Astrology, Prediction and Comment

At school I always got Fs in physics.  Literally. And I always got As in chemistry.  But I do remember a physics teacher telling us that light could be both a single wave and many particles. Don’t ask me to explain or justify this view.  Though it does underline the point that a single phenomenon can be seen in two different ways.

Astrology can certainly be seen in two ways – the wave model and the box model.  When I first started studying astrology, in the 1980s, the wave model was very much in vogue.  The angular separation between planets was important, and one could see horoscopes in terms of harmonics and midpoints.  However, the box model was always there in the background.  Planets work differently in different signs, and the move from one sign to another makes a big difference.

If you’re new to astrology, then you should know that the dates given for sign changes are approximate, and they require an exact time.  For example, the Sun moved from Aries to Taurus at 9.27 pm GMT on April 19 2017, at 3.12 am GMT on April 20 2018 and at 8.55 am GMT on April 20 2019.  These times are given to the minute, but actually the switch-over happened at a precise time.  Before this precise time you are an Aries, after you are a Taurus.

A sign change isn’t just about signs.  A bank of essential dignities change.  The Sun in the last degree of Aries is in the sign of Mars, the exaltation of itself, the triplicity of itself or Jupiter, the term of Saturn and the face of Venus.  The moment it moves into Taurus, it is in the sign of Venus, the exaltation of the Moon, the triplicity of the Moon or Venus, the term of Venus and the face of Mercury.  Furthermore, it moves from being in a Fire sign to an Earth sign, from a masculine sign to a feminine one.  There are no fuzzy borders.  The network of rulerships have changed in an instant.

I suppose it is rather like travelling on the borderlands of Washington and Idaho.  Imagine you are in Washington State, travelling North East up East Appleway Avenue (see the map at the top of this article).  Just before you cross the Idaho state line, the Washington police pull you over.  They notice that you have an ounce of marijuana on your back seat, in a sealed bag.  They check your drivers license, see that you’re over 21 and not under the influence, and wave you on your way.  You cross the state line, and you’re stopped again, this time by the Idaho police.  They find the marijuana, you get arrested, you go to court, and you’re convicted of misdemeanour drug possession, with a $500 fine plus costs – and if it is your second offence you’ve a good chance of going to prison.  This underlines the fact that when you drive across the border between Washington and Idaho everything changes.  Marijuana is no longer legal for recreational use, and you find yourself criminalized.  In terms of drug laws, there is no such thing as being on the cusp, with your possession of marijuana slowly becoming more criminal as you glide across the state line.  You’re either in Washington or Idaho, you’re either an Aries or a Taurus.

We can also look at the problem mathematically.  Let’s imagine the Sun moving through Aries getting closer and close to zero degrees Taurus.  We’ll give the Sun a number.  When it is at 5 degrees Aries it is 25 degrees short of Taurus, so we’ll give it the number minus 25.  At 15 degrees Aries it is -15, at 25 Aries -5, at 29 Aries -1, at 29 30 Aries -0.5, at 29 45 Aries -.25, and at 0 Taurus it is zero.  When the Sun moves into Taurus, and the numbers become positive.  At 5 Taurus it is +5, at 15 Taurus + 15.

Now what we’ll do is take the reciprocal of this number – in other words dividing 1 by this number.  So the reciprocal of 5 is 1/5 which is 0.2.  We can draw a graph of this:

At zero degrees Taurus the graph goes crazy.  This is because you are finding the reciprocal of increasingly small numbers – which turn into large numbers, when they are divided into 1.  At zero degress Taurus, you are dividing 1 by zero, which is mathematically impossible – you have an undefined solution to the problem.  And this is what happens at the supposed cusp – you are effectively dividing by zero.  This means that there is no rational cusp, you are either on one side of zero degrees Taurus or the other.

If you are using signs in your astrology, then by definition you are accepting a box model of astrology.  You are accepting that you are in one state or another.  You cannot be in two places at one time, you cannot merge two sets of meanings.  Of course if you don’t like the box model, there are other forms of astrology available.  You can use harmonic and midpoint astrology. Or you can play around with the Gauquelin system.  However, I do believe that if you drop the signs from your astrology you are missing a great deal.

