Astrology, Prediction and Comment

The British Labour Party is having a leadership contest, and the two front runners are Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey.  Although Keir Starmer appears to be the front runner, polling evidence suggests that Long-Bailey has a real chance of winning.  To anyone outside the Labour Party bubble, this is surprising.  Her TV performances aren’t great, she is strongly associated with Jeremy Corbyn, and she may not have the intellect to get the better of Boris Johnson at the dispatch box.  Put another way, if the Labour Party elect her as their leader, they have little chance of winning the next general election.

I have already looked at Keir Starmer’s horoscope.  He is a Virgo, with a lot of planets in Libra.  Rebecca Long Bailey is also a Virgo with a lot of planets in Libra.  Here is her chart, set for midday on September 22 1976, in Old Trafford, Manchester:

Long-Bailey has a close conjunction between Mercury and Venus, in Libra.  This conjunction is about communication.  She knows how to project herself, at least when dealing with the people who matter.  What I think of her, what the electorate thing of her, is unimportant.  When it comes to the Labour Party, she knows what to say and she knows how to say it.  At the same time, her Moon in Libra means that she won’t rock the boat with her potential fan-base.

Let’s now go back to Keir Starmer’s horoscope:

You don’t have to be an astrologer to see the similarities.  They both have the Sun in Virgo, they both have the Moon, Mercury and Venus in Libra, they both have Mars in Cancer.  Yet there is one difference between the two charts, which may be crucial.

When I looked at Keir Starmer’s chart, I noticed that he had no planets in the Fire signs of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.  As a result he might quite literally lack the Fire that’s required to get his party back to power. He might also be lacking intuition, in terms of understanding what needs to be done to beat the Tories.  Long-Bailey doesn’t have any personal planets in Fire signs, but she does have Jupiter in Leo, conjunct the fixed star Regulus.  Regulus is the Royal Star, and it can propel people to the heights.  Vivian Robson says of this configuration: “Fame, high preferrment, especially of a military nature, success in the Church”.  This description might not be entirely appropriate, but you get the picture.  Long-Bailey’s Jupiter conjunct Regulus allows her to be promoted above her natural abilities.  It should also be noted that although both horoscopes are  concentrated on one part of the wheel, in Long-Bailey’s case all her traditional planets (the Sun through to Saturn) are in a 90 degree arc.  Her chart is very focused, and little in the way of dynamic tension.

Starmer and Long-Bailey are both Virgos with the Moon, Mercury and Venus in Libra.  They both understand the details, and they know what steps are required to achieve their aims.  And because of their Libran planets, they can form the necessary alliances.  The two of them have found their niches, and now they are vying for the top job.  Starmer might be a lot brighter than Long-Bailey, and on paper more effecive, but he doesn’t have Jupiter in Leo conjunct Regulus.

However I am not making any predictions about who is going to be the Labour leader. Long-Bailey’s Jupiter increases her chances of success, but I don’t have her time of birth.

Jesse Livermore is often regarded as one of the best stock market traders ever.  His biography, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, is read assiduously by budding traders, and they hope that his 25 rules will make them rich.  Livermore certainly made a lot of money, but he lost his fortune several times over, and at the age of 63 he committed suicide.

Livermore was born on July 26 1877, in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.  Here’s his horoscope, set for noon:

Livermore started betting on stock market movements when he was 15, so at a very young age he became familiar with price action.  He was helped by his amazing intuition, and he was prepared to back his hunches with hard cash.  He went short on railroad stock immediately before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and he made around one hundred million dollars from the Wall Street crash in 1929.

So what should we look for in his horoscope?  He had four planets in Leo: the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Uranus.  Leo is a fire sign, and it is therefore about intuition.  Another Leo was psychiatrist and mystic Carl Jung, who was born exactly two years earlier, on July 26 1875.  At the end his life Jung was asked whether he believed in God.  He replied “I know… I don’t need to believe… I know“.  Livermore, like Jung, just knew.  However one has to understand that the intuition that these two men demonstrated was not vague and emotional – it was born of Fire rather than Water.  Livermore did not get a vague feeling that he needed to short a railway stock just before the San Francisco earthquake.  He just knew that it was the right thing to do.

