For example, Albert Einstein came up with his world-changing Theory of Relativity before his 27^th birthday.  But career success and visibility didn’t arrive for master chef and television personality Julia Child until much later in life.

Astrologer Edith Hathaway says a system of astrology based on methods from seers or “enlightened beings” in ancient India gives modern astrologers a predictive tool – the Dasha systems – that can be used to determine which planetary influences will be most pronounced, for better or worse, at different times in an individual’s life.

Hathaway is author of In Search of Destiny: Biography, History & Culture As Told Through Vedic Astrology.  In her book she provides more than 30 biographical studies of individuals whose careers sequentially peaked at different times based on planetary periods unfolding from their moment of birth.

She says there are more than 55 different Dasha systems in the ancient Vedic astrology system. The most important of these is called the Vimshottari Dasha, or 120-year cycle.

The 120-year Vimshottari Dasha assigns a specific number of years to the sun, moon and the five planets visible from earth with the naked eye. Also included in the sequence are the moon’s north and south nodes, known as Rahu and Ketu in the Vedic system.

The nodes are sensitive astronomical points defined by the moon’s orbit around the earth.

“The order or sequence for the planets comes from the rishis, or ancient seers, as do the number of years assigned to each,” Hathaway explains.

The same planetary sequence is repeated with smaller time increments during the sub-periods.  How the period of the featured planet plays out depends greatly on its original placement in the individual’s birth chart – where the planet was situated in the heavens at the moment of birth.

For example, Albert Einstein was born in 1879 and died 76 years later in 1955.  From his Vimshottari Dasha sequence it would be apparent to Vedic astrologers that by far the most creative years of his life would occur during the 20-year Venus Dasha when the planet Venus was most involved in shaping his individual destiny.  This Dasha began in December 1895 and ended in December 1915.

It would also be apparent that major recognition most likely would come during the following 6-year Sun Dasha, when the sun’s energy was most pronounced.  For Einstein this period ended on December 14, 1921.

In March 1914 Einstein became Director of Physics at the prestigious Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin.  He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for work he had done in 1905-06 during his so-called “Annus Mirabilis” or miracle year, when he was an unknown 26- year old.

Though he was revered and recognized for the rest of his life, all of his scientific work after this 26-year period (December 1895 to December 1921) is considered to be of less importance, Hathaway says.

Julia Child was on a much different timetable.  She was born in 1912 and died in 2004, but at age 49 her long public career as America’s most renowned expert on French cuisine was only just beginning.

A significant 16-year Jupiter Dasha between April 1941 and April 1957 found planet Jupiter asserting its influence.  This period brought her foreign travel and residence and her first meeting with husband Paul Child, a career diplomat in the Foreign Service.

Child began testing and collecting recipes for her now famous cookbook during this period.  But her career remained in the shadows until her Saturn Dasha, the next planetary period in the sequence dominated by Saturn.

Hathaway says this 19-year period began in April 1957 and held sway through April 1976.

“Saturn’s results do not come to fruition quickly.  However, after some initial delays and setbacks, Alfred A. Knopf published Child’s 734-page cookbook in 1961, an event that coincided with the couple’s return to the U.S.,” she said.

Child’s television series began in February 1963 and went on to become the longest running program in the history of public television.  Child continued to do the program until shortly before her death at age 92.

Hathaway says the Dasha system produces valuable insights for the famous and not-so-famous alike.

“If the most auspicious Dashas occur early in life it’s sometimes difficult for a person to accept what comes next.  If they come later in life the challenge is to not lose faith that one’s gifts and goals will come to fruition at a later date,” she said.

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Editor’s note:  This news feature is based on an article, Mysteries of the Vedic Dasha System, published in the NCGR E-News Commentary by the National Council of Geocosmic Research on April 14, 2013.  This article and more information on the author can be found at www.edithhathaway.com

Although several sources about the sounds of the universe have appeared online and in print over the past few years, a very nice reminder that we can hear the universe was featured recently on the Huffington Post online. As they do each Friday,  the Huff Post and TEDWeekends joined together on February 22, 2013 to share a “powerful idea worth spreading.”

