The 12 Signs Can Be Divided into Four Groups
The 12 signs are divided into the four qualities of fire, earth, air, and water. In astrology, these qualities are called elements. Three signs go into one element.
Fire is Aries, Leo, and Sagittarius. Earth is Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn. Air is Gemini, Libra, and Aquarius. Water is Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. This division is for grasping the broad tendency before looking at the differences between individual signs. Even with the same sun sign, people proceed in different ways, but looking at the element shows where the foundation of that difference lies.
Fire and Earth — The Difference Between Moving Things and Fixing Them in Place
Fire signs are read in connection with starting things and moving them forward. Rather than spending a long time watching the situation, a form where you start moving first and think afterwards tends to fit. This becomes a strength in situations where speed of judgment is required, but it can also happen that things spread while the procedures after starting do not catch up.
Earth signs are read in connection with giving things form and continuing them. The central form is to check real conditions such as cost, time, and procedures before moving. Even if it looks as though it takes time to start, once something has taken form, it continues for a long time. If you think of fire as the role that moves things and earth as the role that fixes them in place, the difference between the two becomes easier to understand.
These two are not opposing things. If you divide them by order — placing the judgment to start quickly with a fire way of proceeding, and fixing the conditions for continuing in place with an earth way of proceeding — both come alive. If the same person tries to bear both starting and fixing in place at the same time in the same scene, one or the other becomes vague. Deciding, for each step, which way of proceeding to center is the key point when using a fire and earth reading in work.
Air and Water — The Difference Between Conveying and Receiving
Air signs are read in connection with words, information, and exchanges with people. There is a tendency to be good at organizing a story and conveying it, and at looking at the opinions of several positions side by side. In meetings and coordination situations, this quality tends to come to the surface. However, a story coming together and something actually being decided are different things. In an air reading, you need to think through to who decides in the end.
Water signs are read in connection with receiving feelings and the atmosphere of a place. This is a tendency to pick up the parts that cannot be seen from numbers and procedures alone, and the things the other person is finding hard to say. In the workplace, it works as the ability to read how the front line is receiving a decision, separately from the decision itself on the surface. If receiving becomes the center, the order in which you put forward your own opinion can move to the back, so it is important to have a separate occasion for putting what you have received into words and returning it.
Knowing Your Own Element Shows Your Habits of Judgment
Knowing which element your own sun sign falls into gives you material for thinking about your habits of judgment. For example, in a situation where you have to decide, do you think first after moving, or do you decide after conditions are in place? In a meeting, do you often take the role of expanding the discussion, or the role of caring about how the front line will receive things? Such tendencies are to be seen not as whether a personality is good or bad, but as a bias in the way of proceeding.
In your forties and fifties, there are fewer situations where work turns by your own way of proceeding alone. You more often work with people who have a different element's way of proceeding, such as subordinates and business partners. At such times, the reason the other person's way of proceeding feels slow, or too fast, can sometimes be explained by the difference in element. Rather than seeing the difference as a fault, the practical use of this division is to use it as material for thinking about in what order to decide so that both ways of proceeding can work.
In addition, an element is not something to use for pinning the other person down. Even with the same element, the way of proceeding changes depending on experience and position. It is strictly material for placing, at the beginning of a discussion, the premise that there may be a difference in way of proceeding. With just that premise, you will less often receive a difference in how to decide as a problem of the other person's attitude.
Points to Note When Looking at Combinations
Elements are easier to understand when looked at in combination than when looked at alone. Signs of the same element have a similar way of proceeding, so discussion moves quickly, but on the other hand the points they overlook also tend to overlap. Signs of different elements are more likely to be at odds at first, but if roles are divided, they take a form where they complement each other.
To give one example from work, when deciding a new person in charge, if you decide centered on a fire way of proceeding, the start will be fast, but you need to be sure to include, even afterwards, a step where an earth way of proceeding checks cost and procedures. Conversely, if you decide by earth alone, the conditions will be fixed, but if there is no one in the role of deciding when to start, the examination will drag on. An element reading is to be used not for which is correct, but for seeing which way of proceeding is lacking in the current situation. Placing a person who makes up for that lack, or consciously including that step yourself. In this form, a reading turns into a plan of action.
Layering the Elements onto Monthly Readings
In this site's monthly horoscope, for each sun sign, the movements of the stars in that month are written as the basis. If you layer the tendency of your own element onto that reading, the way you receive the same text changes. In a month where an expansive reading appears, fire people are more likely to start moving, and earth people enter from checking conditions. The direction of the reading is the same for both, but the placing of the first step is different.
An element is not something that decides detailed judgments. It is a broad division for checking the foundation of your own way of proceeding and organizing the difference from the other person. If you read monthly movements after knowing that foundation, it becomes easier to decide the order of judgments.
When thinking about how to combine with the other person, too, the same foundation can be used. A division of roles such as putting out a proposal with your own element's way of proceeding, and entrusting checking to a person who has a different element's way of proceeding, is one example. Rather than making the other person's way of proceeding match your own, treat it as a difference in order. If a difference can be handled as a problem of procedures, in meetings and coordination settings you will be able to organize the reason discussion does not mesh as arrangements, not as feelings.