Planetlines

LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY, I was given the assignment to write an article projecting the probable outcome of a U.S. Presidential election that was still in the early primary stage. On the Republican side there were two contenders, which included our only appointed President Gerald Ford, and California Governor Ronald Reagan (which tells you how long ago and far away it was). On the Democratic side there were a half dozen or so contenders, many of whom were relative unknowns. Between all of those in both parties with their eye on the prize there was exactly one (Ford) at that early date who had a reliable birth time. For Reagan, several claimants were in circulation, all of which seemed to be phony, and most of the Democratic candidates were too unknown to have drawn much interest from astrological data hunters.

Given both the number of candidates and the lack of data, I decided to focus on outer-planet aspects to the candidates’ natal and progressed suns. Years later, I can’t remember for sure to what degree I was following my own intuition and observation, but in recently reviewing some articles on the subject of electoral predictions, I’ve decided that in my emphasis on the two suns, I was likely following trails of predictive bread crumbs laid down by astrologers Donald Bradley and Everett Blackman, even though my conclusions were a bit different than theirs. For example, Bradley, writing in American Astrology 1964 under the name of Garth Allen, wrote a forecast centering on the Republican convention that year in San Francisco which laid out a remarkable pattern of connections between transiting Pluto and the progressed suns of that year’s candidates. Bradley’s observation:

The convention was indeed, as Bradley noted, a shake-up and showdown, with Goldwater’s backers booing Rockefeller and otherwise behaving in raucous fashion as he tried to speak. Goldwater himself, whose ardent conservative views had led him to be identified by both Democrats and “moderate” (i.e., liberal) Republicans as an extremist, defiantly highlighted his acceptance speech with the politically deadly admonition, “ . . . extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And . . . moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

In an election-prediction article published in the same magazine nine years later, Everett Blackman noted an interesting connection between transiting Saturn and the natal and progressed suns of candidates, and he also pointed to a connection of the same type involving vice presidents who succeeded to the presidency. Blackman summarized his conclusions thus:

In my own survey of the 1976 presidential election, I explored the transits to the natal and progressed suns of all involved, comparing them with past presidential contests. Then I kept an eye on what actually happened that year, and between Allen and Blackman’s suggestions and my own observations, I came up with several rules of thumb:

That third rule seemed less certain than the others in regard to success and failure as such, though transits involving Neptune do seem to indicate definite problems in getting traction, for the reasons mentioned.

Fans of gender neutrality will note that I have used masculine pronouns throughout, which in this case is as it should be, since no woman then or since has been a serious contender for the top office, or in fact even made it into the “also ran” position, as the lone contender against the eventual winner. Because of that, the entire range of comparisons at this point is of man against man, at least at the presidential level, so it’s not at all safe to say any of what’s right (and, as you’ll see, much of it needs to be changed). And, by the way, observations in the ensuing years have led me to believe that whatever truth there is to these ideas, they apply only weakly to lower-level contests, perhaps due to the overwhelming personal demands required in a presidential campaign. American presidential candidates have to start the grind years in advance, and then work through a grueling primary system before they’ll know whether or not they’re even going to get to vie for the big prize.

Between the Saturn and Pluto in the first rule of thumb above, it always seemed to me that while Saturn provided lots of staying power and focus, Pluto was the real indicator of success, perhaps because it helped a candidate frame issues in a way that struck a chord with the public. However, no matter what the situation with the transiting planets at the time of the election, the simple notion of transits to natal and progressed sun is a fallback that is useful when no birth times are available, but is a secondary consideration when one has reasonable data in hand.

During the recent 2004 contest for the Democratic nomination, I was reminded of my old transit rules when I began paying attention to the fracas around the time of the first real test of strength of the ten-candidate field, the Iowa caucuses, followed a week later by the New Hampshire primary. The result of those two back-to-back challenges was two clear victories for John Kerry, and dashed hopes for the front-runner anointed by the media and endorsed by many leading party figures, Howard Dean. A quick comparison of the two showed, interestingly enough, that Kerry was undergoing a transit of Pluto to his natal Sun, while Howard Dean was not.

However, at least as interesting as Kerry’s win was the second place showing in Iowa of total dark horse John Edwards of North Carolina. Having myself dismissed Edwards early on in the contest as too new to the rough-and-tumble of presidential politics to get much traction, I hadn’t even looked at his birth pattern. There were, after all, quite a few candidates in any case at that point, even if one omitted the obvious comic-relief candidates and wannabes. Not only Edwards’ decent showing, but also his obvious persistence made him worth a look. The result was quite striking, especially when Kerry and Edwards were compared , and it led me to do a more thorough study of transits to presidential candidates’ charts. The comparison chart here is set for EST noon on “Super Tuesday,” and shows only transiting Saturn and Pluto, along with some interesting points of contact between the natal patterns of the two men.

One would think just from looking at this particular setup that Pluto does in fact play a role in the campaigns of American presidential contenders. However, given Bradley’s observations on the 1964 Republican convention and the comparison here, it also seems likely that simply saying “Pluto equals winner” isn’t sufficient. So I decided to make a more thorough study of the issue. What I found was more than a bit surprising.