The 2005 and the 2013 Papal Conclaves: A Mundane Exercise

©2013 J. Lee Lehman

Once again, speculation is rife, and astrologers are trying to sort through the possibilities for the new pope, just like everyone else. Following so soon after the 2012 USA presidential election cycle, I can't miss noticing some of the same feeding frenzy - and quite possibly, some of the same mistakes made then.

Perhaps the biggest mistake, imho, is the continued attempt to use horary in order to predict the result. I am going to repeat what I said at the time of the election: to get a good horary requires intimate personal involvement in the outcome, and simply being a news junkie is not enough. Then there is the obvious admonition about not asking the same question twice. It is simply inconceivable that all billion or so possible horaries would come to the same conclusion.

We are in the land of mundane, folks, so let's try to understand how to answer these questions using the right tools. And the best place to start is to look at the last papal conclave in 2005.

We actually have reported data for the dramatic moment when the doors to the Sistine Chapel were closed, closing in the cardinal electors. Here is our chart.

The first thing to notice about this chart is that there is a cardinal sign on the Ascendant. Going back at least as far as Dorotheus, this tells us that this Conclave will take less time than average. The interesting thing about the structure of a Conclave is that the usual format is that the Cardinals go in, and elect one of their own. As an event, it is the cardinal electors given by the 1st house: they are the movers of these events. They are electing the 10th house pope. So in this chart for 2005, we see the cardinals represented by Venus, Ruler of the 1st, dignified in Taurus. The future pope is given by the Moon ruling the 10th. The Moon in Virgo: perhaps a writer, an engineering type, an introvert - all possible renditions. But perhaps the most significant signature is that the Moon is coming to Venus by trine in one degree - and the new pope was elected within a day of the beginning of the conclave. What is perhaps most amazing about this is that Pope John Paul II had updated the papal election procedures, and the newer version has made the living arrangements during the Conclave much more comfortable - something that, it might be argued, could have made it easier for the Conclave to last longer. But it didn't!

We should note: the chart for the start of the Conclave is not the same as the start of the Papacy: it is the chart for the election itself. It is the other relevant mundane charts that begin to show us what were the issues of Benedict's reign.

Here we see the Aries Ingress before Benedict's election. The first and perhaps biggest point is that this chart covers both the death of John Paul II and the ascent of Benedict XVI. Here we are immediately struck by the partile Moon-Mars opposition so close to the Ascendant-Descendant. These cusps themselves are the Gates of Life and Death, as originally formulated by the Greek astrologers. The Moon, ever ready to show the action in a chart is opposite Mars, Ruler of the 10th. What is so fascinating about this is that Joseph Ratzinger was of the nature of Mars: a true defender of the faith. John Paul II was noted for his involvement with the Marian aspects of Chrsitian faith, surely more lunar in nature.

Both the Moon and Mars are highly dignified here with Mars having both exaltation and Triplicity. But they are at the 29th degree: the old order is changing in this moment, and the new pope being elected is very much of the old order.

Mars' rulership of the MC, and just having set below the horizon guarantees that this papacy will be marked by struggles relating to past issues, and that thes struggles can have the effect of diminishing the Church.

Consider next the lunation before the 2005 Conclave. Here we see the signature of what was perhaps the biggest problem of Benedict's reign: the seemingly unending litany of sexual scandals. How can we be surprised with the New Moon in Aries in the 5th house of sex, conjunct Venus in Detriment, and with the North Node there to blow up the circumstances? Here we see the new Pope, Mercury as in the Conclave chart, in Aries - his tongue was sharp enough when he spoke of the problems, but he looks completely ineffectual in this chart.

We might also contemplate Pluto in the 2nd house with a retrograde Ruler Jupiter in partile trine to Neptune to represent the banking scandal.

But enough of the past, what does the current Conclave chart say? [The following is a change to the original text posted last night.] The cardinals filed into the Sistine Chapel with Mercury still angular, but ruling the Ascendant and MC, and Jupiter in the 10th. As they completed their chanting, oaths, and other preliminaries, both Neptune and Mercury, set, and Jupiter moved from the 10th to the 9th. Jupiter in the 9th is appropriate for an ecclesiastical event: and I have to say it is more descriptive that a private meeting have so much more of a cadent look. Jupiter is still angular, though, being still conjunct the MC. Some ancient sources have distinguished between the 3rd-9th axis and the 6th-12th axis, finding the 6th-12th to be much more malefic - which makes sense under normal conditions, but so much more so for a religious occasion. 

