Given that astrology is the tool that claims the ability to determine the very qualities of time itself, perhaps you might think it would be a relatively simple matter to look ahead via available technologies (astrology software) and predict the outcome on Tuesday, November 3 for the Super Bowl of global politics: the American presidential election.
You’d be wrong of course. Hence this long read of of an article!
First, the reigning scientific paradigm says it’s not possible at all, as it views one moment in time as indistinguishable in any measurable or meaningful sense from any other moment in time. From this perspective, astrology is a pseudoscience and its adherents are either charlatans or have been deluded into thinking astrology works because of confirmation bias. To scientists, astrologers like everyone else have a 50% chance of getting it right.
Secondly, religious adherents might say the aspiring astrologer could only ‘predict’ the future with the Devil’s help, in which case such prophecies would be harmful. Rather than depending on God as they should, say some authorities, astrology enthusiasts are probably operating from a power complex.
Thirdly, there is little consensus in the astrological community regarding best practices and techniques. Really the discipline is better understood as art than science as every student of astrology learns the craft in a highly individualized way. It’s lifelong process like any craft, but how can any astrologer be sure their “take” is going to be correct?
Fourthly, even with 50% odds, you can be terribly, terribly wrong. Keep reading to learn about what happened last time!
But for this Canadian astrologer with 30 years of practicing professionally, who has been fascinated by American politics forever, the temptation to review the personal horoscopes for the candidates and start speculating what is to unfold in November is perhaps just too great to resist…
The Perils of Prediction
Maybe I should think twice.
Recently the New York Times (a self-admitted skeptical Virgo of a publication), ran a piece about covid-19 putting an end to astrology, as many astrologers did not see it coming. Certainly, as the NY Times points out, many astrologers inconveniently neglected to mention it in their Sun Sign predictions for the year, which are often written far in advance of their publishing dates.
However, in the astrological community, serious work with the craft, which is done more for love than money and whose results are for concrete human benefit, has always been sharply distinguished from Sun Sign astrology, which is done often more for money than love, and whose results are for promotion and entertainment.
Everybody wants to know how astrology is going to affect them personally and the Sun Sign, being a simple single factor to calculate, is the easiest peg on which to hang an otherwise vast, complex, maligned, misunderstood, and largely marginalized discipline. The way our current paradigm views astrology, the Sun Sign form of it has provided a means for the craft to maintain its relevance and survive.
Sun Sign astrology is often how people first get interested in the field, but it is to real astrology what advertising jingles are to your real music.
What the New York Times failed to mention is that many astrologers have been talking about this year long before we arrived in 2020: the inordinate number of heavy conjunctions (Saturn-Pluto, Jupiter-Pluto, Mars-Jupiter, Mars-Saturn, Mars-Pluto, and Jupiter-Saturn) gave us pause. Some astrologers did suggest pandemic as a possible coinciding circumstance with some of it.
However, when it comes to political prognostication, a more embarrassing consensus by serious astrologers came when they considered the 2016 presidential election and went far beyond facile Sun Sign comparisons to craft their analyses. Like experts in many fields, most astrologers expected Hillary Clinton to win too. We’ll look at why below.
Reviewing 2016
The astrologer’s primary tool is the personal horoscope: a detailed diagram representing the positions of the ‘stars’ as they appear from a fixed place and time. While their dates and places of birth are well documented, the first problem astrologers had to face in 2016 was that both candidates have two published times of birth.
Time of birth is critical because it determines the angles of the chart: the exact degrees of the signs that were rising, culminating, setting and anti-culminating at first breath. On average, the rate of change is approximately a degree for every 4 minutes. The angles are the fastest moving factors and from them many astrologers calculate from their positions the astrology symbol set known as the 12 Houses.
If you don’t have the right data, how can you draw the right conclusions? When astrologers aren’t certain of a birth time, there are methods for determining it by working backwards from a list of events. It’s a kind of corollary derived from the old astrology maxim that if you want to see into the future, you must understand the past…
How did the skies of previous important life events interact with the sky on your astrological subject’s birthday? Is it possible to draw a conclusion about that person’s time of birth based on these interactions? Astrologers call the process for determining a person’s time of birth based on the horoscope’s interaction with life events rectification.
