Why Do We Keep Looking to the Stars?
Dec. 6, 1994. The sun was in Cancer. Neptune was in natal Jupiter. Orange County was $1.64 billion in debt and Robert L. “Bob” Citron was in trouble.
If, as his former colleagues have recently testified, the former tax collector/derivative dabbler used psychics and a mail-order astrologer to predict interest rates, most people would say it’s no wonder Orange County wound up saddled with the nation’s largest-ever municipal bankruptcy. But Citron isn’t the first powerful public figure--including presidents and millionaires--to consult clairvoyants and astrologers. To true believers, Citron’s alarming sin wasn’t the fact that he used an astrologer--it was that he chose the wrong one.
“Nobody does mail-order financial astrology. That’s the type you send away for for $50,” said Henry Weingarten, a financial astrologer from New York, who said he charges $10,000 and up for corporate consultations. Any astrologer who knows anything about finances, unlike Citron, saw that interest rates were rising in late 1994, he said. “More important, they would have seen disaster in Mr. Citron’s horoscope and would have urged extreme caution. . . .
“It was a piece-of-cake call,” he said.
Taxpayers recoil and brokers laugh at the thought of financial astrologers--just two good reasons many high-profile clients and even some practitioners prefer to remain anonymous. Indeed, over the last 15 years, 60% of people randomly surveyed in an annual poll have said they do not recognize astrology as having any scientific base, said Jon Miller, vice president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. Only a constant 5% say they use the stars to determine their behavior, he said.
Still, that 5% projects out to at least 9 million book-, chart- and software-buying adults. Weingarten, who has written a book called “Investing by the Stars: Using Astrology in the Financial Markets,” to be published this spring by McGraw Hill, said that in 1994, he tracked $14 billion in investment funds that he claims had been influenced by astrologers in the United States.
“I know Fortune 500 CEOS who [consult astrologers],” he said, declining to name names. Other astrologers said they often advise employers on who to hire. Weingarten believes he’s one of perhaps 100 people in the growing field.
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Clearly, those interested in fortunetelling are not necessarily little old ladies over tea leaves in the parlor, squealing girls over Ouija boards at slumber parties, British royals or Hollywood celebrities.
A popular story among astrologers involves banker and industrialist J.P. Morgan, who was said to visit astrologer Evangeline Adams, a descendant of John Adams, every morning on the way to work. “Somebody asked him, ‘Is it true millionaires consult astrologers?’ He said, ‘No. Billionaires,’ ” said Woodland Hills astrologer Arlene Kramer.
Kramer added that in World War II, the U.S. government hired astrologers to predict what Adolf Hitler’s astrologers were telling him. “By the time he came to power in 1933, Hitler was using astrology and had bonfires of astrology books. He didn’t want anybody else guessing what was happening,” she said.
Franklin Roosevelt reportedly asked an astrologer to predict how long he had to live.
In 1988, a near scandal ensued after it was revealed that First Lady Nancy Reagan had been using San Francisco astrologer Joan Quigley to determine the timing of President Reagan’s political and diplomatic meetings.
“I was really one of their closest advisors,” Quigley boasted in a telephone interview. “I timed takeoffs and landings of Air Force One, all the press conferences. I timed arm-twisting with Congress. I got heavily into the relationship between the superpowers and the ending of the Cold War.”
While Reagan had at first called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” Quigley said he changed his attitude after she spent three hours persuading Nancy Reagan that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was “someone we could live with.”
She said Nancy Reagan also asked her to time the announcement of Anthony Kennedy’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987. With Kennedy’s date, place and time of birth, Quigley made a chart. “It was a very technical chart and had to be done to the second. So someone was there with a stopwatch, gave the signal and he was proposed and confirmed,” she said.
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After her role was revealed in a book by then White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan, Quigley said she fell out with the Reagans. They hoped she would keep silent; she thought she had to speak out to defend the professional reputation of serious astrologers.
Quigley said the problem now is that there are so many people claiming to be astrologers that people like Citron don’t know whether their astrologer is qualified to give specific advice or advise at all.
She predicts that astrology will soon come into a more favorable, legitimate light. “Uranus is going into Aquarius and Aquarius is astrology’s sign,” she said. “You always have a rebirth when that happens. One of the last times it happened, [Martin] Luther nailed the edicts on the Cathedral of Wittenberg.”
Despite the constancy of surveys, skeptics see a proliferation of interest in astrology, psychic hotlines, Tarot cards and TV shows like “The X Files,” which dramatizes the paranormal. They worry that our educational system is failing to train enough clearheaded thinkers. They fear the consequences are not only public silliness but danger.
Barry Karr, executive director of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, said, “We should be alarmed and shocked. Why don’t people know there’s nothing to astrologers? Let’s look at the evidence. Examine the claim. What is it about the positions of the stars that influence a person’s life? They can’t tell you. . . .
“The danger is that a guy is putting money--billions of dollars--in the stock market based on astrology. We have to use logic and common sense. We can’t hope to find answers in the stars.”