I took the closing of the doors at 5:34 pm Vatican time. This Conclave will be of average length, the general meaning of mutable angles. There's a very strong Mercury signature, with Mercury ruling both 1st and 10th. And poor Mercury! In Detriment, in Fall, cadent, and retrograde. The importance of Mercury at this time cannot be overemphasized! I have to wonder whether this chart would grant a pope even remotely able to tackle the very serious issues facing the Church. Neptune can represent great faith: but also great blindness. As the procession was occurring the Daily Telegraph reported on the arrest of a Colombian priest in California for child battery, showing all too clearly the problems of the Church today.

The Jupiter dispositorship suggests that the new Pope will surely be a man of great faith and conviction, because that is what Jupiter represents. But Jupiter is in Gemini - its own Detriment - so again, I would worry that this man will not be entirely up to the task.

I would also not be surprised to see this Conclave run until Mercury stations direct, given the strong Mercury rulership shown. Retrograde Mercury is applying to Neptune: but in the moment of turning direct, it refrains from conjoining Neptune, which itself is perhaps the biggest hopeful sign we can muster.

Is the Astrology World ready for Linux?

©2013 J. Lee Lehman

Linux?

Back when I was relatively new in the computer consulting world, many of my installations were in Unix. Unix is a stately old operating system with a solid university backing to its lineage that was designed for a multi-user environment. In fact, back then, people didn't have pc's on their desks: they had dumb terminals. A Unix design allowed even a relatively small business to have the luxury of a true multi-user environment, where different employees shared data between inventory, order processing, billing, payroll, and accounts receivable. Most desks had an IBM Selectric typewriter on one side, and a terminal on the main desk.

Unix was fun for me, and I loved coding database designs. But that was then. After I had been doing that for maybe ten years, the Windows operating system arrived, and the typewriters were on the way out. Networking became the name of the game, and I lost interest, because I didn't like the new databases for pc's. And a good thing, because my astrology business had grown to the point where I had to choose one.

But all these years later, I still reserve a soft spot in my heart for the simplicity of Unix that Windows obscured. All those jokes about Microsoft: like the one about if the Windows operating system ran our cars, they would stop randomly in the middle of the road - and nobody would complain. But still, I stuck with Microsoft for the simple reason that all the astrology programs of any complexity were native to Windows. Sigh.

Then along came Linux. I hadn't really kept up enough to follow its trajectory at first. Call it inertia: I had all these other things to think about, like which Triplicity table to use, and which way to calculate the Ruler of the Nativity. But every release of Windows, I groaned. It became clear to me that the operating system new editions, like much of the established software upgrades, were artificial cycles designed to keep the corporation's balance sheets humming, not mine.

About four years ago, after some encouraging words from my brother, I decided to get my feet wet in SUSE Linux. Mistake. No matter how much I had been hearing about open standards, the installation packaging left so much to be desired that I quit after about a week of frustration. But I still remembered the hype: Linux is fast, Linux is free, Linux is open source. Sigh.

Several months ago, my partner Maggie Meister reminded me about Linux again. At first, I groaned. I don't have time for any big learning curve! But then I made contact with a gentleman who is writing a new software program for classical astrology using Xbuntu, and so my curiosity was peaked.

I started reading on Ubuntu, which is a flavor of Linux. (Xbuntu is Ubuntu with a different desktop; in the Linux world, such fracturing is possible and yet everybody stays friends.)

Unlike many open source scenarios, Ubuntu has some serious money behind it, because Mark Shuttleworth, after making mega$ online, put some of that money back into developing a flavor of Linux that would work for the rest of us. This has translated to regular operating system upgrades, the writing of all the background stuff like hardware drivers, and not least, the development and implementation of the vision for a Linux for all of us.

So I was psyched, but I also remembered my disaster with SUSE. I had discovered that both Dell and Toshiba have made their product lines Linux compliant, and that many other hardware companies have done the same, at least with some of their models. So after much thought, I decided to buy my hardware from a Linux specialist: the machine would come with Linux already installed, and so I wouldn't have to sweat over things like getting the wifi up and running, which was one of the things that had utterly defeated me on SUSE.

