Mundane Astrology a Critique by James Braha

[NOTE: Please post the horoscope above on your wall for several weeks and look at it often, contemplating the information below. By dispelling astrological myths, we strengthen the world of astrology and give less ammunition to critics.]
Mundane astrology is concerned with the fate of nations and the world at large. There are no mundane astrologers in the world today who obtain anywhere near consistent accuracy. That’s right, none. If there were, they would be wealthy beyond belief, because they could predict giant financial fluctuations. They would also be famous the world over for obvious reasons.

And yet, when planets form rare combinations, astrologers always make dramatic and sweeping statements to anyone who will listen (and plenty do!). The so-called Harmonic Convergence—heralded as the harbinger of world peace—during August 1987, when eight planets formed a “grand trine” that was supposed to change the world, in fact produced nothing. A major shift from “hellish energies to harmony and cooperation” was supposed to result from the rare grand trine. According to Wikipedia, the “astrological interpretation” was that “The convergence is purported to have corresponded with a great shift in the earth’s energy from warlike to peace.” Blah blah blah. Despite the fact that the planets were so special and wonderful (trines in Western astrology represent the most positive and free flowing energies), the world for the 34 years following the convergence has been as warlike and quarrelsome as ever. Well, let’s be honest, it’s actually been worse. The convergence actually predates September 11th, 2001, the day of the New York City World Trade Center bombings, which dramatically worsened world conditions.

Likewise, the coming “New Age of Aquarius” that astrologers said was dawning in the 1960s and was going to bring an age of harmony and peace instead gave us endless wars and the worst global political situation I’ve ever seen. More nonsense.

The fact that in 2019 or 2020, no astrologer went on the news or alerted governments to a coming worldwide pandemic was no surprise to me. When YouTube astrology hosts asked me to predict when the pandemic would end, I always made the same joke, “That’s so easy. All you have to do is find the astrologers who predicted the pandemic and ask them for the answer.” Of course there were no astrologers who predicted it. No matter what anyone claims, no astrologer shouted from rooftops or tried to alert governments what was about to happen.

Every 5, 10, or 15 years astrologers announce that some planetary formation that hasn’t occurred in centuries will alter the world forever. The problem is that aside from some dramatic events in a few countries here and there, which happens constantly anyway, nothing happens. In my early years of practice, I was as fascinated and gullible as everyone else. Indeed, I even used the term “The New Age of Aquarius” in the Introduction of my first book, Ancient Hindu Astrology for the Modern Western Astrologer. I removed it in the 2020 Revised and Expanded edition, with a tinge of embarrassment I might add.

When I attended Vedic astrology conferences in the 1990s and beyond, I couldn’t wait to hear the annual lectures titled “Predictions for Next Year.” However, the prognostications always failed, especially the more dramatic ones. There was always a giant stock crash coming, a great political event, or some such exciting circumstance around the corner. And when, after five or ten years of making the same prediction, it finally succeeded, the astrologer would prominently announce it on his or her resume, ignoring all their previously failed predictions. Remember the old saying, “Even a stopped clock is accurate twice every 24 hours?”

Within a decade or two, after such disappointment, I became thoroughly skeptical of the worldly predictions astrologers based on rare planetary combinations.

The most famous and relatively accurate mundane astrologer in my lifetime was Jeane Dixon. She was very psychic and likely got more predictive information from her intuitive talents than from the planets. She used both, though, and maintained her own astrology newspaper column. During the 1960s and 1970s, Dixon made many famous and profound predictions, while also making just as many (actually more) that failed entirely. In 1956 she wrote that the president elected in 1960 would be a democrat who would die in office (JFK was elected in 1960 and was assassinated in 1963). However, in 1960, before the election, she reversed that forecast and said Richard Nixon would win the presidency.

She also wrongly claimed that cancer would be cured in 1967. Indeed, Wikipedia states that “John Allen Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, coined the term “The Jeane Dixon Effect,” which references a tendency to promote a few correct predictions while ignoring a larger number of incorrect predictions.” This is exactly what I have noticed in the world of mundane astrology.

To this day, though, Jeane Dixon appears to have made more dramatically accurate predictions than anyone else, and has always had my respect. It’s true that Edgar Cayce made a phenomenal amount of accurate predictions, many more than Jeane Dixon or anyone else and without the huge number of wrong forecasts everyone else makes. However, he was not an astrologer. And, he wasn’t even a typical psychic or medium. According to biographies, early in life he had been knocked in the head with tremendous force (perhaps in his “third eye chakra”) and then began entering trances where he obtained all kinds of accurate medical knowledge and information about future events. Upon awakening from his trances, Cayce remembered nothing.

[NOTE: I grew up in North Miami Beach in the 1960s when Miami was an ordinary sized city, with nothing special whatsoever except its wonderful sunshine. Cayce, who died in 1945, predicted that Miami would one day become a giant international port with people flying in from all over the world. This was a rather far fetched prediction at the time, Miami being a small and quiet place, but it began taking shape in the 1970s and is now exactly what Cayce predicted it would be.]
I’m fully aware that to disparage mundane astrology is unpopular. However, facts are facts. Results speak for themselves. The best advice I can give, in order to save astrologers time and disappointment, is to seriously consider and ponder the planets on February 3rd, 1962. These positions are so bizarre and imbalanced that any astrologer with the slightest amount of knowledge would have expected something extraordinary, bizarre even, on that day or for the days, weeks, and months following. Indeed, there were no phenomenal results. Life continued the same as always.