We now know that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.  Some astrologers correctly predicted the result, others got it wrong.  Making a prediction was a thankless task.  If you got it right, sceptics will say there was always a 50:50 chance, if you got it wrong that’s further evidence that astrology is bullshit.  Nonetheless, in May of this year I made a prediction, based on a horary chart. In other words, I asked whether Trump would win, and set up a chart based on the time of the question.

Some would argue that it is absurd to use horary to predict largescale global events.  Hundreds, even thousands, of astrologers could ask horary questions, and they would all give different answers.  This is the case with any form of divination.  I am sure people used dozens of predictive systems to try to predict who would win the election: tarot, the I Ching, geomancy, dreams, throwing dice, angel cards, crystal energy, asking their dead aunt, etcetera

In my defence, I take horary astrology seriously.  I went through Olivia Barclay’s Qualified Horary Practitioner course, which got me up to speed in the Seventeenth Century methods of William Lilly.  This allowed me to evaluate a horary question, and come up with a likely answer.  But when I asked whether Trump would win the election, on April 15 2020, I got a chart that wasn’t clear either way.  Three weeks late I asked again, and got the following:

The chart is easy to interpret, requiring no real skill.  The Tenth House represents the President, and Cancer is the sign on the Tenth House cusp.  This means that Donald Trump is represented by the Moon in Scorpio, and the Moon is going to an opposition of the Sun.  Scorpio is the sign of the Moon’s fall, and the opposition represents defeat.  We get further confirmation when we notice that the Moon is six and a half degrees short of the Sun.  Using one degee for a month, this is roughly the time between the question and the election.

As the chart showed no ambiguity, I was 100% sure Trump was going to lose.  Indeed I wrote the following in my write-up: “I am calling the November presidential election for the Democrats, on the assumption that Donald Trump is on the ticket on November 3”.  But what if I was wrong?  I considered this possibility in the days leading up to the election, and I told myself that I would give up astrology and close down this website.  If I was wrong, given the strength of the signal, the entire basis for much of the astrology I practice would be broken.

Looking at other astrologers, I notice that a lot of them predicted that Trump would win.  There are a number of reasons why they got it wrong.  It may have been the shock of 2016, where most Western astrologers came out for Hillary.  Trump might have appeared to have an unbeatable mystique,  which one didn’t want to predict against.  Yet as the election campaing progressed, the polls started to move in Biden’s direction, and so predicting that Trump was going to win might have seemed the contrarian but canny thing to do.

As far as style is concerned, many astrologers predicting a Trump victory took an analytical approach.  They looked at lots of different charts, and gave the impression that they were weighing up the evidence.  This approach assumes that astrology is a rational exercise, but you can end up with so much information that you can’t see the wood for the trees.  After all, what you’re trying to do is make a judgement, which is based on both astrological signatures and personal intuition.  There comes a point where the more information you have, the less clearly you see the picture.

The situation is even worse if you claim you have an analytical system, based on specific charts.  Assuming such a system worked, then you would have a situation where winning candidates could be selected based on their personal horoscopes and the charts of when they made critical declarations.  Such a system overemphasizes the importance of the individual.  A political change is something going beyond the individual, and you can’t interfere with the process by choosing candidates with brilliants charts.  In the same way that many people travelling third class on the Titanic, or fighting in a war, died with wonderful things going on in their horoscopes.  Yes, the collective always trumps the personal.

With horary astrology, you cut to the chase.  It took me a bit of time to realize this, but the British General Election on April 9 1992 was a revelation.  Everyone thought that the Conservative government of John Major would be defeated, including me.  Yet astrologer Barbara Dunn, who I regard as being the absolute best horary astrologer, produced a chart showing that the Conservatives were going to win.  And of course the chart was right.  This demonstrated that you don’t need to worry about the horoscopes of politicians or the time that polls opened or closed.  Instead, you ask a question, set up a chart, and use your judgement.

That being said, I think one should have been able to predict that Trump was going to lose, without horary astrology.  One just had to stick to the main signatures.