When Leo is working well it’s very confident.  In terms of Livermore, this related not just to his final decision to trade, but also to his methods.  He had a method for choosing what and when to trade, and he had absolute confidence in this method.  Or in modern parlance, he had a trading plan that he was very comfortable with.

If you look at trading forums, there is endless discussion about how to choose trades, whether you look at fundamentals, such as the economy or a company’s balance sheet, or whether to focus on graphs.  If you are constantly moving from one method to another, then it is difficult to get any traction.  What Livermore’s method seemed to boil down to was identifying a trend, making a small, testing bet, then increasing his exposure as the trend developed.  It sounds easy, but one has to remember that he had experience as well as intuition.

I should also mention that financier George Soros was a Leo.  In 1993 he had a strong feeling that the British Pound was over-valued, and he made a huge bet that it would fall.  His hunch was right, and he made a massive amount of money.

Livermore’s Leo planets, in particular Venus and Uranus, made a trine aspect to Jupiter in Sagittarius.  Jupiter is the planet of optimistic speculation, and in Sagittarius it can bring plenty of luck.  The trine would also have helped Livermore’s intuition – he’d be able to connect the dots super-quickly.  There would be little or no intellectualizing, and the correct course of action would be obvious.

Another way of looking at Livermore’s chart is through the elements and quadruplicities.  The four elements are Fire, Earth, Air and Water, and the three quadruplicities are Cardinal, Fixed and Mutable.  I do a simple count of the seven traditional planets.  In Livermore’s case he had four of the seven planets in Fire signs, namely the Sun, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter.  At the other extreme, he had no traditional planets in the Earth signs of Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn.

One can look at the lack of Earth in two ways.  Firstly, a lack of an element can manifest as a desire for the blank to be compensated for.  Meaning that Livermore had a great desire for money and material things, even if he didn’t trully understand their value.  Secondly, he was perhaps detached from the millions he was making and losing on the markets.  It was a game, and the cash sums weren’t entirely real.  Ironically, this may have helped him become successful.  He wasn’t worrying about the actual money, he wasn’t afraid and he could let his profits run.

The quadruplicities are also interesting.  Livermore had four traditional planets in Fixed signs: the Moon in Aquarius, and the Sun, Mercury and Venus in Leo.  The fixed signs keep moving, in a single direction, like a juggernaut.  He may have known how to exit a trade, but he couldn’t stop trading, and at the same time he had total self-confidence.  Also,  trading was his life, and when he hit a losing streak he only stopped when he was cleaned out.

In this light, it is important to comment on the Full Moon in his chart: his Sun in Leo opposition his Moon in Aquarius.  From an aspect point of view, it is a very wide opposition, with an orb of 15 degrees.  However, it always matters when people have the Sun and the Moon in opposite signs.  It can represent big swings – happy/sad, profit/loss, rich/poor.  This was the pattern of his life, which may also have had a psychological dimension.  When he shot himself on November 28 1940 he was suffering from clinical depression, and there is some evidence that he was bipolar.

This brings me to his Mars-Saturn conjunction in Pisces.  This conjunction is depressive, and can be associated with death.  Particularly as his Sun in Leo was making an 135-degree aspect to both planets, and therefore aspected the Mars-Saturn midpoint.  I suspect that death was never far from Livermore’s mind, and again, this may have helped him in his trading.  I know it’s a controversial suggestion, but maybe he felt that he could take risks, because if things got too bad, he could always kill himself.  Nonetheless, he didn’t commit suicide because he was penniless.  Most of his fortune had gone, but he still had 5 million dollars in annuities, which equates to 100 million dollars in today’s money.

The connection between his Sun on the Mars-Saturn midpoint and his suicide is supported by the planetary line-up on the day of his death.  Here’s the death horoscope, set for New York at 5.33 pm:

Looking at the charts for his birth and death – the former is set for noon – his natal Mars-Saturn midpoint is at 18 degrees 59 Pisces, which makes hard, 45-degree aspects to 3 degrees  59 of the Fixed signs.  On November 28 1940 at 5.33 pm, the time of Livermore’s suicide, transiting Pluto was at 4 degrees 13 minutes Leo.  In other words, close to a conjunction of his natal Sun, at 3 degrees 34 Leo.  At the same time Venus and Mars were close to a conjunction, in Scorpio.  To be precise, Venus was at 2 degrees 58 Scorpio and Mars was at 5 degrees 25 Scorpio.  The transiting Venus-Mars midpoint was therefore at 4 degrees 12 minutes Scorpio, one minute short of a square with transiting Pluto.  This is a good example of inner planets triggering an aspect from a slow-moving outer planet, in this case Pluto.

