It is the talk in Vavunia that an astrologer has sent a mantra through a gentleman from Colombo. This is how the gentleman chanted it for the people’s enjoyment:

Po da Mahinda po da!
Po da Basil po da!
Po da Rishad po da !

Won’t it be a lucrative business if you distributed t-shirts with the above mantra imprinted!

Caesar himself did not believe in astrology, but his successor, Augustus, did. He had coins printed with his astrological sign (Capricorn) on them, but had little involvement with astrologers for fear of public ridicule. Tiberius, Augustus’s successor, knew how to interpret horoscopes and kept Thrasyllus, an astrologer, as his advisor. Tiberius’ successor, Claudius, kept Thrasyllus’s son, Balbillus, as his astrologer. John Dee was a famous astrologer and had as his most famous client Queen Elizabeth. However, when he created a horoscope for Queen Mary’s half-sister, Princess Elizabeth, Dee was briefly imprisoned in 1555 for witchcraft and sorcery.

Nancy Regan used Nancy Reagan used astrologer Joan Quigley to help plan the president’s schedule of activities. Wilhelm Theodor H. Wulff was a German astrologer was required to work on the Ahnenerbe project, project founded by Nazi’s like Heinrich Himmler, commander of the Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS. After Himmler defected Hitler ordered Gastapo arrest for misguiding Himmler. Many believe Karl Ernst Krafft was Hilters astrologer. Krafft too was arrested after Hess’ flight and he spent a year in prison.

Thank you for the Hilarious posting… I just could not help writing this. Just for fun…please

Throughout history astrology has been used to determine if a king should go into war or if a country will have a financially successful year. If the astrologer was wrong, they would be killed or suffer some horrible punishment, either way their astrology career would be over. In 1556 Nostradamus so popular with the French ruling class, later he fell out of favor and was accused of witchcraft. John Dee was a famous astrologer and had as his most famous client Queen Elizabeth. So was Napoleon when his future looks bleak. Napoleon was a Leo.

Many of the powerful characters in Shakespeare, who were surrogates for rulers’ during Elizabethan time, have plenty to do with astrology. (and provides good insights for today)

The setting of the King Lear was in a time of remote antiquity where society is still quite barbaric and brutality was common. King Lear sinned knowingly and scoffed at the stars. Although Lear provided so many things to his family and supporters, but he could never rely on them. Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest defied the stars and then used them to his benefit. Romeo believed the poison from the apothecary was the only thing that would “shake the yoke of inauspicious stars” from his “world-wearied flesh.” Anthony, in Julius Caesar, attributed his first defeat to the fact that the stars had forsaken him, blaming the moon’s eclipse for his ultimate fall. All these characteristics personify MR (I mean the Majestic Ruler)

Especially, King Lear is about a king who mismanaged kingdom, where immorality, betrayal, civil strife and expectation of foreign intervention were omnipresent and the political landscape was beset by intrigue and domestic and foreign intruders. So he was drawn to astrology, ofcourse somewhat cynically.

Following two scenes are pretty insightful.

In the tragedy King Lear, astrology is used to even greater effect. Gloucester first raises the issue of astrology:

Gloucester. These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us. Though the wisdom of nature can reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself scourg’d by the sequent effects. Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide. In cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond crack’d ‘twixt son and father. This villain of mine comes under the prediction; there’s son against father: the King falls from bias of nature; there’s father against child. We have seen the best of our time. Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders follow us disquietly to our graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the noble and true-hearted Kent banish’d! his offence, honesty! ‘Tis strange.

But Gloucester’s illegitimate son, Edmund, has a different take on astrology. He doesn’t believe in, understand, or respect astrology.

Edmund. This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, often the surfeit of our own behaviour, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical pre-dominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforc’d obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whore-master man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon’s Tail, and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

Cheers
Jude

On a serious note, i think this business of election astrology sucks. One should arrive at rational decisions based on past performance, trend analysis etc.. Nonethless i have very little to hope for (logically that is), so like you suggest i’m wishing stars will bring some luck…… And when we lose, let’s blame it on the stars !