing? Why ever should one of the most sophisticated of poets, writing for a wealthy urban elite, write a textbook on farming ? How many Georgics are there?’ ‘Four, I think.’ ‘Isn’t that a clue for you? What is at the heart of these wonderful poems but a meditation on temperament. There is much to be learned there.’ A brief review of the four types ‘I think you’re getting the idea here, my boy. But let’s recap, briefly. The central point is that the cholerics want to act; the sanguines to think; the melancholics to have and hold; the phlegmatics to feel. ‘What William Lilly says about the sanguine temperament is that they are cheerful, liberal and openhearted._ If you believe that, you’ll believe anything. The sanguine types do get an unnaturally good press. Why ?’ ‘Because they write most of it?’ ‘Of course! It’s the scribes who write the books. If the phlegmatics ever took over their job, we’d be reading about what sterling fellows they are. At its best, yes, the sanguine type does take on the fine, Jupitarian quality of humanity that we read about in Lilly. Being a decent person, behaving as a human being should behave. But because the sanguine type is concentrated in the mind, it can be utterly divorced from all human feeling. I’m sure if you were recruiting for staff for the vivisection laboratory, you’d be getting far more than your fair share of sanguines among the applicants. And there can be little more inhuman in its operation than certain levels of bureaucracy. ‘The important thing with the sanguine type is not whether you’re good natured or not; it’s whether you approaching the world through the mind - regardless of whether that mind is in working order. ‘Lilly describes the cholerics as angry, quarrelsome, ambitious, seditious and changing their opinions. Generally troublemakers. Why are they changing their opinions?’ ‘I don’t know uncle. Because they are eager to act ?’
‘Yes: it is the product of their drive for action. If you are choleric, you can’t stand being stationary: you’ve got to do something all the time. The warriors may conquer the country, but they don’t make good administrators once it’s conquered. All they want to do is go off and conquer somebody else - cause some more trouble. ‘Melancholics, Lilly says, are slow in resolution. Remember that most famous of melancholics, Hamlet. Very slow in resolution. They’re fraudulent, Lilly says. Why?’ ‘Something to do with having and holding?’ ‘Yes, because they value money so much. If you value money more than you value someone else’s human feeling, you may well defraud them. Not, of course, that every melancholic is a fraud, any more than every choleric is a hooligan. They’re secretive and fearful, according to Lilly. Why?’ ‘Oh, I know! If you’re desperate to have and hold, you’re always worried that someone might take what you’ve got.’ ‘Right! Then the phlegmatic types, he says, are cowards and uxorious. They’re dull fellows and sluggards in performing any business. Their principle “I want to feel”. But this is not necessarily “I want to feel good”. If there isn’t a good feeling going, fine, we’ll settle for a bad feeling - so long as we get to feel something. So the phlegmatic can be a drama queen, because they want feeling about all else. They’re lost if there isn’t either physical or emotional sensation going on.’ I nodded, in sign of understanding.