In this case, the “powerful idea” was described in a mesmerizing video presentation featuring a talk by curator and artist Honor Harger.  In her talk, entitled Tuning into the Universe, she points out that we can both see and hear the stars and planets. And she illustrates that although they are not directly audible, we can hear them thanks to breakthroughs in radio technology.

Ms. Harger’s presentation provides a penetrating understanding of the resonating forces of our lives.  Using stunning visuals from outer space to accompany sounds, the presentation evokes an enjoyable voyage. Among other things, we can hear powerful sounds from our own very bright Sun, along with sounds from other heavenly bodies.

And one of the most prestigious sculptors of the day, John Quincy Adams Ward, sculpted a statue of Garfield that was placed on an ornate pedestal on the road island to the southwest of the Capital.

Perhaps only a few in the immense crowd gathered for the Garfield statute dedication noticed what appears to be an entire horoscope cast in bronze and depicting planets in astrological signs on the northwest side of the statue’s plinth or base.

David Ovason, author of The Secret Architecture of Our Nation’s Capital, believes this may be the only such astrological figure on any public statuary in the U.S. But, inexplicably, astrological symbolism is everywhere on display in public buildings and elsewhere in the nation’s capital.

The city is teeming with zodiacs and zodiacal images. Many are in official buildings, including the Capitol Building itself where one would never expect to find such symbols of the spiritual world.

In Ovason’s 1999 book he says, “There are 23 important zodiacs in the city and at least 1,000 zodiacal and planetary symbols.”

Kenneth McGhee, an Arlington, Va., astrologer who lectures on the subject, suggests the number of important zodiacs in the city is higher. By his count there are 30 zodiacs with 12 of these located in the Library of Congress Building alone.

A tour of this building turns up a zodiac dome and zodiac clock in the main reading room. There’s a floor zodiac in the Great Hall and zodiacs also are found in marble columns, in a granite arch, on the arm rail of the main staircase and in a hallway painting of Urania, who in mythology is the muse of astrology.

“There is even a zodiac in the wallpaper of a meeting room,” he says.

The Library of Congress Building was completed in 1860. But there also are zodiacs in buildings completed much later in the 20th century, such as the ceiling zodiac found in the Senate Dirksen Building, completed in 1958, and a light fixture at the Ariel Rios Building, built in the 30’s.

McGhee says astrological zodiacs are visually prominent on armillary spheres located throughout the city in such diverse locations as the Air and Space museum, the Reston Town Center, Friendship Heights, Montrose Park in Georgetown and U.S. National Arboretum. These spherical sculptures are modeled after the instruments used by ancient astrologers to determine the location of celestial objects before telescopes were invented.

According to McGhee, the staid Federal Reserve Building and the Freer Art Gallery have zodiac light fixtures. And there are zodiacs on the Mellon Fountain and in the Hillwood Museum garden.

“But nothing is more bizarre than the arch zodiac above the alter at the Catholic Church’s National Basilica on Michigan Avenue. Or the zodiac symbols embedded in an entry door at the National Academy of Sciences,” he said.

So why do we find so much astrological symbolism in the nation’s capital city today?

In his book, Ovason addresses the issue:

“The more I have explored the city and the more I have been touched by the many zodiacs it contains, the more I have marveled that so little research has been done into the arcane aspects of its design. One consequence of the scholarly silence is that the majority of my questions have remained unanswered,” he writes.

But Ovason describes the Founding Fathers’ flirtation with the esoteric ideals of the Freemason movement in the late 18th century. And he suggests this may somehow be connected with the proliferation of astrological symbols we find in the capital city today.

The city itself was planned by George Washington and was initially surveyed using stars as guides. The nation’s first President was also leader of a Masonic Lodge, and Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and many of the nation’s other founding fathers were part of the Freemason movement.

