While many astrologers are understandably reluctant to wade into the current house system debate, Capricorn Research has got his full scuba gear on. 

But while the big personalities are engaged in an argument about who is the oldest, I want to dive deep to see if there’s anything worth salvaging from the wreckage. 

And speaking of which, where better to start than with the chart of the capsized monster himself ?

There has seldom been a figure that polarised opinions more than Donald Trump, which is probably due to his own very close opposition between the Gemini Sun and Sagittarius Moon. 

This is particularly true in the astrology community who cannot even agree on which houses his lights fall in. 

Trump’s Ascendant is in the final two minutes of Leo.

This means that the difference between the Placidus and Whole Sign versions of his chart are about as big as it’s possible to have.

Which also means that he is a very good test case for the merits of these competing house systems.

Followers of Whole Sign House would argue that an 11th house Sun fits better because its the house of political ideas.

Well it would if it wasn’t for the well recognised fact that Donald Trump doesn’t actually have any, in fact he is not really a politician at all, he is a businessman, a classic 10th house character whose powerful desire to reach the top of the money tree has pushed him to try his luck at the Presidency.

That and the fact that his sun’s trine to Jupiter in the Placidus 2nd house together with the sextile from a 4th house Moon shows how much booty he has pillaged from his many and varied ( Gemini ) business ( 10th house ) practices and his family inheritance ( 4th ).

Another observation put forward by the WSH camp is how can such an obvious Martian as Trump have a 12th house Mars.

Again that might be a fair point apart from the fact that a planet 3 degrees from the Ascendant is generally recognised to be conjunct it and so Placidus would give him Mars rising rather than 26 degrees away down the 1st house.

But these kind of arguments, however persuasive are still in the relatively subjective areas of character where so many astrologers love to hawk their trade.

Capricorn Research prefers to deal with indisputable facts. 

And the one fact that so many of us are deeply regretting but cannot deny is that Donald Trump was elected the most powerful man on Earth in November 2016.

The transits were self evident.

Whatever house system you use there’s no denying the fact that Trump has the Sun conjunct Uranus and trine Jupiter.

And that his inauguration as President occurred with a Jupiter Return and Uranus sextile his Sun and trine his Moon.

The Secondary Progressions were once in a lifetime.

By far the most important of these are the Progressed Sun and owing to its motion it will only make one major aspect with any placement in a chart over a 90 year lifespan.

Donald Trump’s Progressed Sun in 2016 was conjunct his Ascendant, without doubt the most powerful progression of his life.

But it’s understandable that Whole Sign House lovers would have missed this fact owing to their insistence on putting the Ascendant beneath the horizon, almost 30 degrees below the start of their 1st house.

After all the traditionalists make great play on sticking with the visible planets. This is why they consistently miss out on overwhelming power of the transits of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto

So for Trump’s Leo Ascendant, it’s a case of out of sight out of mind.

It’s a classic piece of denial of the obvious that the man himself would have been proud of. 

So if you are going to ignore the most powerful progression of Donald Trump’s life and the immensely favourable transit of the one slow mover that was conjunct his 10th house Sun, what possible method can you have left ?

One thing you can say about Whole Sign Housers is they like their astrology to be simple, elegant and exact. If you wished to you could call them Profectionists.

If you did that, however you would be just enrolling in astrology kindergarten.

Their method of annual profections where the first year of life corresponds to the first house etc is much trumpeted but hardly ever subjected to any kind of rational analysis.

There are so many absurdities, it’s hard to know where to start. I would just say that if everyone was more likely to get married in their 19th or 31st years, I feel the rest of the world might have noticed this.

But no, their followers are too busy posting stuff like ” its my 4th house protection year and I just bought a new house – jeez those Greeks eh “.

My response would be ” well I hope that house is big enough because next year you’ll have a kid, but you’ll also need a nanny because you’ll be ill the following year, never mind you can get rid of her the year after because you’ll be married by then. Sadly the year after that you’ll be dead, but it will be your child’s 4th house year so at least he’ll inherit your house ”

The 2016 election occurred when Donald Trump was 70, so by this method that year is an 11th house one.

Which you might think could tempt them into predicting him to win a political election.

But of course they didn’t.

Chris Brennan, Patrick Watson, Gregory Clare and Tania Daniels all using Hellenistic / traditional methods predicted a Hilary Clinton victory in November 2016. To my knowledge, no-one using Hellenistic astrology predicted a Trump win.

This is because out of sympathy with their Ancient Greek forebears, they refuse to give the due credit to the monumentally important transits of the outer planets purely because they hadn’t been discovered back then.

And to compensate for deliberately hampering their serious event prediction capacity by as much as 60%, they come up with all kinds of things that don’t actually exist.

This they quaintly call Zodiacal Releasing which seems to place an inordinate amount of faith on what used to be called the Arabian Parts but are now referred to as the Lots.

There are many of these, but the chief ones for consideration are the Lots of Fortune and Spirit.