In less than a week, my machine arrived, and then I only had to wait for the time I elected that evening to start it up! Right away, I was online, running Firefox (my preferred browser for years), running Libra Office (a sister to Open Office that is completely open source; Open Office had been my go-to for years), and going through the check-list of programs that I had created to map out which programs were cross-platform available, and how I would proceed with the conversion. Skype, Dropbox, Audacity, and Evernotes were some of the applications that were already available in Linux editions - although Evernotes is actually a Linux special work-around called Everpad.

My first goal was to eliminate the Windows 7 computer on my desk, and I accomplished that within two days. I am composing this on the Ubuntu machine with an XP netbook to my left, in the alternate computer place. A week later, I still have not turned off the XP. However, I probably will within the month.

This blog entry is to detail how I got there, what you need to know, and whether it's worth it.

First: I am very happy on Linux. It is for real much faster than Windows. The Ubuntu interface is enough like a cross between Windows and Mac to have a familiarity about running it that allows the user to get pretty far without having to look things up. I did purchase The Official Ubuntu Book (7th Edition), and I have been working my way through it - and it has been very helpful.

One of the first things I fell in love with was the four desktops. Yep. I've generally tended to have a whole bunch of programs running: e-mail, Firefox, accounting, Sirius, Solar Fire, Solar Spark, possibly one or more other astrology programs, not to mention word processing, possibly a database or spreadsheet,a presentation program, and maybe a audio or video program. What a mess! Now my projects are split out between four regions which are switchable through Ubuntu-S (yes, being an Ubuntu machine, I don't have a Windows key, but an Ubuntu one). So now, astrology is on one desktop, the Internet on another, my sound editor and presentation program on the third....

But: is this ready for astrology prime time for someone without a Unix pedigree? My answer is: it depends. If your primary program is Sirius, Kepler, or Nova Chartwheels, the answer is: yes. If your primary program is Solar Fire, then the answer is: maybe. And what follows is why there is a difference.

Crossover

 A long time ago, Linux people realized that there were a lot of programs on Windows that Windows alums would quite justifiably want to maintain under Linux. And thus, wine was born. In Linux, wine is not a drink, but a platform to fool a Windows program into believing that it's really loaded on a Windows system. Wine creates a bottle in which it takes the Windows program's outputs and inputs and translates them into calls that Linux understands. The thing is, wine can be pretty tricky to implement.

Enter Crossover. Crossover is a program by Code Weavers that automates much of the wine process so well that if you have copied over a Windows .exe or other program file, or you put a Windows installation cd in your cd player, Crossover will very nicely ask if you would like it to try to install the program. I used Crossover to install Microsoft Office 2007, Sirius, AstroTides, my e-mail program (Thunderbird comes installed), and a whole host of utility programs. Crossover also runs on Mac's.

Here are some of those results.

 What you see above is Sirius, from Cosmic Patterns. You also see a desktop view with a couple of features. Ubuntu has something they call the Unity interface: you see on the left side a series of icons: these are the common programs and procedures. Unlike a Windows desktop, these icons are always in view to the far left.

The only problem I had loading Sirus through Crossover is that the Sirius installation is a two-cd operation, and that is currently flaky in Crossover: I solved this by installing in Windows, and then copying it over.

This also brought up an issue which is generally true in Crossover bottles: the issue of multiple windows within a program. When you ask for a new chart, Sirius pops up a data entry window. It's very easy for the entry window (which is smaller) to get "trapped" behind the main window.

In the background of the Sirius window, you will see a couple of file manager programs. Linux has file management similar to Windows (actually, of course, the Unix architecture predates Windows), but one of the commands in common is ALT-Tab for switching between programs: something I probably used every day of my Windows life. ALT-TAB has an extra feature in Linux: if you hold it down on a program icon, it will then allow you to switch between the open windows within a program - a very handy feature. If I was doing data entry in Sirius, then get interrupted by a phone call or e-mail and come back to the astrology desktop with the main Sirius screen up front, it will be locked because the data entry screen is actually controlling Sirius at that point. ALT-TAB allows me to see the problem, and get to where I need to go.

Next, we have Nova Chartwheels. I didn't observe any anomalies in bringing this up, but I also confess I am not a power user of this program. But notice: I had no font issues with either Sirius or Nova Chartwheels when I brought them up.

Astro Tides is a little utility program from Esoteric Technologies that apparently never took off, which is unfortunate, because now Esoteric Technologies is no longer supporting it, and it has some great features, like being able to scan time periods for the lunar mansion. Perhaps the fact that it runs flawlessly under Linux will yet breathe new life into it.