In this era Masonic elders used astrology to time the laying of foundation or corner stones for every significant new structure rising in the district, including the White House and Capitol Building, he points out.

McGhee thinks the birth chart or horoscope he uses for the capital city provides some clues to the mystery.

“The city’s birth chart has a lineup of planets (including the Sun) all clustered in that section of the horoscope astrologers identify with mysteries and the occult. Which fits with all the secret symbols found in the city today,” he said.

In an article for TheNational, the leading English-language newspaper in the Middle East, author Robert Matthews says there no longer is any doubt that celestial bodies affect our planet as a whole.

Matthews is a visiting reader in science at Aston University in Birmingham, England.  He says these links go beyond the obvious, such as the role of the sun and moon in the tides.

“The biggest climatic upheavals experienced by our planet are now known to be under the influence of the other planets in our solar system,” he says.

Through their gravitational tugging, the moon and planets distort the shape of the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of its axis to its orbit, causing subtle changes in the intensity of sunlight reaching us.

“By altering the level of heating reaching different latitudes, these changes are now thought to play a key role in triggering the huge expansion in polar ice characteristic of an Ice Age,” he explains.

“Now astronomers think they may have uncovered another astrological connection between the Earth and its fellow planets – one that beggars the trivia of astrology..”

More than 150 years ago astronomers noticed that the number of sunspots appearing on the solar disk followed a distinct pattern, rising and falling over a period of about 11 years. This is curiously close to the 11.9 years that it takes Jupiter, the biggest planet in the solar system, to complete one orbit of the sun.

“It’s hard to know what to make of such coincidences.  But in 1852 the Swiss astronomer Johann Wolf showed that despite its great distance Jupiter had more gravitational effect on the sun than any other planet,” Mathews said.

Wolf went on to develop a theory that seemed to account for sunspot numbers via the influence of Jupiter and other planets.  However, because sunspots are a symptom  of  solar activity, and this in turn directly affects the earth, Wolf’s ideas “sounded uncomfortably close to astrology,” Matthews said.

He speculates that this is probably the reason why Wolf’s ideas were hastily dumped at the start of the 20^th century following the discovery of a link between sunspots and the magnetic field of the sun,

For whatever reason, Wolf’s evidence linking the gravity of planets with the magnetic field of the sun wasn‘t believed to be compelling. But a team led by Dr. Jose Abreu of the ETH Zurich Institute for Geophysics in Switzerland has rekindled the controversy with impressive new evidence for precisely such a link.

To make its case, the team examined records of solar activity far more extensive than those used by Wolf, who could only go back as far as the mid-17^th century and the first telescopic observations of sunspots by Galileo.

Dr. Abreu and his colleagues exploited the fact that changes in the sun’s magnetic field affect the levels of cosmic rays smashing into the earth’s atmosphere – which in turn creates isotopes that get trapped in polar ice and tree rings.

By analyzing the rise and fall in levels of these isotopes the team was able to reconstruct the peaks and troughs in solar activity covering more than 9,000 years,

“Armed with so much data the team has been able to look for patterns in the activity far more subtle than those found by Wolf.  And what they have found broadly confirms his idea of a planetary influence on the sun,” Mathews said.

Published in the current issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, the team’s findings stress that the planets cannot be the prime driver for the 11-year cycle of solar sunspot activity.  If that were so, the orbits of the planets would change noticeably through the energy needed to drive the activity.

“But the planets can and do seem capable of affecting the processes that generate the sun’s magnetic field,” Mathews says.

Analysis of the isotope data has uncovered a set of cycles of solar activity ranging from about 85 to more than 500 years, each of which appears to be linked to planetary cycles.

“This sounds pretty esoteric until one ponders the implications.  Every so often, these cycles combine to produce periods of especially high or low activity.

“When this happens the effect on the earth can be dynamic” he noted.

Astronomers have identified several periods in recent history when unusually high or low solar activity coincided with anomalous conditions on earth.  Among them is the Medieval Warm Period lasting from about 1000 to 1250.  And the so-called Little Ice Age, which lasted between about 1350 to 1850.

