Astrology Study Successfully Picks Presidential Winners and Losers
By Edward Snow
Nina Gryphon read her first astrology book at age 10 while living in her native Czechoslovakia. Today, at 31, she is an internationally known astrologer, investor and corporate attorney in the high-tech industry who lives in Chicago.
Her fascination with astrology has never waned.
Gryphon moved with her family to Seattle as a pre-teen and later earned a BA, MA and JD law degree from Stanford University in California. She continued to study traditional astrology even while attending law school.
In addition to work with clients she has taught classes on a variety of astrological subjects, including how to use astrology to elect favorable times for business and investing. Her astrological predictions have appeared in USA Today, Associated Press, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, Sina.com, Times of India and other publications.
Gryphon recently completed a mundane research study that successfully pointed to winners in U.S. Presidential elections dating to 1880 with uncanny accuracy. At the United Astrology Congress (UAC) earlier this year, she was one of five astrologers on a panel of experts asked to predict the outcome for the 2012 Presidential election in the U.S. All predicted that President Obama would be successful in his bid to win four more years in the White House.
In making her call, Gryphon used the same technique and rules she successfully applied in her study of earlier U.S. elections, including President Obama’s victory in 2008. But she doesn’t believe the research broke any new ground.
“At its core, the concepts used to evaluate the political climate for winners and losers was first set down in writing by the Sumerians four millennia ago and, in all likelihood, dates back much farther than that,” she explained.
The ancient predictive technique used by Gryphon is keyed to interpreting what astrologers call an Aries ingress chart. Simply, this is a birth chart or horoscope created for the exact time the Sun enters the astrological sign of Aries and can be prepared for any location on earth, including Washington D.C.
Ancient astrologers used Aries ingress charts to predict the fortunes of kings in power and those who might challenge or threaten the throne. Gryphon reasoned that a similar situation might be set up when titans from the major political parties battled for political supremacy. It was her idea that ingress charts prepared for the capital city during an election year should reveal something meaningful about the candidates over the next 12 months.
“The ancients thought of the Spring Equinox – when the Sun arrived at zero degrees of Aries – as the yearly anniversary of the creation of the Universe, the first moment of its existence containing the seeds of the future unfolding through time. The Persians still celebrate this day as Nowruz, the New Year. So it is a theory with a respectable pedigree and is worthy of examination,” she said.
In the Aries ingress chart, specific rules regarding layout of the astrological map and the planetary patterns within it apply. In her study, Gryphon analyzed results for 32 elections held over the132-year period. A more detailed explanation of the research can be found here.
In an interview with the Astrology News Service (ANS) she provided these additional insights:
ANS: Was it especially challenging to apply ancient astrological rules and techniques to events in the modern world?
Gryphon: After examining a few horoscopes I found a consistent pattern. In the Aries ingress charts, the planets of the winning party were found to have a connection with other strongly placed planets, whereas the losing party’s planets were either not doing anything or were being actively harmed by other planets. This is extremely basic astrology.
When I started doing the horoscopes the first rules I applied worked on about 80 percent of the charts. But it was clear I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. I took some time off and came back to all the horoscopes with a less expectant attitude. And more of the rules underlying the remaining 20 percent (of the charts) gradually began to reveal themselves. Given a random horoscope from my sample, I’m now able to predict the outcome correctly 90 to 95 percent of the time. Any lack of accuracy I attribute to operator error.
ANS: Have you been able to test the technique elsewhere?
Gryphon: Earlier this year, when Francois Hollande defeated Nicolas Sarkozy in France, I used the rules and technique from the study to predict Hollande would be the winner. This prediction was reported in advance in the monthly Gryphon Astrology Newsletter. With so many past and present elections in the offing the theory clearly is testable.
ANS: What is the climate for astrology like on college campuses these days?
Gryphon: Historically, astrology has flourished at times when culture and economic prosperity was at an apex – the Italian Renaissance, the Arab advancement of science, mathematics and culture, the Elizabethan era in England, and so on. We in the West have just lived through a period like this, the second half of the 20th Century, and Western astrology has been immensely enriched as a result.
Unfortunately, due to the economic situation, students today are probably less likely to explore ideas they do not see preparing them for the task of earning a living. My hope is that there is sufficient momentum in astrology – and a sufficient number of young people entering the astrology world.
ANS: What about the corporate world. How is astrology doing with business people?
Gryphon: In my experience there is a great demand for astrological advice in the financial and corporate worlds; one simply has to speak the right language. In any highly competitive sphere, people want to gain an edge over the competition. Our earliest texts indicate that astrology was developed to advise the rich and powerful. The early Babylonians spent considerable time watching the Sun and Venus specifically for information about the political and economic situation in their land. This is one application for astrology that does not get much play in the public eye, yet is extremely useful and very frequently used.
Many use astrology yet few will admit it publicly, partly because it is socially unacceptable to speak against the prevailing scientism but also because no one wants to give away their advantage. I’ve come to realize we live in two overlapping worlds. There’s the world described in our public discourse, such as the news media, where things are portrayed as rational, scientific and measurable. And there’s the world we actually live in, which motivates our decisions and which is far richer, more complicated and filled with things reason cannot explain. Astrology brings together reason and instinct to help us function in the realm of our choice.
ANS: You have a law degree. If you were to defend astrological truth claims in a court of law what might your best legal arguments be?
Gryphon: Any lawyer or politician will tell you that to win an argument one must be in control of definitions. The naming of things defines our reality, and thus contains great power. The first task, then, is to define “astrology” in such a way that gives us a chance defending its truth before an imagined objective court. So I would exclude from our definition astrology packaged as entertainment, such as mass media astrology columns. While these predictions may be entertaining, I would not be prepared to defend their accuracy in a court of law.
A working definition of astrology for our case could be: “A means of using celestial bodies to forecast future events.” If we can convince our judge to use our definition, and prove that astrology can perform according to its definition, then we will have won. If astrology can do better at predicting than its mainstream equivalent, this would be an added bonus.
Of course, astrology can be used for much more than just prediction, but predictions are easy to verify. So, our argument would rest upon being able to show that astrology is right a certain percentage of the time in a relatively unambiguous field, such as weather forecasting. Astro-meteorology has an illustrious history, with practitioners as well known as Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. And there are many fine astro-meteorologists carrying on their work today. The added benefit of predicting the weather is that we can compare astrologers’ results with those of mainstream meteorologists. If astrology does better than the meteorologists, which I believe would be the case given the skilled practitioners, astrology would stand alone among the sciences. In either case, a world-view revision would be in order.
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Category: Interviews
Tags: ancient Sumerians, Aries ingress charts, birth charts, Nina Gryphon, President Obama, Presidential elections, Stanford University