ASTROLOGICAL NOTES ON THE UPCOMING ELECTION

• Tim Lyons -Installment #1

In this series of pieces, we will look at elections - or, we might say, at how astrologers look at them or make predictions regarding them - and at the upcoming presidential election. In general, astrologers have a pretty good record at these predictions, but only when they use all the tools at their disposal and look carefully at their assumptions.

Admittedly, in the Kerry-Bush debacle, many of astrologers did neither, at least at first. Perhaps we succumbed to wish-fulfilling thinking, as the prospect of another four years of Bush-Cheney didn't look all that good to many of us. In any case, many astrologers, myself included at first, ignored some important factors and predicted that Kerry would win. Looking into why we did so and at the non-astrological factors that came into play in that election will help us to shed light on the coming election and how to evaluate the relevant astrological factors. We'll get to all that soon. First, though, let's look a bit at how astrologers evaluate elections.

One of the most often-used techniques for election-prediction involves the position of transiting Saturn in the candidates' horoscopes. Saturn transiting in the western hemisphere of the horoscope - the right hand side: moving upward from the 4^th house toward the 10^th - generally bodes well for the candidate; Saturn moving through the eastern hemisphere (down the right hand side of the horoscope) generally doesn't.

Why does this technique so often work, and what assumptions underlie it?

Saturn's movement through the western hemisphere of the horoscope (from the 4^th house to the 10^th) generally coincides with a person's movement toward maximum career success, particularly for a person ambitious for social advancement. I have found this pattern to operate in about 75% of the men and 25% of the women whose horoscopes I've dealt with. The others show another pattern: the one described by Erin Sullivan in her excellent Saturn in Transit. When we make election predictions based on the first pattern mentioned, we make some notable and overlapping assumptions: 1) that winning a presidential election qualifies as a positive career move, for Saturn moving toward the 10^th suggests a movement toward career success or position 2) that the candidate in question will show the first pattern mentioned above and not the second. 3) and that the horoscopes don't have other, perhaps more weighty, factors in effect. (We also assume that we have accurate birth-times for the candidates, for the house-arrangement of any horoscope depends on an accurate birth-time: the house-wheel moves at the rate of a degree every four minutes).

Let's take the first three assumptions one at a time.

1. Does winning a presidential election always qualify as a "positive career move" or as a movement toward success?
   
   If it doesn't, then we wouldn't predict a victory for a person with Saturn in the western hemisphere. But what does "success" mean? If a man attains to high office and then fails miserably, would we categorize his election as a success or as a positive career move? And if a person loses, should we always consider him worse off for it? Consider Al Gore. After his loss in the 2000 election, he went on to make important contributions that he would probably not have made if he had won and which seem much closer to his heart than did his effort to win the election.
   
   It seems, though, that most ambitious people do follow the mentioned pattern and so do achieve some degree of what the world calls "success" as Saturn moves through the western hemisphere, and especially as it moves toward the midheaven. Bill Clinton provides a case in point: he won the 1992 election with Saturn in his 5^th house and the 1996 election with Saturn having reached his descendant (the cusp between the 6^th and 7^th houses). By many standards (though not all, of course), he qualifies as a successful President. Bob Dole, his 1996 rival, had Saturn descending, having reached his 12^th house, suggesting that his vocational structure would dissolve or that he simply didn't have his heart in the drive for success.
   
   We might also note that the movement toward eminence suggested by Saturn's upward movement through the western hemisphere suggests efforts arising from something deep within a person, some inner dispensation driving the person to achieve self-chosen career goals. If the person acts as he does not because of inner drives but because of external compulsion or insistence (party officials, perhaps, pushing the person to run), then we might see less success during this period.
   
   So we can see this movement of Saturn as a positive sign during an election if the candidate follows his own inner voice toward a goal that he has chosen. The astrological technique contains, we might say, the assumption that candidates do this.
   
   

2. The second assumption has many connections with the first. If a candidate follows the second pattern described above (and we will know this only by tracing the astrological connections throughout his life), then he may well lose even if he has TR Saturn moving toward his or her midheaven. From what I can see, though, most people who follow this second pattern do not feel at home with external social pressure to achieve success. And we might suggest that "worldly success" (e.g. winning an election) does not qualify as a good career move for many who follow this second pattern. If a person loses an election as Saturn moves toward his or her midheaven, we might speculate either that the other candidate had stronger factors at work, or that the candidate-in-question follows the 2^nd pattern (and, perhaps, that winning the presidency would not qualify, for such a person, as a positive career move; see above).
   
   Notably, George W. Bush won the 2004 election with Saturn descending (east) and in the 12^th house, arguably the worst Saturn-position for a candidate. (Kerry, by contrast, had transiting Saturn in the 8^th house, in the western hemisphere.) We might then have categorized Bush's victory as a bad career move. Considering developments of his second term, developments that have led some historians to see his presidency as the most harmful in the history of the nation, we can see why we should seriously consider such an evaluation.
   
   

3. But what about those "other factors"? We'll look at those in the next installment as we review the 2004 election.