Each coincides with peaks and troughs in solar activity triggered by the planets, and to events of major historical significance.  For example, the bitter winters of the Little Ice Age caused mass starvation and social upheaval in Europe during the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

“The emerging evidence for planets influencing the sun and thereby global events suggests that the real problem with astrology is that its claims were simply too modest,” Mathews concludes.

The unidentified woman was arrested after defacing Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, an iconic painting commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 in France.

According to American astrologer Ray Grasse this is the painting said to have inspired Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, the French sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty that was gifted to the United States in 1870.

It’s also the painting that was featured on the pre-euro, 100-franc French banknote.

The unidentified woman, described by police as “unstable,” scrawled a 12-inch graffito on the bottom of the painting before she could be restrained by a museum guard.  The incident occurred on February 8.

“Fortunately the woman took a pen, not a knife, to the painting.  Museum officials say the canvas should be easily restored,” Grasse said.

Considering the revolutionary nature of world politics today this particular incident may seem little more than a minor footnote in a turbulent historical era.   But Grasse believes the symbolism of the painting’s iconic imagery coming back into consciousness at this time is “very synchronistic.”

Grasse is author of The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives and Signs of the Times; Unlocking the Symbolic Language of World Events. He provides this astrological explanation:

Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People in the fall of 1830.  The exact date the painting was finished isn’t known but at about this time the planet Pluto was transiting the astrological sign of Aries and was either in or near the eighth degree of the sign.

When the painting was defaced earlier this year the planet Uranus was at about the same degree of Aries and applying a challenging aspect to Pluto 90 degrees away in the sign of Capricorn.

“From an astrological perspective, the sensitive degree placement and angular relationship between Pluto and Uranus might reasonably be expected to trigger the famous painting’s birth chart or horoscope quite strongly,” he said.

Although astronomers have downgraded Pluto to minor planet status astrologers hold a contrary opinion.  Grasse says the icy planet is viewed as the powerful, transformational archetype that empowers, overwhelms, destroys and resurrects the universal life force at every layer of existence.

Uranus represents the principle of change, freedom, rebellion and revolution and is identified with unexpected developments of all kinds. When dynamically paired with Pluto the combination has been linked to upheaval and change throughout human history, he noted.

“Humans, birds and seals are all known to navigate by the stars. But this could be the first example of an insect doing so,” he writes.

Amos describes a study by Marie Dacke of the Lund University in Sweden. An article on her research published recently in the journal Current Biology.

According to Assistant Professor Dacke, the dung beetles are not necessarily rolling with the Milky Way or 90 degrees to it. They can go at any angle to this band of light in the sky and apparently use it as a reference.

Dung Beetles like to run in straight lines. When they find a pile of droppings, they shape a small ball and start pushing it away to a safe distance where they can eat it, usually underground.

Getting a good bearing is important because unless the insect rolls on a direct course, it risks turning back towards the dung pile where another beetle will almost certainly try to steal its prized ball, Amos noted.

Dr. Dacke, a native of South Africa, had previously shown that dung beetles were able to keep a straight line by taking cues from the sun, the moon and even the pattern of polarized light formed around these light sources. But it was the insect’s capacity to maintain course even on clear moonless nights that intrigued her.

Amos says the researcher took the insects (Scarabaeus satyrus) into the Johannesburg planetarium where she could control the type of star fields a beetle might see overhead. Importantly, she put the beetles in a container with blackened walls to be sure the insects were not using information from landmarks on the horizon, which in the wild might be trees, for example.

The beetles performed well when confronted with a perfect starry sky but just as well when shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Dr. Dacke’s take on this is that it’s the bar more than the points of light that is important.

“Beetles have compound eyes. And it’s known that crabs, which also have compound eyes, can see a few of the brightest stars in the sky.

“Maybe the beetle can do this as well, but we don’t know that yet. It’s something we’re looking at,” she says.

