Secrets of the Combined Astrology: The Full 144 Combinations of the Chinese & Western Zodiac Signs, by Zakariya Adeel
Dodona Books, 9781782794684, 760 pp., 2016
If you follow your horoscope, you may have wondered how the eastern tradition of Chinese astrology affects the Western understanding of your star sign, or vice versa. Secrets of the Combined Astrology by Zakariya Adeel seeks to provide answers to these questions.
First and foremost, this is not a book that you should start your study with if you’re are hoping to learn about astrology in general. This book is firmly for people who have at least an intermediate understanding of western astrology, as this text doesn’t provide any general information about those signs.
Although Secrets of the Combined Astrology is large, only the first 20 pages of it contain any introduction or exercises. The bulk of this text is an examination of the combined astrology signs. The introduction serves only to give the briefest of information about what the text is meant for, which is greater reading into a subject’s personality using their signs as a guide.
The introduction is simply meant to explain how the signs from these two traditions relate to each other and briefly give some history of how the two traditions have been used together in the past. This is just dressing and glossed over quickly.
This introduction also includes some “quick charts” to help readers identify their own signs, specifically those from the Eastern system. There are also small charts that match up the eastern signs with the western counterparts, for example, the Boar is closest to the Scorpio in nature. These charts also share the elemental alignments of the combined signs. That being said, they’re a bit basic and not formatted incredibly well, so aside from a quick glance they probably won’t serve much use for people who do choose to use this book.
There is an exercise included which teaches you how to make a “Mind Map Pie Chart.” This was a very practical exercise that can help reveal how strongly a person aligns with the different elements of their two signs. It is clearly explained and includes a small illustration. The illustration isn’t very well done, it seems like something that was thrown together quickly in Microsoft Word, but it provides a simple reference for what your chart will look like and the written instructions are very clear.
After this section, the next nearly 700 pages of this book are just information about the personalities of each of the combined signs. There are 144 of them in total and the book spends three to four pages on each detailing how they may present.
Each of these sections are set up the same way. As I said before, there is very little information regarding the western signs. Instead, the book is divided by the eastern signs, which are all given a few pages of introduction. After that, each chapter is broken down into 12 sections, one for each combination of animal and western sign.
Each subsection is set up the same way. First, there is a small chart that goes over some fast facts such as the Chinese name, the elemental alignments, numerology, etc. This is followed by a quote from a famous individual who shares that alignment and then, finally, the description. The sections close with a brief list sharing what other combinations that sign works well with for various relationships, and a list of famous people who also share that combination.
The descriptions are well written and thought out. They go into depth about the characteristics of people born under the different combinations. I find the lists of famous people fairly useless, but they do illustrate the different ways each sign may present.
Although I wasn’t greatly impressed by the charts or the introduction of this book, I found the descriptions within each section to be well written out and easy to follow. The text does include many pop culture references, which may be a problem with seeing this as evergreen content. That being said, that style could help some readers to digest the information.
Upon reading it, I didn’t feel that it is the type of book that one would study, as in devote time to reading every passage, taking notes, etc. It is more of the type of text one would pick up to look something up from time to time, if a question arose.
Secrets of the Combined Astrology is a strong reference book, and it contains very detailed and well-written information on working with both eastern and western astrology, combined. It is far from a beginner’s book but it may help those more experienced in astrology explore a new understanding of the signs.