Virtualbox

If the program you want won't run in Linux, there is another option, but it's definitely Plan B. That option is VirtualBox, a program by Oracle. By using VirtualBox, you can actually create a ship-in-a-bottle on your Linux hard disk in which you can load an alternate operating system. There is only limited communication between them through some shared resources. If you want to load Windows, you actually have to buy a copy of the Windows operating system and install it within the VirtualBox environment established. This is how I got Solar Fire running.

Let me emphasize that getting VirtualBox going is not something to do if you have any fear of computers! It's tricky, but I got great tech support from both my hardware supplier and the company from which I bought the Windows operating system cd's. What you are seeing on the screen is the actual VirtualBox which contains Windows XP, and then the VirtualBox control screen behind it.

Finally, here's my old friend Solar Spark, another somewhat orphan program from Esoteric Technologies - mostly, I suspect, because getting these small programs compatible with Windows 7 and then Windows 8 was probably just not worth the expense.

 The other thing to be aware of is that setting up VirtualBox does put system performance at risk because we already know that Windows is a hog. I configured the VirtualBox to only use as little of my systems resources as I thought I could get away with. Certainly, it's a grand idea to pick one Windows operating system to implement, because while it is possible to run multiple operating system, each one chews up resources.

Happy hunting!

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What does Terror Look Like?

Copyright 2012 J. Lee Lehman, Ph.D.

As the horror of the Connecticut school shooting has sunk in, the raw emotionality of the event has triggered inflammatory language from people of different political spectra. One of the words that has popped up frequently is terror, as in terrorism. As a second-generation teacher, being a language cop is one of my attributes, so here I wish to consider two questions: can terror truly be the term for a single person acting alone without a political agenda, and, in any case, what does terrorism look like astrologically?

We are confronted with a linguistic issue: terror, we learn, is extreme fright, and certainly there was plenty of that going on at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A terrorist is someone who foments terror, and that could certainly be said for the murderer. The word terrorism prior to the last few decades applied to terror applied by a political entity, such as the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution. Now we apply terrorism to any group that attempts to organize terror as a political statement, whether that group is a state, a political party, or an ad-hoc group. We are left with the position that the mass murderer can probably rightly be called a terrorist, but what he did was not terrorism, it was disgusting mass murder.

So on to our second question: what does terrorism look like? A recent article on the BBC on Operation Condor got me thinking about this. Operation Condor was a coordination of state-run terrorism by six autocratic regimes in South America during the 1970-1980 decades: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The purpose was to destroy any leftist opposition. According to documents discovered in Paraguay, the first meeting was set up in Chile on 25 November 1975 - the 60th birthday of reigning General Augusto Pinochet.

I have chosen to use a noon chart, since the time is unknown, and this follows convention for business and other such mundane entities. So what would terrorism look like? Classically, we would have to look to the three malefics: Mars, Saturn and the South Node. Here, we see the Moon in Leo at the Bendings, and specifically, the South Bending. In Classical Astrology for Modern Living, Chapter 10. The South Bending specifically seems to refer to scape-goating, which is probably an excellent description for the psychology of the dictators who felt such an obsessive need to eliminate anyone who could conceivably oppose their regimes. I find the specific placement in Leo to be incredibly telling: the sign of the king, a sign in which the Moon herself has no dignity at all, thereby showing all the emotional needs, without the strength to back it up. As for Saturn, it's in Detriment, the sign opposite its rulership. A planet in Detriment often manifests the qualities diametrically opposed to what it naturally does. Here, Saturn experiences the ego of the Sun. The Sun itself, the Light of Day is in Sagittarius, where it has Triplicity, and in a partile trine to the Saturn. Saturn is the use of authority in its most rigid and hierarchical fashion: here applied through the lens of personal ego.

Mars, of course, is the planet of violence, here placed in the first degree of its sign of Fall, showing again the idea of Mars energy turned around.So here, all three classical malefics are showing problems. Malefics behaving badly desperately need a positive outlet for the energy, like sprts. Otherwise, left to its own devices, the results can be very tragic.

Reference

Lehman, J. Lee. Classical Astrology for Modern Living : From Ptolemy to Psychology ∧ Back Again. Atglen, Pa.: Schiffer Press, 1996.

