Though their past gaffes haven’t faded away, those fearless pro forecasters, heading into a new decade, have no hestitation in putting a . . . : Finger on Fate : Happily, a Bad Call

When Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, astrologer Sydney Omarr knew he was a marked man.

Every U.S. Aquarian president had been elected during a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn--which happens only once every 20 years, said Omarr, and “not one left office alive.”

Aquarian Presidents Abraham Lincoln and William McKinley were assassinated; Franklin Delano Roosevelt was re-elected four times, setting a presidential record, until he fulfilled his fate to die in office.

Indeed, Omarr wondered why President Reagan ran for office, since, Omarr said, Reagan had long been interested in astrology and knew about the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction. When Omarr put the question to a Reagan associate, the astrologer said the response was “a sense of duty.”

Seeing the President on television, Omarr suffered. “I’d feel sad that he was not going to leave office alive.”

Yet, he asks, “What could I say? What could I do?” The President had chosen his destiny.

When an assassination attempt was made on President Reagan just 70 days after he took office, Omarr felt “eerie” about the orderly workings of planetary cycles.

“We’re still human and we think of the fact that we’re not literally connected to the solar system or the planets.”

On the other hand, when the workings of astrology click so efficiently, Omarr is reassured, “knowing there is an order in the universe.”

But the astrologer was foiled and President Reagan survived the gunman’s bullet.

“It was my worst prediction and yet one that made me the happiest,” he says. “He broke the jinx of the cycle.”

What are the physical reasons for astrology’s workings?

“Tell me what magnetism is,” Omarr said.