Out: Birth Certificate. In: Birth Horoscope!

Having settled the controversy over President Obama’s birth certificate, let us now turn to an even more important issue: his birth horoscope. Knowing the exact date, time and latitude of his birth allows us to chart the positions of the stars and planets at that exact moment, the better to understand his destiny according to the ancient methods (which were sophisticated nonsense long before today’s pop astrology was crude nonsense).

One of the pleasures of my undergraduate education was a freshman seminar on the history of astrology. Like other occult sciences, such as alchemy, astrology developed tools and knowledge that were the foundation of today’s empirical sciences, even if its ideas were ultimately discredited. In politics, astrologers were the pundits of their time–though their methods were quite different from what we find on horoscope pages today.

According to today’s pop astrology, for example, President Obama is a Leo because he was born on August 4. The ancients, however, would have considered him an Aquarius, because the point on the horizon at the moment of Obama’s birth–the ascendant–is in the 18th degree of Aquarius (each sign being divided into 30 degrees). Our first sixties-born president really was a child of the Age of Aquarius–astrologically, anyway.

The ancients would have placed great emphasis on the fact that Jupiter–signifying power, prosperity, and happiness–is in Obama’s ascendant sign, surely a sign of a successful political career. They would have noted, too, that Jupiter forms a trine aspect–that is, a 120-degree angle–with the moon, a feminine and fertile planet, presaging the Obamas’ success as a power couple–though perhaps lacking the romantic passion that a more favorable angle with Venus might have indicated.

What would have worried the astrologers of antiquity is the fact that Saturn–symbol of wisdom but also of solitude and melancholy–is almost on top of Jupiter, separated by only 5 degrees. That relationship–called a conjunction–has negative implications. It may explain President Obama’s aloof, arrogant style of leadership, or how a candidate who ran on “hope and change” could govern later through division and demagoguery.

Mars is in an interesting positon, forming a trine aspect with both Jupiter and Saturn. That is an accurate reflection of President Obama’s mixed fortunes as a wartime president–success in Iraq, stalemate in Afghanistan and Libya–and his contradictory foreign policy, which wavers between rhetorical support for democracy and appeasement of tyranny.

Both the sun and the planet Mercury were dipping below the western horizon at the moment of Obama’s birth–in polar opposition to Jupiter and Saturn, another negative relationship. That might signify the continued unpopularity of ObamaCare, since the sun is associated with health. It could suggest continued economic decline. Or it could mean that Obama’s gifts as an orator, embodied in Mercury the messenger, have their limits.

Does Obama’s birth horoscope predict a one-term presidency? If so, perhaps that’s the real reason he kept his “real” birth certificate a secret for so long. But there’s hope for the president yet. The ancients didn’t know anything about the modern planets Uranus and Neptune (and neither do I). Both occupy key positions in Obama’s chart–especially Neptune, near the Medium Coeli, or midheaven. Perhaps their subtle influence will win the day.