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The KitchenAid Mixer and Pluto in Capricorn

Copyright 2012 J. Lee Lehman

Much of the text of Astrology of Sustainability is devoted to understanding from a mundane perspective how Pluto's passage through the signs really works. My historical analysis demonstrated that there is a lag phenomenon, a period of years in which the majority of people attempt to operate under the rules of the old Pluto sign. This period that can easily last years in the case of Pluto: probably as long as a quarter of the cycle, or more. When I was writing that book, Pluto was earlier in Capricorn than it is now. One thing I did say was that the transition of Sagittarius to Capricorn is about the most wrenching of the sign transitions, because the transition goes from Jupiter-ruled to Saturn-ruled, and people vastly prefer the openness of Jupiter to the rules of Saturn.

Here, having just witnessed Obama's reelection under the shadow of Pluto in Capricorn, there are some thing that are worth reflecting upon.In Obama's campaign in 2008, the watchword was change. This made complete sense, given Pluto's recent ingress into Capricorn. In Chapter 1 of Sustainability, I give the historical precedence for why we should take the first pass of a planet into a sign as the beginning of that sign period, even if it later retrogrades into the prior sign, Pluto went into Capricorn for the first time on 26 January 2008. Just how likely is Pluto to change signs during an election period? The last time this occurred was 1956, and the prior time was 1912. The next time will be 2066. So this has only happened twice before. So what was special about those elections? Woodrow Wilson won the 1912 election as a result of the Republican Party splintering between President Taft, and former President Theodore Roosevelt: in that era, the only time the Democrats could win the presidency was when the Republicans were too factionalized to agree on a single candidate. Despite the great disadvantage for national office of the Democrats at that time, Wilson won reelection, becoming one of the roughly 2/3 of presidents who ran for reelection who won. The other case was Dwight Eisenhower, an extremely popular president, running for reelection, who easily won a second term. So our very small sample size of two cases shows that when the Pluto sign change comes at an election with no incumbent, the other party not only has a good chance of winning, but of staying in office for the next term as well. The sign change in Wilson's case was from barren Gemini to fertile Cancer, from Mercury-ruled to Moon-ruled. This is a change, but it's not so dramatic as Jupiter to Saturn. In Eisenhower's case, it was Leo to Virgo, Sun-ruled to Mercury-ruled. Again, this is hardly wrenching.

What has struck me, now living through this process, is that over a quarter of the way into Pluto in Capricorn, I am still observing lots of phenomena that I would classify as leftover Pluto in Sagittarius thinking. Many of them have to do with the economy or economically-based decisions, whether personally, corporately, or governmentally. Let me explain.

• First, astrologically, recession or depression looks a lot more Saturnian, and bubbles look like Jupiter. Thus, the housing bubble, derivatives generally, and running on credit, all look like Jupiter. The trend toward getting away from credit cards and using cash is Saturnian: living within one's means. 
• Inflation looks more like Jupiter, and deflation looks more like Saturn. The credit crunch looks like Saturn. And yet, many banks and governments are acting as if inflation is what we must worry about.
• Products designed for flash and features look like Jupiter, while products designed for durability look like Saturn.

Which brings me to the KitchenAid mixer. Back in 2011, my partner Maggie bought a KitchenAid mixer. Not that she wanted to: her previous mixer had a burned-out motor. However, she got an incredible deal on it, and so she bought it. We did not elect a time.

How do you interpret the chart? First, the time was easy: we took it from the e-mail confirmation that she received from Chef's Catalog. We did not examine the chart at the time. However, looking at it now, the 1st house represents the subject of the event, namely the mixer, and we see the South Node there: not a good sign. The Moon was in Taurus, which we had probably noted at the time in a vague sort of way.However, this chart hangs upon Mars.

Why Mars? Mars is the motor! In a mixer, it dies when the motor gives out, because most of the other components are replaceable. Go onto EBay, and you'll find just about every attachment available. Similarly, you can get many parts from the manufacturer.Here, Mars was peregrine and combust. There was some debate in the Medieval period about whether Mars combust was an accidental debility at all: here the suggestion might be that it may not be as bad as another planet combust, but it certainly doesn't help! That poor Mars is the most elevated planet, and it's a Mars hour, torquing up the importance of Mars. But this is a weak Mars.

So a couple of weeks ago, Maggie went to make bread, turned on the mixer, and the sound was like a car battery dying. One dead motor. The value of the Moon in Taurus was that Chef's Catalog replaced the mixer with only the difficulty of the confusion of the Mercury retrograde period, in which they got it confused about whether she wanted a refund or replacement.

