The failure of many 'good' astrologers to predict the election is demoralizing

RohanMenon

the ISAR panel of 6 or so astrologers unanimously predicted a Clinton victory. Flipping a coin might have worked better. Astrologers who blog online, and write books and charge money are showing similar stats . Way worse than random coin flip prediction. 10 to 1 in favor of Hillary winning.

Yes political experts didn't see it coming. But isn't that when we need astrology, when conventional wisdom doesn't work? If we can't have *some* of a chosen group of experts predicting correctly then what is the point? (to be clear, I don't expect every one to make the right prediction. But this is worse than chance)

No wonder many 'experts' avoid prediction and prefer psychobabble. Steven Forrest is already saying that Trump won because (paraphrasing) Pluto accentuates the shadow side of whatever it touches and since Pluto is in Capricorn, the shadow conservative side won in the form of Trump. WTF? why didn't you predict this before the election then? Pluto was in Capricorn on Nov 7th too!

I think every astrologer who makes predictions should be put on record and his/her record tracked over the years. Just an idea. In time this should winnow the techniques that don't work. Mixed Martial Arts competitions had a similar effect on the martial arts. When you see '10th generation grandmasters' of Flying Emerald Dragon Yin Yang Kungfu get knocked out in one punch by an intermediate level boxer, the field of martial arts gets purged of ineffectiveness.

Demoralisedly,
 

Barleywine

I'm curious whether all of the astrologers involved in the panel were modern psychological practitioners. I think I can guess the answer. It may be that traditional astrologers who focus more on the event-oriented angle rather than trying to perform psychological profiling on the electorate would have had a better chance at success. Where is William Lilly when we need him?

Maybe reconstructing the election outlook in traditional terms would reveal whether there is any truth in this. A good parallel might be the use of Lenormand instead of tarot for election forecasting. I had accurate results (posted here) with the former, while the latter produced a mixed outlook.
 

RohanMenon

Hey Barleywine I found these links

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/12/astrologers-predict-us-election-trump-clinton-zodiac

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-astrology-election-20161018-snap-story.html

I'm not familiar with the names. I assumed that since they were presenting at ISAR they'd be at least decent.

To be clear, I'm not asking for scientific proof or anything. I'm no radical skeptic, and am making a genuine attempt to learn astrology (as my other posts here will show). Kenneth Bowser (for one) did predict correctly and never wavered, but he seems to have been a rare exception.

In any case, the lesson I take away is to never let your biases (political inclinations, world views, whatever) intervene in the process.
 

Barleywine

I took a look at the links but the only name I recognize is Ray Merriman's; the others are unknown to me. Now I'm going to have to go to the websites of some of the more high-profile traditional astrologers to see if they had anything to say.

It would be interesting to compare the charts of the two candidates to the USA chart - I understand there are two contenders for that, Sibley's and another one - rather than the hypothetical chart of George Washington, to see whether there is much alignment. But I understand that Clinton's birth time is uncertain, so analysis would be limited. The Gemini-rising USA chart might be the "friendliest" to Trump.

The other approach might have been to try a horary chart, but I'm unclear on what time should be used. I believe Clinton's acknowledgement of defeat came at 2:48 AM EST on November 9 (I stayed up to see it), but that may not be the best time to use, and poll closing times don't give a single data point to build a chart on. I'm sure it's been done in the past, but I have no experience with that.
 

danieljuk

I read a lot of astrology sites online as an interest and read different views and most did back Hillary where as others said "they both have similar things and so can't call it!". other sites said it would be long and drawn out like Florida some years ago.

The site Darkstar Astrology called it exactly right. I have to be honest and say I find the writing and view points on the site quite challenging at times to my views but I do like to read things that challenge me but it can get quite dark in interpretations. They got it all right but I believed other sites because it matched my beliefs.

I think RohanMenon is bang on the money about biases, I suspect the sites who got it wrong just didn't want what happened to happen and I didn't want to read something which was saying that, so the predictions and information was misread by many. Such an important lesson and I do more divination than astrology (I am a real beginner in astrology) but a reminder we have to be impartial to find the truth :)
 

empress's dress

complicated results.

clinton won the popular vote. trump won because of the electoral college. perhaps everyone has to ask the question differently in the future.

perhaps just ask: which candidate will the electoral college choose?

it's the 2nd time in 16 years the popular vote and the electoral college outcome didn't match. 4th time in history.
 

RohanMenon

"Who will win the election" means

"Who will be occupying the White House?" post inauguration day and execute the duties of president. In the American system that is the person with the most electoral votes, not popular votes, which aren't relevant.

some "astrologers" who made the Hillary win prediction are now hiding behind the 'popular vote' fig leaf. The truth is they can't predict worth a damn (imo).

But hey maybe Hillary will flip > 25 % of the electoral college delegates and become President instead of Trump. There is even a petition going around to that effect. If that happens, I'll glad acknowledge the superior astrological technique of the 'professionals' who predicted her win.

the funny thing is that most of the people who made this utterly wrong prediction charge gullible people money by promising to predict events in their lives.
 

Barleywine

To be accurate, the popular vote matters "by State" because it determines which way the State's electors will be charged with voting in the Electoral College. In many States, the electors aren't bound by that charge, but it has very seldom happened that they don't comply. I certainly don't see a large enough "flip" to unhorse Trump, and everyone in the upper echelon of government is certainly acting like it won't. Looks like a "done deal" to me.

I think I'll look at the sites of Deborah Houlding, Kevin Burk, John Frawley, Jeff Warnock, Chris Brennan and a few other eminent traditionalists to see if they said anything.
 

RohanMenon

In a post above, Barleywine refers to

a Lenormand based divinatory spread he did well before election day. The thread is here for anyone interested.

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=265220

I had no idea what the Lenormand deck was. As I understand it (from multiple Google searches) this deck is less 'psyche based' than more traditional Tarot decks (Rider-Waite is the only one I have and I don't know how to use it) and more 'event oriented', and at least in that limited sense relates to Tarot as traditional astrology does to Modern astrology. I must admit, I'm quite intrigued.

PS: Thank You for that list of astrologers. I'm very curious about Brennan's predictions, if any exist.

Does anyone else here combine other divination systems (Tarot, I Ching, whatever) with astrology? What has your experience been?