“However, we show the beetles just the bright stars in the sky, they get lost. So it’s not just the bright stars the beetles are using to orient themselves.”

In the field, Dr. Dacke says she has seen beetles run into trouble when the Milky Way lies flat on the horizon at particular times of the year. And, she suspects, many other creatures might be similarly affected.

For centuries, scientists have maintained that distant stars are too far away to have any measurable impact on earth. But mounting evidence from the biological sciences suggests an unknown mechanism does in fact appear to be at work forming consequential connections between an omnipresent cosmos and organic life on the planet.

It’s an oddity but also a mystery that lends at least a modicum of support for claims astrologers have been making since the dawn of civilization. That is, one doesn’t actually need to see or tactilely feel the stars in order to be guided by them.

Thanks to the 20th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in 1933, the President’s term begins at noon on January 20th. Before this change the term began on March 4.

“Many people know that January 20th is the first day that the sun enters the astrological sign of Aquarius. But they may not realize that the actual time the sun enters the sign varies a bit each year and also depends on where someone is on the planet when the event occurs,” astrologer Armand Diaz explains.

This year, for example, the sun entered Aquarius at 4:51 p.m. EST on January 19^th.  Last year it entered the sign of the Water Bearer on January 20th at 11:09 a.m. EST.

“Setting the date for January 20th at noon Eastern Time virtually ensures that the sun will be in Aquarius when the U.S. President is sworn in,” Diaz says.

It’s possible but rare that the sun would still be lingering in Capricorn on January 20th at noon Eastern Standard Time. This happened in 2004 but has never happened on the day of a President’s inauguration.

There will be a close call on Inauguration Day in 2049. The sun will start this day in Capricorn but by noon will have nudged into the sign of Aquarius in the nation‘s capitol.

“Astrologers would see this as significant, because the moon was in Aquarius on July 4th, 1776,” Diaz points out.

“In the horoscope of a country, the moon is said to represent the people and Aquarius is seen as a progressive, principled sign often associated with democracy. It therefore seems very appropriate that the President take the oath of office when the sun – representing leadership – is in this sign.

“It’s probably coincidental, but then astrology is based on coincidence – meaningful coincidence,” he said. 

Diaz believes another astrological coincidence that happened around this time is worth noting.  In order to help the economy in 1939, President Roosevelt moved the U.S. Thanksgiving Day to the fourth Thursday in November from the last Thursday in the month – a change that became permanent in 1941.

Although the holiday may come earlier (the fourth Thursday can also be the last Thursday), the earliest Thanksgiving will be celebrated is on November 22^nd.   This places the sun right at the start of the sign Sagittarius, “which most astrologers take to be the ascendant or rising sign of the United States,” he said.

“The rising sign is the sign that is on the Eastern horizon at sunrise and is believed by astrologers to be embedded in the country’s collective psyche.  Sagittarius is Jupiter’s sign and is identified with hope as well as a bit of naiveté,” he said.

Astrologer Barbara Schermer says the Mercury retrograde phenomenon was clearly a factor on Election Day in 2000. In a tight race bedeviled by voting irregularities and delays, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to halt a recount of ballots in Florida that had been ordered earlier by jurists in the state.

The higher court’s historic decision cleared the way for George W. Bush to win Florida’s Electoral College delegates and pushed the candidate over the top in the national race. But the spectacle witnessed live on TV by the millions of Americans was hardly an inspiring portrait of democracy in action.

The indelible memory many have of this Election Day debacle is of election judges pouring over thousands of paper ballots abused by cranky voting machines. The judges were tasked with the insane job of deciphering voter intent by counting hanging “chads” that were insufficiently punched out on some Florida ballots, Schermer said.

Earlier this year, the astrological community warned that a similar celestial event was once again lining up for Election Day in 2012 – for only the second time in modern history. Mercury was set to station (stop) on Election Day in the fiery sign of Sagittarius and begin its retrograde motion when the polls closed.

