Inventory 1 and inventory 2
When you fall in love, you bring with you learned ways of expressing affection, arguing, spending money, and sharing time. Some are so obvious to you that you only notice them when you meet someone who does things differently. Knowing that history is a first step toward telling what you want to live apart from what you have taken for granted.
To explore that meeting I use two sets of information, which in Germán Rosas’s system are called “inventories.” We can picture them as two programs running at the same time: they gather different elements of our life and take part in the way we relate.
Inventory 1 covers the country and the setting we were born into, family models, genetic inheritance, values, and lifestyle. Inventory 2 gathers the characteristics this system interprets from the date, place, and time of birth, as represented in the birth chart.
An image can help us understand how the two relate: inventory 2 would be the seed, and inventory 1 the soil it is planted in. To understand how that seed grows, we also need to look at the ground in which it develops.
When two people meet, their inventories come into relation. From that interaction something shared emerges that sometimes seems to have a life of its own: the bond of the couple. We could say that when A and B come together, C appears. A and B are the people; C is the relationship they build between them.
To get to know that relationship arising between the two, we need to look at what each person brings and what happens when they meet. The same difference can awaken curiosity, enjoyment, or discomfort depending on the place they give it in their shared life. That is why we come back to the relationship after going through each of these views.
Inventory 1
We are born and grow up in a family and a sociocultural setting with particular characteristics. Our parents’ lives, their dreams and frustrations, childhood stories, movies, the heroes we admire, and the stereotypes around us gradually shape the standards by which we judge a relationship.
Many of those standards are so familiar to us that we do not notice they are there. It seems natural to us that money is handled a certain way, that affection is expressed in one manner, or that conflicts are resolved by following a familiar procedure. Meeting another person makes those habits visible, especially when their history has taught them something different.
In this inventory we can observe compatibility, complementarity, and incompatibility. We can also explore childhood wounds and the patterns that repeat in our relationships.
Inventory 2
The birth chart organizes the reading of inventory 2. Germán Rosas’s system distinguishes six levels. Each one opens a different question about the person and about the meeting with their partner.
Password: a first key to knowing the person
With the term password, the system refers to the position of the Sun, the Moon, and Mercury in the birth chart. Each represents a particular channel of expression.
The Sun is related to the way we mark out and defend our territory. The Moon, to our way of living time, imagining, and looking at the world through fantasy. Mercury, to communication and learning: the gestures, the tone of voice, and the words with which we approach others.
The profiles of the Sun, the Moon, and Mercury develop this first key. There you can see how those ways of acting, imagining, and communicating meet.
Mobility
This level raises questions about our need for movement: what pace feels comfortable to us? How do we prefer to act? What are the activities and pastimes we enjoy like?
In a couple, recognizing those rhythms helps us understand why one person wants to go out and do things while the other needs to stay home or keep a calmer pace. Mobility has its own guide.
Motivations
Here we look at what drives us to act and where we direct our interests. Do we focus mainly on our personal affairs, on family, on friendships and community, or on questions that go beyond our immediate surroundings and connect us with the meaning of life?
When planning something together, those priorities become visible: each person wants to give time to what matters to them. Knowing the motivations helps us recognize them and look for spaces to meet without demanding that all interests be the same.
Position in the group
This level describes how we tend to place ourselves in relation to other people. We may lean toward leading, toward holding a firm position about our wishes and decisions, or toward adapting more easily to other people’s proposals.
In a couple, these tendencies show up when organizing shared life: who proposes, how decisions are made, and what happens when preferences differ. Position in the group looks closely at each person’s part in those agreements.
Emotional world
The system establishes correspondences between the planetary points, the glands, and the emotions. I use those correspondences as part of its interpretive framework to talk about communication, the expression of affection, courage, and anger.
From this perspective, certain behaviors that surprise us can be explored through the position of the planets in the signs. Among them are the need to always be right, the repetition of bonds in which we feel abandoned or deceived, and expressions of anger whose origin we do not immediately recognize.
In my approach, childhood history and the tendencies described by the chart are considered together. The experiences of inventory 1 can be the ground in which certain characteristics of inventory 2 take on a particular expression, including the experience of emotional or physical distress.
This reading expresses the system’s perspective; astrological correspondences do not in themselves constitute a clinical explanation of that distress.
I use “planetary points” as a working name for the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. The term lets me group them in the astrological discussion without confusing that name with an astronomical classification. In astrology the Sun and the Moon are also called “luminaries.”
I will also refer to the North Node. Within this system’s karmic interpretation, its presence in synastry is associated with encounters understood as a legacy from other lives, bringing matters that are favorable or difficult for the relationship.
To measure mobility, motivations, and position in the group, the Part of Fortune and the Ascendant are also considered, together with the points listed above. The calculation uses thirteen positions and gives some of them a double value, so that the total is seventeen points.
Two different things are therefore counted: the positions observed and the value assigned to them. The selection and its weighting are explained in the topic of mobility.
Areas where we can achieve things together
The sixth level corresponds to the astrological houses and the areas of life they represent. It allows us to ask in which areas a couple can move forward and in which they meet obstacles. Here we look at them in relation to the projects they choose to share in their romantic bond.
A full analysis requires a detailed study of the charts. Here I offer an approach to the interactions of the Sun and the Ascendant with the houses, and I return to the topic when discussing shared projects, without developing the full evaluation of this level.