As we are deep into election season, I would be remiss to not turn my attention to the upcoming United States presidential race. Fortunately for us all, there was no need to wait until now to do all the speculating since there was a major confab of the world’s leading astrologers—a once in every-four year event—that took place from May 25 – 30, 2012 in New Orleans, the United Astrology Conference (UAC). As one Reuters reporter put it in the Chicago Tribune, there is “no need to wait for November to know the election outcome” although speculation abounds.
I would think it is a fun assignment to cover an international astrology conference, but how to justify attending it? It wasn’t exactly a mystery that most journalists covered the forecasting of the presidential campaign, a sexy news hook for the media. Fortunately there was a media-friendly plenary dedicated to the topic! You can watch the panel here, although beware that it is highly technical and includes very footage blurry. (It’s mostly a bore until about 26 minutes into the feed.)
Here is a brief Associated Press video that showed up on the USA Today online edition.
Other major outlets like USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Huffington Post, New York Daily News, and the hometown New Orleans Times-Picayune also covered the event using a similar storyline. Even the blog Christian Post covered it.
Major news outlets routinely cover astrological predictions for presidents although I haven’t had time to review the extensive astrological coverage of the historic 2008 election yet. The good news is that there is still a lot of consensus from the astrologers: that Obama is likely to be elected, but that the election will be very close (or maybe even too close to call). Part of the reason why there is consensus: the transits leading up to and on election day, November 6, and on inauguration day, January 20, 2013 are very favorable to Obama and much less so for Romney. In particular, astrologers like the fact that Saturn and other planets will be transiting through Obama’s 10th house of career throughout the fall. The influence of Saturn and Neptune on Romney’s chart are less favorable.
More generically, well-known astrologers like Susan Miller tend to agree, because Obama is a sun in Leo (executive, leader archetype) which is more typical of the pattern of past presidents, while Romney has a sun in Pisces (artist, mystic archetype).
According to a PR Newswire article, if Romney had only consulted an astrologer, he would have been more careful and avoided the “verbal gaffe” when he was secretly recorded saying at a fundraiser: “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” Larry Schwimmer had predicted a predicament like this following the Republican Convention in August 2012.
If you want to get all the details, I recommend Larry Schwimmer’s two part series in the Huffington Post, first looking at the Romney-Ryan ticket and then the Obama-Biden ticket. And, Kepler College has produced a great summary of articles on astrological predictions for the 2012 election, highlighting different forecasting techniques. There also is a summary of psychics and tarot readers at Cafe Mom. I found some of the techniques on the more obscure side and designed only for specialists or astrologers who are showing off, but it’s an excellent overview of what it’s all about.
And there is other big news about the presidential election, which we probably could have anticipated even prior to Hurricane Sandy. That Mercury will go retrograde the evening of the election. This may mean modest things like problems in the voting booths or misplaced ballots, or something more major like a contested election (Surprise!) With Sandy in mind, who knows how many folks won’t be able to vote. In November, the planet Mercury (representing communication and thinking) is transiting the sign of Sagittarius, but on November 6, election night, it goes retrograde or backwards. As a result, some astrologers are predicting some element of “chaos” to be determined. Stay tuned!
The Cosmic Post 