Rectifying Trump
The fact that we have any time at all for when a person was “born,” which for an astrologer, is the moment the baby takes their first breath, is really something of an unrecognized wonder. With everything that is going on when is a woman is in the process of giving birth, few include someone bedside with a correct stopwatch capturing the exact moment the astrologer is most interested in, which is typically the first sounding of the baby’s first cry.
Maternity nurses have reported that the recording of the birth time is typically done after the fact with the rest of the paperwork and is estimated imprecisely. And that’s even when you have a birth certificate time, which astrologers consider by the Rodden Rating System to be the highest score: an “accurate accurate” or “AA” time.
Probably everyone, even with people with “good” birth times, should have their charts properly rectified. To do it right requires two things: a dated list of significant events symbolically related to the angles and a laborious process involving many calculations using a variety of techniques.
Good news! This is this is the 21st Century and computers exist to manage vast amounts of mind-numbing mathematics.
Enter AIR Rectification – a stand-alone dedicated rectification program developed by full-time veteran professional astrologer extraordinaire Alphee Lavoie.
It provides a means to capture birth and event data and make comparisons using a variety of techniques. After I bought the software, I’ve been using it for my rectifications ever since and it significantly speeds up the process. It does not rectify the chart automatically for you; it merely provides the capability to perform many more calculations with a mouse click to evaluate a range of times.
As is well documented, Donald J. Trump was born on June 14, 1946 in Jamaica Hospital Queens (Queens County), New York. His birth certificate states 10:54 a.m., but it is not the only time in circulation. Before his birth certificate was made public, the available time for Trump was 9:51 a.m., an A rating supposedly based on his mother’s memory.
While most astrologers accept and use the AA time, some astrologers have done their own rectification of his chart. Alphee calculated 10:11 a.m., which moves the ascendant back by about 8°.
Below is Trump’s horoscope according to his AA time. It’s not much different than the more familiar 10:54 a.m. horoscope.
Rectifying Clinton
At least all Trump’s times give him the same rising sign (Leo)!
Hillary Rodham Clinton was born on October 26, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois, but there are two birth times available in the astrological community: 8:02 a.m., source unknown and 8:00 p.m., from herself according to the Ingraham biography. These times, differing by almost 12 hours, give markedly different horoscopes: for the morning birth time, the 23rd degree of Scorpio rises whereas for the evening birth time, the 30th – and last – degree of Gemini rises.
The consensus in the astrological community is the morning time better fits Clinton, as the Scorpio Ascendant is quite martial and known to attract distrust, no matter how righteous those born with it may try to be. A light-weight Gemini rising personality she does not seem to have! But those who know her it’s said know her to be a very caring person, despite her outer tough exterior. This is congruent with having a water sign rising rather than an air sign rising, and in particular, Scorpio.
However this is a qualitative argument. We should be able to rectify to validate this conclusion.
Important Events in Clinton’s Life
The angles in a horoscope consist of:
- The Ascendant (aka rising sign, but the astrologer seeks the exact degree)
- Its opposing point, the Descendant
- The MC (aka the mid heaven or the point between the Ascendant and Descendant culminating above the horizon;
- Its opposing point, the IC (aka the mid heaven culminating below the horizon)
The angles symbolize the major concerns in life:
- The Ascendant represents birth and the physical self.
- The Descendant represents the other (whether partnerships or the public).
- The MC represents the public self and its professional attainments.
- The IC represents and the private self, and we most see it in terms of its connection to home and family.
With the Descendant, the Ascendant form the horizon and thus define the across, or relational and imminent axis of a horoscope.
With the MC, the IC form the top and bottom, or parental and transcendental axis in a horoscope.
We want publicly recorded events that fall within this context of symbols to determine when Clinton was born.