Without considering any horoscopes, we can give consideration to the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. Every 20 years Jupiter and Saturn form a conjunction, and this conjunction represents the beginning of a new cycle.  When you have a presidential election close to a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction, you might expect to see a regime change, to usher in the new cycle.  In 1920  control of the White House passed from Demcrat to Republican, in 1960 from Republican to Democrat, in 1980 Democrat to Republican, in 2000 Democrat to Republican.  It was then reasonable to expect the heliocentric Jupiter-Saturn conjunction on November 2 2020, the day before the election, to herald a change in the White House. The geocentric conjunction, by the way, is on December 21 2020.

One aspect of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle starting in 2000 was its focus on reality TV, which I have mentioned in an earlier article.  The last 20 years have been dominated by reality TV, and a gameshow host becoming president of the United States right at the end of the cycle is the final, obscene horror.  It is then fitting that Trump loses office as the cycle closes.

As far as Trump’s horoscope is concerned, I have noticed that a lot of people have cast doubt on his 10.54 am birth time, and have used rectification to change it.  I don’t see any reason to rectify, and maybe astrologers, by changing his birth time, are making themselves open to predictive error.  It is not for nothing that the word rectify is sometimes changed to “wrecktify”.  A good way to wreck a chart.

Here is Donald’s chart, set for 10.54 am on June 14 1946, in Jamaica, New York:

I am confident that the Ascendant is Leo.  This means that the profected year ruler is Venus, by virtue of its rulership of the whole sign third house.  Trump’s Venus is not well placed.  It is above the horizon in a daytime chart.  And if we use whole sign houses, it is in the Twelfth. Furthermore, it is conjunct Saturn.  We might therefore expect the year starting on his 74th birthday on June 14 2020 to be difficult.  Then we find that in the run up to the election transiting Saturn, in late Capricorn, has been making a square aspect to his Venus.  We get the symbolism of the Venus-Saturn conjunction in his natal chart repearted in his transits.  And then, on the day of the election, Mercury  went stationary direct at around 25 57 Libra, right on the square with his natal Venus.  It was a final trigger. While I wouldn’t predict Trump’s lose just on the basis of the annual profection and transits to Venus, it is good evidence that something is going wrong in his life.

Another thing to consider is the soli-lunar signature.  The horary was asked on a Full Moon, with the Moon opposition the Sun.  Donald Trump was born on a Full Moon, his Gemini Sun being opposition his Sagittarius Moon.  On the day of the election the Moon was in Gemini, exactly opposite its natal position.  At the same time the North Node – a place where the paths of the Sun and the Moon intersect – was returning to the place it was when he was born.  Some astrologers regarded this as positive, because his North Node is conjunct the Sun in the Tenth House.  On its own the North Node return in the Tenth House probably is positive, but that’s the danger of analysis without synthesis.  You have to look at the big picture, including the Moon’s opposition to its own place on election day.  And perhaps you also need to have a moral perspective.  The Nodes are about Karma, about reaping the consequences of past actions.  And Donald Trump isn’t Nelson Mandela.

Going back to the horary, I was probably lucky.  My question about whether Trump was going to win was asked on a Full Moon, and it gave me a clear answer.  This meant that I could look at everything else with the knowledge that he was going to lose in November, assuming that he stood.  Not every horary is going to be so clear, and if I hadn’t  asked the question at the right time, my prediction of Trump’s loss might have had a margin of error.

We’ve known that Donald Trump will lost the 2020 presidential election since the early spring, so it could be argued that there is no point in analyzing the situation any further. However, on November 3 and 4 there is some interesting stuff going on.  For example, here is a chart set for November 4 2020, at 1 am in Washington DC.  It is the moment that the polls close in Hawaii, the most westerly US state:

Some might argue that I should take a different time, such as for the opening of polls, or that I should have moved the chart to Hawaii, but these details aren’t  important.  We’re trying to get a general picture.  The first thing that leaps at us is the Moon at 22 Gemini conjunct the North Node at 20 Gemini.  It is important because of Trump’s  chart:

As we can see, the Moon is exactly opposition his Natal Moon, at 21 Sagittarius, and conjunct his Sun, which is at 23 Gemini.  Furthermore, Trump has a North Node return – the Node returning to the place it was when he was born.  The North Node return is an indication of Karma manifesting.  Donald has to deal with the consequences of his actions, for better or for worse.  Though I should say that intrinsically there is nothing fortunate or unfortunate about the nodal return.