“There were concerns because we remembered what a mess the 2000 election turned out to be,” she said.

Planet is the word ancient Greeks used for the “wandering stars” they observed contrarily moving at different speeds – and at times in different directions – through a firmament bedazzled by less adventurous fixed stars.

What the ancients didn’t realize is that the retrograde motion they were observing was an astronomical illusion created by the vast and varying distances separating earth and its solar system neighbors. From an earthly perspective, observed direction changes appear to occur when the earth passes slower moving outer planets – or when faster moving inner planets appear to overtake the earth – as the earth elliptically orbits the sun.

Less easy to explain is why retrograde motion changes the way we experience archetypal planetary energies, Schermer says.

Messenger of the Gods…

To the ancients, fast-moving Mercury was the revered “Messenger of the Gods.” Today the planet is intellectually identified with such things as mental acuity, flexibility and duality and is said to influence speech, writing, mathematical reckoning, information technologies and communications devices of all kinds.

When retrograde, Mercury is well suited for reflection or for planning or strategizing. But under this influence human behavior becomes more quirky or mistake prone with problematic delays, uncertainty, false starts, miscommunication, miscalculations and the frustrating need to do things over.

Mercury’s reputation as a trickster was largely earned during those times of the year when the planet is retrograde. Anything hastily built on an unstable platform is especially vulnerable, Schermer said.

On Election Day 2012 there were no hanging chads to count on Florida ballots or need to ask the highest court in the land to step up and decide a winner. Florida election officials did need an extra day to tally statewide results, but by then the race had already been decided in other battleground states in favor of the incumbent.

Voters did suffer the indignity of having to wait in long lines to reach polling booths in some states. But this development might as easily be attributed to deliberate efforts aimed at frustrating voter turnout and didn’t seem to produce the desired result.

To everyone’s surprise, the networks were able to call the race much sooner than expected. The losing campaign was so stunned by this unanticipated development it delayed conceding the election for more than 90 minutes after the outcome was obvious to everyone else.

Schermer says Mercury doesn’t take sides in political elections. But as a harbinger of things to come, technical glitches and communications snafus did appear to dog the Republicans throughout the campaign.

There was the surreptitious taping of a fund-raising pitch to well heeled supporters that was said to hurt the challenger’s chances with ordinary voters. But the cruelest blow to the campaign was delivered on Election Day when the GOP rolled out an IT system that campaign organizers believed would give the challenger an electronic equalizer to combat President Obama’s vaunted ground game.

Called Orca, the system was named for the killer whale and was supposed to give the Romney campaign its own analytics on what was happening at polling places. Also, it was expected to aid get-out-the-vote efforts in key battle ground states.

The goal was to put a mobile application in the hands of 37,000 volunteers in swing states to help them track activity at the polls. The information provided was to be monitored and analyzed by more than 800 volunteers at campaign headquarters in Boston.

“Obviously, the candidate neglected to seek the advice of a competent astrologer. The system wasn’t beta tested until election day – the worst possible timing for this sort of thing,” Schermer said.

Thanks to a series of deployment blunders and network and system failures, Orca performed more like a floundering minnow. On the morning of the election 37,000 enthusiastic volunteers were left without communications or instructions for what to do.

“That’s pure Mercury retrograde in my opinion,” she added.

Editor’s Note: You can read more about this subject in Chris Brennan’s Political Astrology Blog
and the arstechnica.com website.

If we lived on Mercury there would be times when the earth appears to be traveling in the wrong direction as well.
It’s called retrograde motion. And it took ages for sky watchers to figure out they were dealing with an astronomical illusion.

The reason why distant orbiting planets appear to travel through the zodiac at different speeds – and at times in opposite directions – has to do with orbital proximity. And the fact we’re observing our solar system neighbors from a rotating platform that also is hurtling through space.

Retrograde planets have been likened to two cars traveling in the same direction on a highway in the fast and slow lanes. The slower car is still moving forward but as the faster car speeds by the slower car appears to be traveling backwards in the fast car driver’s rear view mirror.