I mention Livermore’s death because it illustrates the fact that you have to understand the natal chart before trying to make forecasts.  He had a Mars-Saturn conjunction, which the Sun aspected by sesquiquadrate (135 degrees).  Alfred Witte uses three words to describe this combination: “Death through wounding”.  That was the potential shown by the chart, which was there the moment he was born.  Then at the time of his death, this midpoint configuration was hit by Pluto, Venus and Mars.  Incidentally, in the Solar Return prior to his suicide, there was a close Mars-Saturn square.  This means that we have a repeated signature.

Another signature, in the suicide chart, is an opposition between Mars and Saturn, which had Jupiter exactly squaring it.  Witte wrote of Jupiter on the Mars-Saturn midpoint as follows: “Pleasant interruption of work. Vacations. Quick death”.  The photo at the top of the article was taken the day before Livermore’s suicide.  According to Richard Smitten, the photographer asked Livermore for permission to take the shot, and he replied “Of course you can… but it’s the last picture you will take, because tomorrow I’m going away for a long, long time”.

Finally, I can understand why traders want to emulate Jesse Livermore.  However can they cherry-pick the parts of his personality they like, and discard the rest?  I think not.  To appreciate Livermore’s success, you have to understand the whole person, and in this sense, astrology can be useful.

I was in London last year, and as my sister drove me to the airport, she was complaining about the state of British politics.  She didn’t want Britain to leave the EU, and she thought that everything would be fine if Keir Starmer rather than Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party.  I didn’t know much about Keir Starmer, but I took her word for it.  Well, almost.  Keir Starmer is a fanatical Europhile, who did everything he could to frustrate Britain leaving the EU.  And his support for the EU played a role in the Labour Party’s crashing defeat in the December 2019 General Election.

Jeremy Corbyn is now standing down as leader, and there is an election for a replacement.  Keir Starmer is the frontrunner, and from my reading of the newspapers, rather than my reading of the stars, I would guess that in a few months time he’ll be Labour Party leader.

Keir Starmer is a lawyer.  Apparently a good lawyer.  If we look at his horoscope (see below), we see that he has the Sun in Virgo conjunct Pluto.  Details are important to him, and he has the capacity to dig down, to the heart of the matter.  Furthermore, he has Mercury in Libra making a favourable aspect to Saturn in Aquarius.  He has mental discipline, and he has the capacity to speak in a measured and authoritative tone.  He also has Mercury square Mars.  This makes him a good debater, and on the surface he might be a Leader of the Opposition who Boris Johnson would fear.  After all, Gemini Boris Johnson is famous for being hazy on detail, and Starmer might shine a forensic light on his lack of knowledge.

At least this is the hope of Starmer’s supporters.  Unfortunately, they are fighting last year’s war.  Prior to the General Election, Starmer was able to use his skills to undermine the Conservatives’ quest for Brexit.  The Conservatives didn’t have a majority, and Starmer and his fellow Remainers were able to grind the government down with their mastery of law, details and procedure.  However these kind of skills are not going to work now that the Tories have a majority.  They’ll come over as petulant and petty – not to mention unexciting and lacking in vision.   Also, the Labour Party that lost the election is still the same party – too left of centre to be elected, and riddled with the kind of Marxist entryists that infected the Party in the 1980s.

There are nonetheless many moderates, perhaps like my sister, who believe that Starmer can sort the problem out.  He is not an extremist, and he can perhaps be characterized by his suit and tie and his knighthood.  The very man to bring the party back to the centre.  Yet to do this he needs both dynamism and ruthlessness.  I am not convinced that he’s got these qualities in sufficient measure.  He has no planets in the Fire signs of Aries, Leo and Sagittarius, and his Mars is weak in Cancer.  Furthermore, he is more of a Libran than a Virgo.  He has three personal planets in this sign – the Moon, Mercury and Venus.  I believe that if elected as leader, he will be a typical Libran, and try to be friends with all wings of his party.  Including the far left.