So now, we come back to Pluto in Capricorn. When she got the mixer, even though the model number was the same, it felt different to her. One of the blades she had bought wouldn't fit. I felt the included blades: and they felt lighter weight. In fact, when she bought the mixer, she had bought an extra bowl, and when we weighed the old bowl and the new bowl, the difference was over two ounces lighter for the new bowl.

As we have been seeing for some time, corporations are finding all the ways they can cut manufacturing costs to maximize their profits. Everything about this new mixer is cheaper - and yet its price in the Chefs Catalog has risen about $100 in the less than two years since Maggie bought it, in the midst of this very inflationary period! This is Pluto in Sagittarius thinking on the part of KitchenAid: build cheaper equipment which dies sooner, but has nifty features, thereby hopefully encouraging the customer to buy the latest and greatest because of its still sexier features.

How long before corporations "get" it? Also in Astrology of Sustainability, I discuss the agency of outer planet cycles for change - specifically, that we are in a period until 2020 with no major outer planet conjunctions. Evidently, we are all likely to be slow learners for a while.

Gaming Models and Presidential Elections

Copyright 2012 J. Lee Lehman, PhD

For many years, I have been interested in mundane methods for predicting the outcome of sporting events. Originally, I worked primarily with William Ramsey's rules. Later, I also worked with Bonatti's rules of warfare. In the latter case, I developed methods for working with presidential elections based on quantitative models: assigning points to each of the criteria used. I believe that this work is vital, because only quantitative models avoid the judgment calls that make historical work truly useful, rather than speculative.

The pitfalls of non-quantitative models was illustrated all too well in Sylvia De Long's 1981 work, Charting Presidential Elections. In this book, she presented a model using Saturn to rule the Democrats, and Jupiter to rule the Republicans. She used elevation and disposition as two of the factors to judge which planet was stronger in the chart for sunrise on Election Day.

The problem? The one advance chart she gave was 1984, in which she predicted that the Democrats would win, instead of 1984 becoming the reelection of Ronald Reagan. Oops. Now - we all will be wrong sooner or later in our predictions. But the point, I think, is that, when you know what the outcome was, it is difficult to be truly objective in rating the charts. Unless you have a friend run the data, then chop the chart information off the print-outs, it's hard to actually retrospectively predict rather than explain.

I made my own predictions for 2012 in August at a talk I delivered to the Northern Illinois Chapter of NCGR. I wanted to share a couple of my slides, to illustrate some ideas about mundane prediction, especially using gaming models.

I would also like to note that the media has given little coverage to the fact that not only were there several of the media statisticians like Nate Silver exceptionally accurate - but so were the betting models. Jamie Partridge has also mentioned this. During the run-up to the election, sites like http://www.predictwise.com/ and http://www.betfair.com/ were showing Obama winning consistently. Predictwise was likewise very accurate on the results for the US Senate.

So: about the astrology. I presented two different discussions: a comparison of natal charts based on chart comparisons from prior elections where we had good birthdata for each candidate.

For example, comparing the last three outer planet transits before the election gave these results:

This wasn't a stunning call for Obama, but given that Saturn aspects seemed more likely in winners, the fact that his last three aspects were all Saturn did argue for Obama. When I counted up which transiting planet aspected the natal chart, I did not break the data out by transited planet: off-hand, Saturn square Saturn seems harder than most.

Another example was the lunation cycle. I saw a number of predictions based on Romney going into the 8th phase as a negative.

This was a technique that was not predictive in this race, although I saw it used by several astrologers as an argument for Obama. Here;s the issue. This graph shows the actual historical count. Romney was born in the 6th phase, which, according to the graph, has more winners than losers. He had just gone into the 8th phase in September 2012. Given the description of the 8th phase in Rudhyar's work, this makes absolute sense as a call for Romney to lose. In the actual data going into this election, there was only a small elevation of losing associated with this phase.

Contrast this with Obama. Obama's birth phase, the 7th, is not historically good for presidential winners, whereas Romney's birth phase was. Obama's phase at the 2012 election had heretofore only been occupied by losers.

We don't have a lot of data points to work with here, so these results so far are just a start.

We have more data for mundane models, and this is what I will review now. My model is based on the following:

The major question is: what charts work? This is my summary slide of results leading up through 2008.

