Politics, Personality, and Planets

SEVEN YEARS AGO, I wrote down some observations elsewhere on the astrological connections surrounding the impeachment of a U.S. President, Bill Clinton. My thoughts on this are recorded in a series of articles elsewhere on this site entitled The Impeachment Chronicles. That series was based in part on contemporaneous observation, and in part on looking at parallel events in U.S. history, both nationally and at the state level. Examples of the former include the impeachment of Andrew Johnson and the resignation of Richard Nixon, while at the state level I considered at least one gubernatorial impeachment.

Astrologically, though I focused at first on a Saturn-Neptune square that occurred early 1998, this aspect began to widen even as the idea of bringing Clinton down grew legs and took off running. One would expect that an event like this would first of all involve a long-term aspect pattern such as Saturn-Neptune, something which would serve to put people in the mood for impeachment, so to speak. However, since impeachment is both a political and a legal process, it takes time to build, time to formalize, and time to carry out. As things come to a head in a process like this, a confluence of short-term aspects would serve to build up the pressure begun by the long-term contacts, eventually bringing closure on impeachment. At that point, a trial is held which will result either in removal from office or acquittal.

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Posted by Ken Irving January 2, 2006 11:47 PM UT. © 2006

Presidents and Pluto . . . and the Rest

Part II

HAVING LAID OUT the problem in the first part of this article, I will begin this part by saying categorically that Pluto seems to play only a supportive role in who wins or loses a Presidential election, and most of my other ancient rules about transits to the natal and progressed fare about the same. On the other hand, certain transits do seem to be important during an election, though for the most part they are quite different than what I would have expected.

Years ago, my study of this question had been done in a somewhat informal way, so with the help of more modern tools than pencil and paper and with the benefit of a few more election cycles to consider, I decided to take a closer look at the issue. In my effort to look more closely at the question of transits to the “two Suns,” I collected the data on all major candidates plus the transits on election day from 1932 through 2000, calculating each man’s natal and progressed Sun, and then tabulating the actual transits to these two points on the election day in question. 1932 seemed a logical starting point because it was a watershed election in terms of the use of film and radio, and generally marked a new era in national politics.

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Posted by Ken Irving May 25, 2004 05:52 PM UT. © 2004

Presidents and Pluto - Some History

LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY, I was given the assignment to write an article projecting the probable outcome of a U.S. Presidential election that was still in the early primary stage. On the Republican side there were two contenders, which included our only appointed President Gerald Ford, and California Governor Ronald Reagan (which tells you how long ago and far away it was). On the Democratic side there were a half dozen or so contenders, many of whom were relative unknowns. Between all of those in both parties with their eye on the prize there was exactly one (Ford) at that early date who had a reliable birth time. For Reagan, several claimants were in circulation, all of which seemed to be phony, and most of the Democratic candidates were too unknown to have drawn much interest from astrological data hunters.

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Posted by Ken Irving May 3, 2004 02:28 PM UT. © 2004

Jim Lewis and Ken Irving: NASO Lecture, Tucson 1978

Introduction: This tandem lecture given in 1978 at a conference of the National Astrological Society in Tucson was a natural outgrowth of the investigations Jim Lewis and I made of Helen Boyd's U.S. chart within the year or two after the publication of her book, The True Horoscope of the United States, in the mid-1970s. Most of the examples given here are straightforward, but they are also relatively few, partly because each of us was working by hand in those ancient pre-computer times. Jim was not able to get his map operation computerized until around the time we did this lecture, while I would have been investigating the progressions by eyeballing photostats of ancient nautical almanacs, and doing the final calculations with a calculator or a circular slide rule, pencil and paper. As a widely-traveled lecturer with a unique product (Astro*Carto*Graphy) that gained him both recognition and respect, Jim probably brought the Boyd chart much wider attention than it otherwise would have had, since the chart's primary defense and documentation were sidereal. This lecture lays out some of the background relating to what piqued and held his interest, and aside from some minor grammatical corrections to make the transcript understandable, and an occasional note to fill in useful information such as missing dates, I've left it intact, even though I don't necessarily agree with everything I said then. Additional notes follow, adding some details and explaining where my thinking may have changed on certain points in the intervening years. A note on the illustrations: The maps used to illustrate Jim's points are screen shots from AIR software's Locality Maps program. Technically, the two are not quite equivalent, but the AIR maps have a good appearance and are easier to work with in this environment.
Ken Irving

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Posted by Ken Irving January 12, 2004 12:31 AM UT. © 2004

The Olive Branch Petition

This was approved on July 5th, but finalized on the 8th. In between came the less obsequious (though still polite) Declaration on the 6th.
- KI

The Olive Branch Petition
July 8, 1775

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

MOST GRACIOUS SOVEREIGN: We, your Majesty’s faithful subjects of the Colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Counties of Newcastle, Kent, and Sussex, on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, in behalf of ourselves and the inhabitants of these Colonies, who have deputed us to represent them in General Congress, entreat your Majesty’s gracious attention to this our humble petition.

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Posted by Ken Irving December 27, 2003 01:18 AM UT. © 2003