Also interesting is that on the  day of the election the planet Mercury goes stationary direct, at around 25 55 Libra.  Mercury is square Donald’s natal Venus, which in turn is ruler of his Midheaven.  There are clearly consequences for his leadership.

Another thing to note is the position of Jupiter and Saturn.  From a geocentric point of view they are five degrees apart, but heliocentrically they form an exact conjunction the day before the election, on November 2.  Symbolically this is a sign of a new era, when the rules and the culture will change.  It seems fitting that Donald will lose an election the day after the conjunction.

If you’re into the hypothetical planets of Uranian astrology, then one can’t help noticing that Jupiter at 21 31 Capricorn is exactly square Zeus at 21 31 Libra.  This represents a massive and violent liberation.  As Zeus often represents explosions and firearms, we perhaps have the image of half the American population letting off fireworks.  We might also see gun-toting militias trying to make their presence felt.  But I don’t want to exaggerate the issue.

There is also an midpoint configuration involving Mars, Uranus, and Admetos.  On election day Uranus at 8 32 Taurus is on the direct Mars-Admetos midpoint – Mars being at 15 52 Aries, Admetos at 2 09 Gemini.  Mars is the principle of action and aggression, while Admetos is about stagnation and decay.  We then have the image of sudden powerlessness.  Witte and Lefeldt, in their Rules for Planetary Pictures, described the configuration as “Sudden restriction in the field of work. Enemies made suddenly. To rip or tear something suddenly. Fragments and rags”. We can see this as a sudden transformation into utter powerlessness, the president of a powerful country turned into a ragged, lame duck.  The sudden enemies are obvious – rats leaving a sinking ship.

We now need to go back to Trump’s Moon.  On election night the Moon is opposition his natal Moon.  This means he has a demi-lunar return close to the time polls close.  We can then calculate the precise time that the transitting Moon is opposition the natal Moon, and draw up a chart – the demi-lunar return.  I like to set return charts to the place of birth, rather than the location of the client at the moment of the return.  This is the chart I get, set for Jamaica, New York:

The striking feature of this chart is the fact that Uranus is exactly on the Midheaven.  This indicates a dramatic and unexpected event.  Or a sudden change in someone’s position.  I think this is likely, given the fact that Uranus is on the Mars-Ademetos midpoint.  We also have a trigger.  Over the period of the election this midpoint is empowered by Uranus, but at the moment of Trump’s demi-lunar return the Midheaven hits it as well.  Suddenly Donald’s world become much smaller.  It’s no longer about global leadership, but about the trivialities of his daily existence – tax, debt and the treat of tedious lawsuits.

We then move to his solar arc directions – the technique where every planet in the horoscope is moved by approximately one degree a year.  On November 3 2020 Donald’s solar arc directed Mars is at 7 57 Scorpio.  If we convert this to the 45 degree dial, where 0 degrees Aries is the same as 15 Taurus is the same as 0 degrees Cancer, we get 37 57.  This is the relevant section of his natal 45 degree dial:

For a start we can see that solar arc directed Mars is exactly on his Sun.  To be precise, it is making a sesquiquadrate aspect.  Yet amazingly, it is also exactly on Donald’s natal Mars-Admetos midpoint, reminding us that natally he has the Sun exactly on this midpoint.  Witte and Lefeldt wrote of this configuration “The man who works with loss, who narrows, reduces his field of work”.  From a business perspective, we know that Trump has had a few bankrupticies, and because of past losses, he pays hardly any federal tax.  So saying that he works with loss seems very true.  The directed Mars, on November 3, creates a situation of anger and powerlessness, the man who is losing an election and can’t do anything about it.

Amy Comey Barrett is Donald Trump’s pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Supreme Court justice.  Barrett is a religious conservative, and progressives are worried that her appointment will move the court to the right, perhaps for a generation.  From a non-American perspective, these concerns seems absurd.  A judge is supposed to be impartial, and their political views should have nothing to do with their judgements.  Yet America is a Cancerian country, born on the fourth of July, and it’s therefore ridden with subjectivity.

