≡ Menu (About, Home, etc)

Predicting Trump’s defeat with astrology: pitfalls and pointers

CNN 2020 election projection.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:

Will Trump win in November?

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:

Trump horoscope

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.

{ 2 comments… add one }
  • Pavani November 9, 2020, 12:44 am

    RE: overemphasizing the importance of the individual in large-scale events. Thank you. Will bear your advice in mind. Since I am unlikely to be confident in my very occasional and non-traditional practice of horary, I will place greater emphasis on the collective auspices indicated in the sky, in national charts, and in scheduled events like elections and inaugurations.
    And speaking of inaugurations, OMG what a doozy for 20 January 2021!

    • Archie Dunlop November 9, 2020, 8:36 am

      Thanks for reminding me of the inauguration chart. I haven’t even looked at it! Without thinking about astrology, I am not particularly optimistic about the Biden presidency. At this stage, American needed an FDR… or at least a Bill Clinton or a JFK.

Cancel reply

Leave a Comment