The publicly recorded events from Hillary Clinton’s life that I believe fit this criteria include:
- 1975-10-11: Marries Bill Clinton
- 1978-11-07: Becomes First Lady-Elect of Arkansas
- 1980-11-04: Loses First Lady of Arkansas Role
- 1982-11-02: Regains First Lady of Arkansas Role
- 1993-01-20: Becomes First Lady of USA (11:59 a.m.)
- 1993-04-07: Father passes
- 1998-08-03: Bill’s Extramarital Affair Becomes Known
- 2000-02-06: Announces Bid for US Senate
- 2000-05-16: Nominated Democratic Senatorial Candidate
- 2000-11-07: Elected Senator from NY
- 2006-11-06: Re-elected Senator
- 2007-01-20: Launches 2008 Presidential Campaign
- 2007-06-07: Suspends 2008 Presidential Campaign
- 2008-12-01: Chosen for Secretary of State
- 2009-01-21: Sworn in as Secretary of State
- 2009-06-17: Broke Right Elbow
- 2009-06-18: Underwent Right Elbow Surgery
- 2011-11-01: Mother’s passing
- 2013-02-01: Resigned as Secretary of State
- 2015-06-13: Announces 2016 Presidential Bid
- 2016-07-26: Nominated Democratic Presidential Candidate
- 2016-11-08: Loses Presidential Election
- 2020-04-28: Endorses Joe Biden for President
- 2020-01-02: Chosen for Chancellor at Queen’s University Belfast
It is important to point out the caveats facing the astrologer undertaking rectification:
When it comes to objective events, more the astrologer examines them, the more subjective they become. This is to say that objective events do not always register in a person’s psyche when they occur; people often have a subjective timing all their own. Obviously, it would be very difficult if not impossible to determine dates for this kind of subjective event as the person’s processing and assimilation of the meaning and feelings of the event happen very occasionally before, or more frequently, if the event and person’s registry of it don’t coincide, after the event itself…
Another issue is that a predictive factor has many different levels of expression when in range (orb): cosmic intent, experienced emotional content, and observable concrete event to name only the most important three. The last, which is often what is most pursued when using astrology to attempt prediction of the future, isn’t always reflected directly by a convenient predictive factor.
Nevertheless, astrologers like all professions must operate within the limitations of their craft. To evaluate Clinton’s two birth times, I used only those forecasting factors I’ve found most reliable measuring only those interactions most inclined to manifest in the form of observable events.
Below are the graphs for Hillary’s birth times compared to the compiled events list I specified above.
It’s visually apparent that the 8:02 a.m. birth time angles show much more activity, in particular with the Ascendant. So well does it provide peaks for the individual degrees, either the source of the unknown time either just happens to be the correct one or more likely, an unknown astrologer rectified it.
Either way, I’m comfortable with the 8:02 a.m. time as pictured below.
Decision 2016
With the two candidates’ times established via rectification, we can now compare predictive factors for the month leading up to the election that mostly everyone got so wrong.
Clinton’s most important predictive factors from October 1 to November 15, 2016 using 8:02 a.m. as her birth time were as follows:
- 8 Oct: Progressed Libra Moon conjoins progressed Neptune in the 11th House
- 13 Oct: Progressed Capricorn Sun conjoins progressed Mercury in the 2nd House
- 28 Oct: Sagittarius Saturn in the 1st House trines Leo Mars in the 9th House
- 1 Nov: Libra Jupiter conjoins Neptune in the 11th House
- 5 Nov: Sagittarius Saturn in the 1st House trines Leo Pluto in the 9th House
- 5 Nov: Progressed Libra Moon in the 11th House sextiles Mars
- 14 Nov: Progressed Scorpio MC in the 1st House semi-square natal Libra Neptune in the 11th House
It’s easy to see from even a superficial glance at this list why astrologers believed Clinton would coast to victory. The aspects are conjunctions (new beginnings) and the confluent sextile and two trines. The 9th, 11th and 2nd Houses are emphasized suggesting a theme of Clinton having something to say of genuine worth for the people. The planet Saturn is the biggest star as it makes that easy contact with Clinton’s ruler Mars, suggesting taking on increased responsibility and frankly, the support of the majority of the establishment. Surely this heralds victory? It certainly must have felt like it!