As far as Barrett’s horoscope is concerned (see above), she was born on January 28 1972, making her an Aquarius.  Assuming that she is appointed, which at this stage seems certain, she will be the third Supreme Court justice with an Aquarius Sun – Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts are also Aquarians. She will  share her Cancer Moon with Brett Kavanaugh, meaning that both these justices will have the Sun in Aquaris and the Moon in Cancer.  It should also be noted that Justice Clarence Thomas has the Sun in Cancer and the Moon in Aquarius.

It is interesting that Donald Trump’s last two picks to the Court had the same Sun and Moon signs. In 2018 I posted about Brett Kavanaugh’s horoscope.  This is the chart:

I wrote the following about Kavanaugh’s horoscope: “The first thing to note about the chart is that there are three planets in Aquarius: the Sun, Mercury and Venus.  Aquarius is a sign that is widely misunderstood.  It is common to describe it as being ideallistic and future-oriented, and this is because some astrologers have erroneously associated it with the planet Uranus.  You also have the hype about the Age of Aquarius, that’s created an overly optimistic view.  The reality of Aquarius is that it’s ruled by the planet Saturn.  It’s about the positive aspects of limitation – creating structures to enshrine a rigid world-view.  Such structure may be useful, as in the case of Aquarian Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, or it can be downright evil, as was seen by Nazi Germany, an Aquarian organization which came into being on January 30 1933”.

There can be a superiority to Aquarius, and this reminds us that Aquarius’ opposite sign is Leo.  Leo represents the shadow, and Aquarius, through its claims of objectivity, is marking out how special it is.  But in the case of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coley Barrett there is another problem.  They have the Moon in Cancer.  Cancer is a completely different energy to Aquarius.  It is emotional and often traditional, looking to the past rather than the future.  Furthermore, it tends to be subjective, and finds it difficult to separate its thinking and feeling.  On a historical note, Roland Freisler, Nazi Germany’s top judge, who sent the Scholl siblings to the guillotine, had the Moon in Cancer in mutual reception to Jupiter in Taurus.

We therefore shouldn’t be fooled by the academic veneer that Kavanaugh and Amy Coley Barrett present.  Their Suns in Aquarius are weak, Aquarius being the sign of the Sun’s detriment.  And their Moons are in Cancer, the sign of its rulership.  In Kavanaugh’s case the Moon is doubly strong, because it is in mutural reception by exaltation with Jupiter in Taurus, as was the case with Roland Freisler.  The engine of Kavanaugh and Barrett’s personalties is the Moon in Cancer.  Utterly subjective, with their legal judgements being twisted by ideological prejudice.

The ideological bias can also be understood in terms of Jupiter.  Kavanaugh has a strong Jupiter, as I have already discussed, and so does Barrett – she has Jupiter in Sagittarius, the sign of its rulership.  Jupiter has two sides.  It is the great benefic, but it is also very sure that its vision of the world is correct.  Furthermore, Jupiter is the planet of religion.  William Lilly described the downside of Jupiter as “Hypocritically Religious, Tenacious, and stiffe in maintaining false Tenents in Religion…” (sic).  And given what we know of Barrett’s associations with a fringe religious group, one must doubt whether she will be able to adhere to the fundamental tenet of church-state separation, that one “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 20:21).

Amy Coley Barrett’s Jupiter is interesting for another reason.  It is poorly integrated with the personal planets in her horoscope, and its main aspect is a square with Pluto.  Its trine with Mars in Aries has a wide orb, and the quincunx with Saturn is a minor aspect.  Jupiter is the planet of religion, is the planet of God.  Barrett’s God is something that may not be properly integrated into her being.  Sometimes her God is there and sometimes He is not.  And sometimes Barrett is controlled, even possessed by her God, and other times she is an ordinary, secular human being.  In this light, we should remember that one of the activities of the religious group she has been associated with is speaking in tongues.  And if my analysis is correct, God, or more likely some disembodied psychological projection, could intervene in her judgements at any time. This means that she is probably not a suitable candidate to be a Supreme Court justice.