On February 3rd, 1962, using sidereal positions for 12 Noon in Miami, Florida, Rahu occupied 24 degrees Cancer. The rest of the planets (not including Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, which most Jyotishis ignore) were all, yes all, in Capricorn. The planetary degrees were as follows: Moon 3, Mars 8, Saturn 10, Sun 21, Venus 22, Ketu 24, Jupiter 25, Mercury 25. Yes, these 8 planets were all in one sign, in Capricorn. Nothing happened. The world did not end. There was no worldwide upheaval, revolution, or catastrophe. There was no huge change in business activity or corporations (ruled by Capricorn). Draw the chart. Post it on your wall. Think about it. Ponder it. Leave it up and think about it some more.

As if these bizarre planetary positions weren’t enough, the day in question is more astrologically incredible for Western astrologers and anyone using the outer planets. Using sidereal positions, Uranus was 6 degrees Leo, Neptune 20 degrees Libra, and Pluto at 16 degrees Leo. This means that Neptune tightly squared Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, while Uranus formed quincunxes (150 degree aspects) with the Moon and Mars (quincunxes are bad aspects).

To be clear, I’m not saying that the planets on that day didn’t have any effect; just nothing remotely close to the kind of worldwide results that astrologers would expect or predict. And bear in mind that the positions on that day are profoundly more dramatic than all the other combinations astrologers rave about every 5 or 10 years.

Naturally, individual countries are affected by planetary positions because countries have birth times and therefore horoscopes. All horoscopes, personal or otherwise, are affected by transiting planets. Certainly some country like Pakistan or Sweden or Germany might have a major event within days of the planetary event. However, anyone expecting worldwide effects would have been sorely disappointed. Yet, it’s always worldly events that astrologers forecast during odd or exceptional planetary alignments.

One obvious problem with using planetary transits to predict worldwide effects is that there is no birth time for the world (that we are privy to), assuming the world’s birth time would help. The most we can do, from what I have seen, is note what happens when major planets enter signs. And even then, it’s difficult to know exactly what to predict. For example, the Covid pandemic occurred when Pluto entered sidereal Capricorn (February/March 2020). What does Pluto in Capricorn have to do with a deadly worldwide health issue? Does a pandemic occur every time Pluto enters that sign?

To be fair, and to consider every possibility, there was a major emergency in October 1962, eight months after the bizarre February planets, called the Cuban Missile Crisis, where the world came to the brink of nuclear war. Yes, eight months after one of the weirdest planetary alignments ever, a huge and frightening event that gripped the world occurred when Russia tried to install offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba, which from their view was perhaps considered a deterrent to a future U.S. invasion of the island nation—a country only 90 miles away from the U.S. mainland. Was this the result of those planets? Maybe. In fact, for argument’s sake, let’s say it is.

Even if this bizarre planetary alignment was the cause, though, is there anything about the February 1962 chart that could alert an astrologer to the nature of what would happen? Is there anything about that particular planetary arrangement that would tell us that a worldwide crisis would occur? And, that it would occur eight months later rather than in a few days or weeks? While I’m perfectly willing to accept that those planets are (possibly) connected to a monumental event that would happen much later, I’m not at all ready to say that an astrologer could use that chart to make an accurate prediction of what—and when—something would happen. Not at this point in our astrological understanding. Period. Full stop.

Please understand, I’m not saying that planets don’t have worldly effects. I am saying that in my lifetime I’ve not found any mundane astrologer able to produce anywhere near consistent predictive accuracy. Not 70%, not 50%, not 40%. Indeed, because of the incredibly poor track records of astrologers making mundane astrology predictions, my advice is that they should be ignored or, at best, seen as a curiosity.

[NOTE: In 1982, on my way to India, I stopped in Israel to visit a rabbi cousin of mine who ran a Yeshiva (orthodox Hebrew school). I spent a week there and met his young students. I had no knowledge of Jyotish at the time, but was obsessed with Western astrology, and was constantly discussing it. One day, a student said to me, “What do you know about February 3, 1962?” I was quite aware of the planets of that day and, stunned by his question, asked, “You’re not an astrologer, how do you know about that day?” He replied that it was his day of birth and that some New York astrologers had gotten the names of many children born that day in order to follow up on their lives. I was gobsmacked!
The student told me that by 1982, the results were that these 20-year- olds were plagued by vastly more troubles than their peers. They had much more drug addictions, behavioral problems, and other complexities than would be normally expected.]

Final Note: This is one of the longer sutras and is written for those rare astrologers who earnestly want to achieve predictive accuracy and are on a serious mission to find truth. For some who have already experienced and realized the terrible track record of mundane astrologers, and indeed most of mundane astrology itself, seeing these words in print may provide some comfort. Vashti, my wife, and I privately call what I have written “The Vashti Sutra,” because when I read it to her she was thrilled and grateful. She explained that for many years during her astrology studies before we met she had always gotten so excited about mundane astrology predictions and found it incredibly painful and disappointing when 95% of them failed. She’s happy to see the issue brought into the open.

One of the biggest issues within astrological practice, as already mentioned, is whether to use it as a religious belief system or as an experience based, factual phenomenon. Because the world is maya, a dream that appears and disappears, positively all experiences and views are valid. For those who consider astrology sacred and religious, hearing astrologers make mundane predictions, even when they fall completely flat, is thrilling. In the words of Mark Twain (from Huckleberry Finn), “You pays your money, you takes your choice.” Let the good times roll!