But what about all the Neptune that’s running through it like a red thread? That’s the heady heights of ecstasy when she becomes the first female president or… well, Neptune does have a reputation for victimization and disappointment. But with Saturn, the principle of consensus reality on her side, she should win solidly nonetheless.
What she got was the best 2nd place finish possible in that she actually got more votes. It’s an inconvenient truth for the current administration that more Americans wanted Clinton for their nation’s highest office than Trump.
Trump’s most important predictive factors using the 10:54 a.m. time, October 1st to November 14th, 2016:
- 4 Oct: Aries Uranus in the 9th House sextiles Gemini Sun in the 10th House
- 6 Oct: Libra Jupiter conjoins Neptune in the 2nd House
- 7 Oct: Progressed Cancer Moon in the 11th House squares progressed Libra Ascendant in the 3rd House
- 20 Oct: Libra Jupiter in the 2nd House squares Cancer Mercury in the 11th House
- 26 Oct: Libra Jupiter in the 2nd House sextiles natal Leo Pluto in the 12th House
From a superficial glance, surely conjunctions, trines and sextiles would beat conjunctions, squares, and sextiles, given that the square is an aspect of resistance.
But trines can be lazy and squares can be energizing. Further, as a colleague pointed out, if it’s a beauty contest between Jupiter and Saturn, Jupiter wins every time because the principle is more attractive to the human eye. Who can resist Zeus?
As the world saw, even though objectively, Saturn may receive the most votes cast, by the higher (Jupiter) constitutional law defining what state constituencies are worth via the Electoral College, Jupiter can make enough of his dice rolls to squeak through to victory. The reasons why (Russian interference, protest vote against or dislike of Clinton who it was assumed was going to win, hard feelings over Senator Bernie Sanders loss, misogyny, economic dissatisfaction among non-College educated whites…) will be discussed and debated for decades to come.
The possibility of a surprise (Uranus!) Trump victory should have been foreseen if the important Uranus sextile to Trump’s Sun had been better tracked. A good part of forecasting is looking to the natal horoscope. Trump was born with his Sun conjoin Uranus: he openly embraces the uranian principles of generating turbulence and chaos to get his way. He derives his identity from shocking and behaving apparently randomly.
Uranus is all about deviation and mutation, combined with Jupiter, it most certainly can be pulling victory out of the blue from the jaws of defeat.
While the transiting Uranus sextile Sun started in the spring coinciding with Trump’s winning the Republican nomination, later in November, Uranus would trine Trump’s Moon, then finally finishing its forward march over the same points starting in the latter third of January 2021, just in time for inauguration…
A uranian individual (Sun-Uranus) with predictive factors involving Uranus (like Uranus-Sun and Uranus-Moon duh!) is more capable of surprising everyone at such a time than any other. Astrologers somehow forgot this fundamental understanding.
Hindsight is always 20/20, but someone should have seen it, except it wasn’t the prevailing wisdom and these days, most astrologers in America have sympathies that lie with the Democratic party. Surely Trump can’t win… can he?
Turns out he could!
Astrologers often say about predicting Uranus that whatever it is, it will be surprise, welcome or otherwise. Turns out astrologers are, just like any other profession, capable of group think. And Uranus, that mad genius of the planetary pantheon, apparently can still shock them as much as anyone else!
