Abstract
The author shows that in materials with orbital degeneracy, the crystallographic and magnetic structures are strongly connected: the exchange interactions depend on the occupied orbitals, which are related to the crystallographic distortions. In the case of triply degenerate states, they point out the importance of the spin-orbit coupling. The magnetic structure of the perovskite-like compound CaCu3Ti4O12 can be interpreted if both superexchange and spin-orbit interactions are taken into account.