It was typical in the classical period to examine all outer planet conjunctions. Since the Outer Planets hadn't been discovered yet, that meant the Mars-Saturn and Mars-Jupiter conjunctions, as well as the more famous and more powerful Jupiter-Saturn. Here, the Mars-Jupiter and Mars-Saturn would potentially be interesting, because there is always at least one such conjunction between each election. Thus, one cycle of Mars and Jupiter or Saturn can only apply to one presidential cycle.

This being said, that doesn't guarantee that either of these cycles is predictive. In fact, the Mars-Jupiter does not appear to be. Similarly, the prior solar eclipse and the Inauguration Day chart are not predictive, at least using this particular rules of war model. This does not mean that some other model could not use these charts.

We may further note that the Libra Ingress turns out to be one of the more predictive charts: but in reverse. This is what is called a contrarian model: you take the winner as whatever the model deems the loser.

Examining all these charts together gives the following prediction, based on the historical model:

Going back to 1912, this combined model has been wrong only three times: in 1932, 1952, and 2008. It is interesting that 1932 was the first election after the onset of the Great Depression, and 2008 the beginning of the Great Recession: major economic downturns which clearly were outside the bounds of the model.

My future concern - that Election Day charts may become obsolete as more of the country moves toward early voting - may in fact be borne out by this year's data. The last time both Election Day charts were wrong was 1972: and these two charts have only both been wrong twice in the last century. We shall have to watch this trend.

References

Bonatti, Guido. The Book of Astronomy by Guido Bonatti. Trans. Benjamin N. Dykes. Golden Valley, MN: Cazimi Press, 2007.

Brady, Bernadette and J. Lee Lehman. Twelfth century castle besiegement in sport. The Astrological Journal 39(3): 27-44, 1998.

DeLong, Sylvia. Charting Presidential Elections. Tempe, AZ: American Federation of Astrologers, 1982.

Ramesey, William. Astrologia Restaurata, or, Astrologie Restored Being an Introduction to the General and Chief Part of the Language of the Stars : In 4 Books ... : With a Table of the Most Material Things Therein Contained. London: Printed for Robert, 1654.

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The Indianapolis Explosion

Copyright 2012 J. Lee Lehman, PhD

It is odd waking up to the news f an explosion which takes out a house in a normally quiet city. We expect these things in war zones, and so all the descriptions of the scene picked up that image. From an astrological standpoint, the first thing that we want to know is what caused it. In this case, the chart gives a pretty good indication that the initial theory of a gas explosion is probably correct.

Data given bu USA Today, 11 November 2012.

First we see the Leo rising 0 fire. That is what all the preliminary pictures focus on: the appearance of the neighborhood as if a fireball had hit. The ruler of the chart is in the 4th, with dignity only by Face: the dignity that I have referred to as having the keywords fear and anxiety.

The presence of Neptune at the 8th house cusp does look like the gas leak scenario. Jupiter, ruler of the 8th house cusp, is not only in an air sign (gas!), but doubly debilitated: by being in Detriment, and being retrograde. That leaves little of its more benefic qualities, and more of the inappropriate expansive ones.

Saturn is at the IC. Were this a horary question about buying a house, that Saturn would immediately make me think there was something structurally wrong there.

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What has the 2012 Election Taught Us?

©2012 J. Lee Lehman

First, congratulations to all my friends and colleagues who dared to predict the presidential election. I congratulate everybody, because the first step is to try.

I also hesitate to congratulate only those who predicted correctly because this kind of prediction is difficult, and fraught with problems. It is in the spirit of humbleness that I would like to address some of the problems I see in this prediction process, as well as to herald some things that I think we as a community are beginning to get right.

In the category of right, I congratulate the Political Astrology Blog and Chris Brennan and Patrick Watson for their work through the last two elections in providing a resource for predictions made, and timings recorded. It is extremely useful that the information from one election is not just quietly disappearing before the next cycle: and the next. We can only learn from developing a historical database. It is also for this reason that I urge everyone who has posted predictions or discussions of this election to not take them down. I know that nobody really wants to keep remembering their mistakes, but there is still gold to be mined in understanding both the "correct" and "incorrect" analyses - because hardly anybody gave single reason predictions. I would claim some small credit for Kepler College in helping to initiate a more serious discussion of these matters.

Here are some ideas I would throw out as important.

There are two psychological factors that we have to keep in mind that have major bearing, not only on our predictions, but those of the media, and citizens at large, whether of the country in question, or not.

