Creative and Business Partnerships

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the ‘other’ relationships that astrologers work with in addition to personal and romantic connections, but I saved one of the most common and important forms of partnership for today.

Creative and business partnerships can often be treated almost the same way as personal relationships. In fact the lines can be quite blurry, as there is often a very strong personal component involved. All of the techniques that we would use in any other relationship consultation can be applied, from basic synastry (comparing birth charts) to relocating the composite chart (a blend of the two charts, moved to the locale of the business).

There are some differences, however. For example, in a creative partnership we might emphasize the house of creativity and play (the 5th house), and when we look at Venus we might be thinking more of aesthetics than of relationships per se. Still, a creative partnership will also have to reckon by Venus’ ideas about how to relate.

One planet that is particularly important in business partnerships is Saturn, Actually, Saturn is important in all long-term relationships, because it provides the ‘glue’ that holds people together. In business partnerships, however, it is doubly important because Saturn is the planet the symbolizes business.

The cycle of Saturn is very typically active in relationships of all kinds, and especially in business partnerships. Just as the ‘seven year itch’ is a challenge point in personal relationships, it is also significant for business and creative partners. Multiples of seven are also make it or break it points for all types of relationships.

Consider, for example, The Beatles. As a group in their canonical John, Paul, George, and Ringo form, they were together for seven years - a quarter of a Saturn cycle. John and Paul’s creative partnership lasted for just about a half of a Saturn cycle (although they fell just short of the full 14 - 15 years).

Seven years, a quarter of a Saturn cycle, the time it takes Saturn to go 90 degrees or three signs in the zodiac, is the time at which things move into the past. It is often at these points that the original inspiration and agreements for a business begin to fade, as partners’ interests start to diverge.

Although it isn’t really something we deal with much in our joint practice, you can even see the same stress points at the level of corporations - for example in mergers and acquisitions. In fact, the same strategies that work for assessing the relationship between two people also work for two corporations.

As with any relationship, understanding the interpersonal dynamics and the perspective of each partner can be very helpful in making the most of creative and business partnerships.

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