The point about Uranus is driven home if we look events for the same period using the Alphee’s rectified time are as follows:
- 5 Oct: Aries Uranus in the 9th House sextiles Gemini Sun in the 11th House
- 6 Oct: Libra Jupiter conjoins Neptune in the 2nd House
- 7 Oct: progressed Cancer MC in the 11th House inconjuncts Sagittarius Moon in the 5th House
- 20 Oct: Libra Jupiter in the 2nd House squares natal Cancer Mercury in the 11th House
- 20 Oct: progressed Libra Ascendant trines natal Gemini Uranus in the 10th House
- 26 Oct: transiting Jupiter in Libra in the 2nd House sextiles natal Pluto in Leo in the 12th House
- 10 Nov: transiting Aries Uranus in the 9th House trines natal Leo Ascendant (1st House Cusp)
The dates may differ but the two Trump lists contain many of the same items, and what stands out for me with Alphee’s rectified chart is the double exchange between Trump’s progressed Ascendant trining his natal Uranus on October 20 with transiting Uranus trine his natal Ascendant three weeks later November 10. Such a close coinciding of the same principles (over Election Day) through different predictive methods is always more than a double herald. What’s written in the sky has been bolded and underlined!
Uranus with the Ascendant quite literally suggests the ability to manifest the lightning, surprisingly, shockingly, and frequently blindingly for good or ill. Which is precisely as the world knows what did happen. Many just did not want to believe it possible and some of them happened to be astrologers. I among them!
Rectifying Biden
It is well documented that Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., known today as Joe Biden, was born on 20th of November in 1942. The only time of birth I am aware of circulating in the community is 8:30 a.m. It has an A rating and reportedly came from him via someone’s memory.
Is it correct? The need is to subject it to the same rectification process.
Important Events in Biden’s Life
The publicly recorded events from Joe Biden’s life that I believe fit the appropriate criteria include:
- 1966-08-27: Marries Neilia Hunter
- 1972-12-18: 1st Wife (and Daughter) Killed
- 1973-01-05: Sworn into Senatorial Office
- 1974-06-01: Politically Identifies as a Moderate
- 1977-06-17: Marries Jill Tracy Jacobs
- 1978-11-07: Re-elected Senator 1978
- 1984-11-06: Re-elected Senator 1984
- 1987-06-09: Announces Candidacy for 1988 Election
- 1987-09-23: Drops Out of 1988 Race
- 1988-03-15: 1st Brain Surgery
- 1988-05-02: 2nd Brain Surgery
- 1990-11-06: Re-elected Senator 1990
- 1996-11-05: Re-elected Senator 1996
- 2002-11-05: Re-elected Senator 2002
- 2008-08-27: Nominated VP
- 2008-11-04: Elected VP (and re-elected Senator)
- 2010-01-08: Mother’s Death
- 2019-04-25: Announced Presidential Candidacy
- 2020-02-29: Wins South Carolina Primary
- 2020-04-08: Becomes the Presumptive Democratic Nominee
This should provide enough data points to test the remembered 8:30 a.m. time. Below is the graph for it.
The Ascendant peak isn’t a peak at all (although it’s on the way to one), and the MC peak is only the 8th highest.
According to my analysis, a more plausible time is perhaps 10:29 a.m.
Still it’s not an overwhelming number of hits in the chart as a whole and I’ve only selected it because it’s the best fit for the peaks that are available. When I corresponded with Alphee he told me that there weren’t enough events to rectify Biden. So we’ll use both in the section ahead.
Decision 2020
So at last we come to Biden versus Trump.
Trump’s predictive factors for October 1-November 2020 using the 10:54 a.m. time are:
- 17 Oct: Progressed MC in the 11th House enters Leo
- 20 Oct: Progressed Virgo Moon in the 1st House squares natal Gemini Uranus in the 10th House
- 21 Oct: Capricorn Saturn in the 5th House opposes Cancer Venus in the 11th House
- 27 Oct: Progressed Virgo Moon in the 1st House semi-squares progressed Leo Saturn in the 12th House
- 27 Oct: Taurus Uranus in the 9th House sextiles Cancer Mercury in the 11th House
And for his 10:11 a.m. time:
- 20 Oct: Capricorn Saturn in the 6th House opposes Cancer Venus in the 12th House
- 28 Oct: Taurus Uranus in the 9th House sextiles Cancer Mercury in the 11th House
- 31 Oct: Progressed Virgo Moon in the 2nd House squares natal Gemini Uranus in the 10th House
- 6 Nov: Progressed Virgo Moon in the 2nd House semi-squares progressed Leo Saturn in the 12th House
Trump has one predictive factor to perhaps hang victory on: his old friend transiting Uranus is combined mildly favorably (by 60° or a sextile) with Mercury. The keyword for this aspect is “opportunity,” but whatever its promise, you have to exert yourself and prioritize the good thing out there for you to reap the benefits of it.