Just to remind readers that these Lots don’t actually exist, they are empty points in space which are arrived at by a convoluted method of adding the degree positions of the lights together and subtracting the number you first thought of.

They do it one way for Fortune and the opposite way for Spirit and then just because they feel like it, reverse these formulas if you committed the cardinal sin of being born during the night.

If I get a prediction wrong, my first response is to review my basic method to see if adjustment is needed in order to improve my accuracy in the future.

I assumed that most people would adopt a similar policy. However I realise that is because I am a pragmatic Capricorn and astrologers with Fixed sign emphasis are far less likely to respond in this way.

One with Sun, Moon and Ascendant all in Fixed signs still claims to this day that Trump gave us the wrong birth time despite the fact that the above one describes this dickhead to an absolute tee, even including his appearance ( think Mars – red in Leo – yellow on the Ascendant = orange skin ).

Also it is fair to point out that this person’s prediction was made based on the above chart ( not some other one ) so even if Trump’s birthtime was fake news, this is not actually an excuse a wrong prediction.

The Hellenistic astrologer with the biggest profile has simply refused to address his method’s failure to predict the Trump Presidency, which given its importance to the future of his country, does not exactly inspire people with confidence about its ability to deliver in the future.

Chris Brennan has simply doubled down on his method insisting it was the same one that paid off so handsomely for Ancient Greeks.

To be fair Patrick Watson has attempted to address the method’s failure and come up with the cute explanation that they were reading the Lots upside down at the time.

So basically they would have predicted a two horse race correctly if they had chosen the other one.

I don’t wish to say that Hellenistic astrologers were the only ones to get the 2016 election wrong.

Many astrologers made predictions using all kinds of different methods and there were more misses than hits.

In fact only 34 out of 90 astrologers who were prepared to make public predictions did get it right which is a pretty poor result for astrology.

And I feel that quite a few of these must have been Trump supporters looking for heavenly support for their chosen one. Because only 5 of them got both Donald in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. 

Obviously I got both. I can see what transit Neptune square your Sun and Moon means, just as easily as I can with Jupiter and Uranus trine them. 

One astrologer who also predicted a Clinton victory responded by suggesting that my correct prediction meant I wanted to be treated like some latter day Nostradamus. 

Not so. I would never want to be associated with someone whose “ predictions “ were deliberately vague and open so that virtually anything could be claimed from them as a result. 

One thing we can probably say for sure about Nostradamus is he never won a 40 / 1 wager on any one of his visions by backing his preference 18 months before the event as I did on Donald Trump in June 2015 when he was a mere peripheral figure in the Republican caucuses. 

Any new readers may be thinking why is this guy making so much of this one prediction. Surely any system should be allowed the occasional error without the need to dismantle it ?

I would be the first to agree with that statement, but this isn’t an isolated failing for the Whole Sign House method.

I have tracked back over all the US Presidential elections since JFK in 1960.

I can honestly say that I would have predicted 8 of the 9 that have been held in that time and I also think I may well have got the 9th as well based purely on the transits of the outer planets alone.

I also believe that a traditional astrologer using WSH and profections as their main guide would have failed to pick more than 2 of them with any confidence.

For a more detailed breakdown of these elections see Electing the President – Profection Or Perfection

So what can we conclude from all this ?

The simple fact is that House Systems are very important in astrology, particularly when your method of prediction is so tightly linked to them.

If you are going to use something like profections with the dominant house changing every year you would think it very important to start your houses in the right place.

Because as with the Donald Trump example, for someone with an Ascendant at 29.58 of a sign, even making the dubious assumption that there is merit in the basic method, you are going to get it wrong every single year.

As for the Lots, it’s clear that the Hellenists have read a lot of old books.

Maybe there is one important one they have missed though because every schoolkid knows that there was a character called Lot in the Bible.

His story is recounted in Genesis 19: 1–38. Lot, his wife and two daughters were visited by two angels who urged them to flee the city of Sodom before its imminent destruction by God. As they fled, Lot’s wife disobeyed the angels’ command to not look back and was turned into a pillar of salt.

It’s fair to say that much of the Bible was written as an allegory rather than a pure historical account. This story is advising people that its not good to look back to the past, much better to leave it behind with your eyes firmly on the future.

And these days we have telescopes so we can actually see Uranus, Neptune and Pluto rather than have to rely on dumb ancient formulas to find our way.

So if you don’t wish your predictions to crumble into a pillar of salt, probably best to ditch this astro Hell-inism.

Maybe just pick a house system. Any house system will do. Just not a sign system like WSH.

So how would the great gods of WSH respond to this article ?

I would be very happy to discuss any of these issues with anyone, particularly the astrologers named in this article, but that’s unlikely to happen.

It’s pretty clear they aren’t down in the depths investigating this wreckage. They stayed in the boat and definitely don’t want me to surface with my findings to share them with the people from their town.

The Whole Sign gurus maybe a bit astrologically naive but they’re not stupid.

The have long since realised that the best way for them to deal with a Capricorn Research investigation is to block my supply and cut off the oxygen. 

Posted on February 18th 2023

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