However, I am weary of writing Starmer off, especially as I don’t know his time of birth.  For example, he can win through if he is everyone’s friend until the moment he gets elected, and then have a brutal purge.  Yet his Western horoscope suggests he won’t do this.  The lack of Fire indicates that he won’t have a grand epithany that forces him to take action against his own colleagues.  I understand that Boris Johnson doesn’t have any Fire either, and he managed a successful purge of his party.  However he had Sagittarian Dominic Cummings urging him on from behind the throne.

But… I’m thinking aloud here… Starmer’s Vedic horoscope is in many respects very favourable, and depending on the time of birth, it suggests that the situation isn’t hopeless.  Yes, Eastern and Western astrology can give very different messages.  I’ll comment further, if and when Starmer becomes leader of the Labour Party.  Hopefully by then we’ll know his time of birth.

An updated article was written on April 6, considering whether Keir Starmer would ever be British Prime Minister.  

The first half of the week is dominated by a conjunction between Saturn and Pluto.  The Sun and Mercury join the party, and pressure is added by a 45 degree aspect from Mars.  Things are tense, and many of us may feel that we can’t take much more of it.  As a result, it might be a good idea to take a step back from our immediate problems, and in terms of relationships we shouldn’t feel that anything should last forever.

But it’s not all bad.  Venus is moving into Pisces, the sign of its exaltation, where is moves to a favourable aspect with Uranus.  There are ways of expressing our feelings, and good relationships can get even better.  There is also the possibility of a surprise meeting, which brings the possibility of happiness and excitement.

And here are my forecasts for the twelve signs:

Aries At work it might feel that something is moving towards a crisis.  You don’t feel comfortable, and it might seem that your brave moves could end in disaster.  However, through sheer determination you can win through.

Taurus You can put away the mirror, and stop worrying what you look like.  You’re fine, just as you are, and with Venus moving into magical Pisces you can be the centre of attention without trying.  Partners need love and support.

Gemini Every Gemini knows that nothing is permanent, and sometimes you think about the end before it has even begun.  But maybe it is a time to lighten up.  By focusing on feelings rather than words you can make new and useful contacts.

Cancer Right now there is a huge astrological build-up in Capricorn, your opposite sign.  Relationships take up a lot of your time, and you might feel that they are more trouble than they are worth.  Seek the company of spiritual people.

Leo You have a limited amount of energy, and if something doesn’t have to be done then don’t do it.  And don’t allow yourself to be manipulated and blackmailed.  You’ve got an agenda to follow, which has your own physical and psychological health as its central plank.

Virgo Being creative is often a fine balance.  You have to put in the time and the dedication, but you don’t want to take things too seriously.  Because your attention to detail may destroy the thing you are creating.  Someone special wants your attention.

Libra Your home life takes up a lot of time.  And your family could really get on your nerves.  OK, there are chores and duties that can’t be avoided, but you do need some space.  Places near water can help you relax, particularly if you’re accompanied by someone you trust.

Scorpio Money issues are hard to avoid.  You want things to be sorted out, but there are unavoidable delays.  Perhaps communications about money get delayed, and you get angry.  Partners and lovers are in the mood for fun and games.

Sagittarius Mars continues its movement through your star sign.  You’ve certainly got a lot of energy, but there’s a danger that you hit an obstacle.  Perhaps there is a sum of money you can’t afford.  In general, obstacles should be side-stepped rather than attacked.

Capricorn If you’ve got plants, look after them.  Because right now there is a danger that you forget to water them, and stuff like that.  Elsewhere you feel that large scale forces are at work, that you can’t fully control.  Let the storm run its course.

Aquarius Just because everything is quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is going on.  Deep down, tectonic plates are shifting, and for your part, you need to be ready to take advantage of the situation.  You friends can be very annoying.

Pisces Venus moves into your star sign.  Your social skills will move to the top of the range, and with Venus aspecting Uranus you can communicate in an animated and exciting way.  Right now your social life and your career life can’t occupy the same space.