How good could this aspect be for Trump? Or maybe the better question is whether he could use it to capture lightning in a bottle again and win his second term? To explore answers to these questions, we need to look at Trump’s natal Mercury placement more closely.
Trump’s Mercury is placed approximately 8° of Cancer. Transiting Uranus is just entered the degree and become exact in early June for its first pass (the retrograde and final direct pass occur in October 2020 as discussed above and March of 2021). The timing is not the same as last time, nor is the strength for Mercury rules the less significant 2nd and 11th Houses, whereas last time Uranus touched the chart ruler (Sun rules Leo and thus the all important 1st House) and the Ascendant (by both transit and progression).
It’s also not a happy Mercury. It has no dignity and falls on a difficult degree (the Sun/Saturn midpoint). This is the non-expert who behaves as if he is one about every subject and secretly harbours feelings of great insecurity. For us to get some sense of how much good this transit will do for Trump, we’ll have to watch what happens to him over the next few weeks.
Besides this time round it’s not Hillary with Saturn aspects – it’s him. Saturn opposing your Venus has a reputation of accompanying everything you don’t want. He has the Venus-Saturn conjunction in his birth chart, so the opposition will activate the root prediction (and probably repeated experience) of feeling blocked, cut-off and unappreciated. Trump notoriously has a low tolerance for frustration and with this aspect there will be plenty to be frustrated about as his Venus-Saturn conjunction is also on his Sun-Mars midpoint. He loves the feeling of moving ahead and this is a time of being unable to move forward.
I expect he’ll be saying a lot of very bizarre and outrageous things in October if it looks convincingly that he’ll lose in November.
Biden’s predictive factors, 8:30 a.m. AA time, for the same range:
- 1 Oct: Progressed Pisces Moon conjoins progressed Venus in the 3rd House
- 15 Oct: Progressed Aquarius Sun in the 3rd House sesquiquadrates Libra Neptune in the 10th House
- 23 Oct: Capricorn Jupiter in the 2nd House trines Virgo MC (10th House Cusp)
- 25 Oct: Progressed Pisces Moon in the 3rd House inconjuncts Leo Pluto in the 8th House
- 4 Nov: Capricorn Jupiter in the 2nd House sextiles Mercury in the 12th House
- 8 Nov: Progressed Pisces Moon in the 3rd House sextiles progressed Capricorn Mars in the 2nd House
Biden’s for the 10:29 a.m. time:
- 9 Oct: Progressed Pisces Moon in the 2nd House sextiles progressed Capricorn Mars in the 1st House
- 5 Nov: Capricorn Jupiter in the 1st House sextiles Scorpio Mercury in the 11th House
- 8 Nov: Capricorn Jupiter in the 1st House squares Virgo MC (10th House Cusp)
If Biden’s 8:30 a.m. time is correct, victory is clear: Jupiter, the planet of winning contests, is making very favourable connections (120° or trines) to both his career point (the MC) and the planetary ruler of that point (Mercury). What’s more, at the beginning of October, by secondary progression, his progressed Moon-Venus conjunction is occurring in Pisces, traditionally a Jupiter-ruled sign. The outpouring of love for the former VP could be considerable!
OTOH, if Biden’s rectified time is correct, the path to victory isn’t as strong (although what’s there is mostly good). The Jupiter square says beware of inflation and over-reach, although to some degree, it would be inevitable with assuming the role of the once and perhaps future leader of the free world.
Conclusion
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me to call it, I’d say yes. The stars do indeed seem to favour Biden and if his birth time as reported is correct, his victory has the potential to be a blow-out.