Astrologers have studied the retrograde phenomenon for centuries and claim it messes with the traditional archetypal meanings associated with the planets, astrologer Chris Brennan explains.

In a column posted on The Political Astrology Blog, Brennan says astrologers associate fast-moving Mercury with mental acuity and duality. Among the things the planet influences are speech, writing, technology and the reckoning of numbers.

When retrograde, Mercury is associated with uncertainty, delays, false starts, miscommunication, miscalculation and the need to do things over, he said.

Brennan describes the problem that occurred on inauguration day 2009 when President Obama was being sworn into office by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts during a Mercury retrograde transit. Roberts messed up his lines and had to return to the White House the next evening to repeat the swearing-in ceremony that made the change-over official.

This may seem like a small act but from an astrological perspective it changed the timing and therefore the trajectory of the Obama Presidency.

Mercury is retrograde for periods lasting several days about three times a year. However, the planet has been retrograde on Election Day only three times before in recent U.S. history – in 1960, 1980 and again in the year 2000.

Brennan says the monumental “hanging chads” debacle in Florida on Election Day 2000 provides a classic example of what can go wrong with Mercury retrograde in the heavens. In this instance cranky punch-card machines failed to properly tally votes, effectively disenfranchising many voters in the state.

With Democrats crying foul the U.S. Supreme Court listened to arguments but voted to vacate an earlier Florida Supreme Court decision calling for a recount. This handed the state’s 25 disputed Electoral College delegates to George W. Bush, pushing his candidacy over the top in a tight election.

In Roman mythology, Mercury is the god of commerce, travel and thievery. After the 1960 election that sent Richard Nixon packing and John F. Kennedy to the White House it was the Republicans claiming the other party “stole” the election.

“The 1960 election was the closest in the 20th century with Kennedy winning the popular vote by a slim .01 percent margin. There were widespread issues with voter fraud, which may have decided the outcome,” Brennan said.

Mercury was also retrograde during the 2010 parliamentary election in Australia. This contest ended in a virtual tie that eventually was resolved in favor of incumbent Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

What’s interesting in this example is the uncanny parallel between the Australian election and what the U.S. electorate can look forward to on November 6, Brennan says.

On the day Ausies went to the polls Mercury stationed and went retrograde, just as it will on Election Day in the U.S. this year. Weeks later the outcome in Australia remained uncertain and the Prime Minister wasn’t sworn in until Mercury stationed and started to move forward again.

“Ominous in the build-up to Election Day in the U.S. are reports of potential legal battles over voting ID laws in several states that could lead to delays in determining the outcome in a tight race,” he added.

Brennan’s blog can be read here.

Is this what they call a harmonic convergence? Is the moon in the seventh house – or perhaps Mercury’s in retrograde? (I forget, honestly, if those things are bad, or good.)

Either way, it seems like the stars are aligning to tell us to lie back, consider the mysteries of the zodiac, and dig some psychedelic sounds from the spaceways with this hour-long playlist – bookended, of course, by two cuts from Sun Ra, the most famous American musician to actually come from outer space (Saturn, to be exact.)

Click the link to listen to the playlist “Ain’t No Particular Sign I’m More Compatible With” on Spotify.

Oh, and what’s your sign?

1. Planet Earth – The Sun Ra Arkestra

2. Born Under A Bad Sign – William Bell

3. Readings In Astrology – Curtis Mayfield

4. No Matter What Sign You Are – The Supremes

5. I Am The Black Gold Of The Sun – The Rotary Connection

6. Age of Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In – The Fifth Dimension

7. Scorpio – Dennis Coffey

8. Venus – Shocking Blue

9. Third Stone From The Sun – The Jimi Hendrix Experience

10. Capricorn – Miles Davis Quintet

11. Space is the Place – The Sun Ra Arkestra

Originally published: http://www.nola.com/music/index.ssf/2012/06/in_honor_of_the_transit_of_ven.html