• It is an extremely well documented observation that virtually everybody makes the mistake of believing that other people agree with them more than is actually true. I have observed and commented for some time that there has historically been a high correlation between who astrologers predict will win with whom that astrologer will or would vote for. If we understand this within the context of this psychological tendency, we understand the very real peril: that if we believe that the universe is ordered, and we are right, then of course the universe will work out according to our own beliefs. While not a fully conscious process, this represents a considerable danger in making predictions.
• When, as today, we are engaging in the post-election discussion, the tendency when one is wrong is to find a factor in the charts that one examined that could be construed as going in the opposite way, pounce on that factor, and then explain one's wrong prediction as being a result of that. So far, this may be plausible. But the real error is then the all too human tendency to believe that, having found the magic bullet, that one's prediction is transformed into a correct prediction, for having been explained.

In fact, predicting the outcome of political elections means using astrology in a fundamentally different way than we normally do. Natal astrologers are simply not generally called upon to compare two charts and see which one would be victorious in a contest held upon a particular day.

This simple reality is further complicated by the fact that everybody had a roughly 50-50 chance of being right or wrong. Thus, we are confronted with the probability that some of the correct predictions for Obama were actually fundamentally flawed in analysis and right by chance, whereas some of the predictions for Romney were just slightly incomplete, but primarily correct. How does one tell the difference, especially since we only repeat this exercise at four year intervals?

For now, let me address some particular factors, in the hope that they can help the thinking process for future elections.

• The prediction of two-party models is completely different than parliamentary models, because only two party elections resemble the warfare models of which I am fond. If there are multiple armies on a battlefield, each one is not fighting all others: they are already aligned as allies, which is not how multi-party systems work.
• I think we have to come to agreement for the future that if the US system is that the actual victory occurs through the Electoral College, that winning the Electoral College is the measure of a correct prediction. Frankly, we don't have enough data for a model of when an election is split between popular and Electoral College. However, I have to admit that I am being dragged kicking and screaming into developing some respect for the Electoral College idea. Had a hurricane or earthquake actually occurred on the day of the election, thereby significantly lowering a populous state's voting; or had a state referendum significantly changed the voter turn-out in just that one state; then the popular vote might not actually be more "just" than the Electoral College.
• This election was the first failed case since Al Morrison pointed out the theory: that people nominated under a void of course Moon do not win the election. Obama was, and he did. My comment on this is twofold: first, there are no single factor arguments that I know that will work absolutely all the time. The second point is that the void of course has, imho, been blown up way out of proportion. It is merely one of the ways that the Moon can be afflicted. We must study them all.
• This leads into the next issue: is there any critical event prior to the election itself that determines the outcome of the election? We don't often discuss this matter of multiple events surrounding an event, but we have the time a person announced candidacy, the time the election campaign is established, each of the primaries, the date of the primary at which the candidate receives the votes needed to become the candidate, the time that this is declared by the media, the time the nominating convention begins, the time that the candidate is announced as winning the nomination, and probably several other dates I am forgetting. Are any of these fail-safe predictors of the results? I tend to view these matters in the spirit of electionals in a string of related issues like a relationship (where one can do charts for the time of meeting, the first date, the first sex, moving in together, marriage, etc.): the most important thing may be defensive charting: that none of these event can predict a success, but any of them could preclude one.
• Horary: it's time to give it up. Sorry, but let's stop kidding ourselves. In a world of seven billion people, the idea that any one of us citizens has the special pipeline to the truth about this is delusional. This cannot work, because of two irreconcilable problems: that we cannot know when the question was asked for the first time (making all subsequent attempts bogus with random access results), and we aren't really any more special than any other citizen of the Earth. I was especially disheartened by reading an argument that perhaps one gets the right answer if one has greater virtue. No comment. But I think the fact that there are many astrologers (me among them) who adore horary doesn't make this an appropriate technique.
• It may do well for Americans to study European parliamentary elections as a model for the primary season. We simply don't have a model for what to do with multiple candidates.
• In a world of early voting, it's time to revise our models. Dixville Notch is now a lovely historical asterisk, when literally millions have voted before those intrepid few have stayed up for their election night party. We may see a decline of importance of election day charts as being predictive, because so much of the voting has already occurred.

I believe that successful work on elections will occur through the combination of mundane techniques, and natal work focused around learning the appropriate factors to compare between timed charts of candidates: a database which now stands at seventeen cases where we have good data for both candidates. This is slow, hard work.

But most of all, I encourage my colleagues to persevere, always using caution about applying hindsight instead of foresight.

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