Astrology and News
Hillary and Obama - is the worst yet to come?
Let me briefly recap on my views of the presidential race. I don’t believe that Barack Obama will be the next US president, and if Hillary Clinton or some compromise candidate doesn’t get the nomination then John McCain will definitely win the prize - provided he stays fit and healthy, which is statistically likely. As I think Barack Obama will discover in 2008, it’s not enough to be a talented and charismatic politician. You have to get your timing right, and he’s going for the top job four to twelve years too early.
From an astrological point of view, it’s difficult dealing with Hillary and Obama, because we don’t have an unambiguous time of birth for them. Sure, astrologers have put up timed birth charts, but so far the information about their birth times is either patchy or contradictory. Still, there are certain things we do know.
In Hindu astrology Barack Obama has a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, in Capricorn. This conjunction is important, not least because he’s going through a period of life ruled by Jupiter. Furthermore, he has a conjunction between the Sun and Mercury, in Capricorn’s opposite sign of Cancer. Before anyone complains, I should point out that the Hindu signs of the Zodiac are currently twenty-four degrees behind their Western counterparts - so Obama has a Leo Sun in the West, a Cancerian one in the East.
Hillary Clinton also has planets in Cancer, in the Hindu Zodiac - to be specific, a conjunction between Mars and Saturn. We can therefore see the potential for a real clash.
One might think that there’s already a clash, as they’re both battling for the same prize. But it’s likely to get more intense. After all, on April 28th the planet Mars moves into Cancer, in the Eastern Zodiac, and it stays here until June 21. It triggers Hillary’s Mars-Saturn conjunction, and also Obama’s Sun-Mercury conjunction. Not to mention being opposition his Jupiter and Saturn.
Under these circumstances, these two candidates can do considerable damage to each other, unless one of them drops out of the race. It’s difficult to say who is most vulnerable to the destructive influence of Mars. My guess is that it’s Obama - Mars affects four of his planets, including Jupiter, which is the ruler of his current planetary period.
Though I should say that under normal circumstances Mars’ movement through Cancer wouldn’t be too much of a problem, because it happens approximately every two years. Yet when you’re in a high profile position, battling to be US president, it’s a different picture.
At this stage I should mention security risks. Forty years ago, on June 5 1968, Bobby Kennedy, one of the candidates for the 1968 Democratic nomination, was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. There is an astrological tie-in between the 1968 and 2008 presidential elections. In early 1961 there was a conjunction between Jupiter and Saturn, and just over seven years later, when the two planets were a hundred and twenty-six degrees apart, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Likewise there was a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction eight years ago, in the year 2000. Put simply, the years 1968 and 2008 are at the same stages of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle. In fact one of the precise days when their angular separation is the same as it was at the moment of Bobby Kennedy’s shooting will be August 4 2008, which is Obama’s forty-seventh birthday. So perhaps he should be careful who he invites to his birthday party?
In Bobby Kennedy’s case, we have a time of birth, and his horoscope has a clear signature of an assassination danger - much clearer than that of his brother John. His Hindu horoscope had a Mars-Saturn conjunction in the Seventh House of enemies. While Hillary also has a Mars-Saturn conjunction, we don’t have an unambigious time of birth and we therefore don’t know which house it’s in.
Nonetheless, given the events of 1968, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and I feel that the period from April 28 to June 21 could be more dangerous than usual, for both Hillary and Obama. But I must emphasise, that I think it very unlikely that anything terrible will happen. It’s just that from an astrological point of view, there is an elevated risk.
On a non-physical level, both candidates must make a special effort to keep their cool - thanks to Mars’ influence there’s the possibility that in the heat of the moment they make very big mistakes. Of course that’s perhaps what the next stage of the campaign is all about, with each candidate hoping that the other one puts their foot in it.
Yet from the point of view of Obama’s political career, he really does need Hillary to win the Democratic nomination if he wants to be president. If he’s the main candidate he’ll lose in November, and that could cause long-term damage to his political capital. On the other hand if he doesn’t get the nomination, perhaps because the super-delegates get the jitters, he can claim that he was deprived of what was rightfully his. And with his honour in tact he’d have a good chance of being elected president in 2012, 2016 or 2020.