ISAR 2016, Penfield, WSJ, WAPO: What Even Is My Life Right Now

Now I realize you don’t read this blog to read about me, but so much has happened. So. Much. The past month has been the most surreal time in my life. First, a little history.

Back in April 2012 after I released my prediction with Chris Brennan that Obama would win the 2012 elections, we were approached by an ABC reporter Dana Hughes. She was asking about Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects in 2016. We were fairly confident, due to a number of factors, that if Hillary was born at 8 am that she would run.

I was pretty confident that she’d win, but the safer statement we decided to make is that she would at least run. Perhaps this wasn’t that risky of a prediction to make in hindsight, but at that point, Hillary was actively denying that she would run in 2016. I based this prediction on a pattern of important political developments occurring under the same Aquarius sub-periods for zodiacal releasing from the Lot of Spirit, including the 2016 election.

The ABC article got the attention of a few other outlets. It was covered on Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze, where one of their contributors mocked the idea that I can make astrological predictions about elections.

Today Clinton, for the 1 millionth time, said she’s not going to run for president. But here’s Patrick Watson and he knows otherwise. And he’s an astrologist, so he knoooows.

Astrologer. ಠ_ಠ And I don’t necessarily knooooow. It’s not a superpower, it’s trying to understand the significations of someone’s chart. It’s more like predicting the weather. “He’s a meteorologist, so he knoooows.” Blow me. Anyway.

More importantly, it got the attention of Fox News producers, who asked us to appear on TV. I nominated Chris to represent us, resulting in a totally surreal television appearance by Chris on Fox & Friends, answering questions on Hillary’s Zodiacal Releasing periods by the now-former host, Gretchen Carlson. Unsurprisingly, Fox News did not keep video of the exchange on their website, but Mediaite did. The 2012 election came and went, we got it right, and many other details of our prediction for Obama and Romney came to pass.

The Present Day, Crazy Stuff

4 years later, Hillary didn’t just run like we predicted, she is now on the verge of becoming the next President, and I think she will do it. We still don’t have totally reliable birth data for her, although I am of the mind she was born around 8 in the morning because reasons.

Out of the blue this summer, I was referred to Wall Street Journal reporter Yogita Patel who had been working on this story about Hillary Clinton’s birth data. I worked with her, told her what I knew, helped her out with understanding some things about astrology such as the houses and zodiacs issue. She did some great investigative reporting which basically uncovered that a lot of the sources for Hillary’s time were not legitimate or otherwise inconclusive, and that the most consistently recorded and most corroborated time is 8 pm, ahead of the few times 8 am has been reported.

In early August of this year, I heard rumors online that Marc Penfield had confirmed a 2:18 am time for Clinton. I noticed it was the same time Zayin Cohen had submitted on Astrodatabank. So I messaged Zayin Cohen. It did not go well. I didn’t think much more of it until ISAR blasted out an announcement saying Penfield had an AA rated time.

The announcement was messed up on three fronts: 1) They were purporting to withhold the birth time of HILLARY FUCKING CLINTON weeks before the election that could make her the next President, just to gin up publicity for the conference. 2) They were even going to withhold it from the prediction panelists making a prediction regarding this particular individual at their own conference. Granted, not all the panelists were using natal charts for their predictions, but still, not cool. 3) Since Illinois is a closed state, barring the unlikely possibility that Hillary shared her birth record with Penfield, it could not possibly be AA rated.

This was all met with swift outrage online. I called Marc Penfield kind of a jerk. After intense pressure, Penfield and ISAR decided to release it early. In the days before the announcement, I recorded a podcast with Chris Brennan recounting the story of Hillary’s birth time up to that point. On the same day, Yogita finally published her article on Hillary’s birth time in the Wall Street Journal. It came out really well, although not a lot of what I told her made it in for the sake of brevity. I was mentioned for having correctly predicted the 2012 election, so that was nice.

So they released a video in which Penfield claims to have Woodward-and-Bernstein’ed the time out of a state clerk in 2 minutes because he’s just so charming. And of course he cites Zayin Cohen for the original time which is like saying you got some good investment advice from a guy called Bernie Madoff. The online response seemed muted but skeptical. I called Marc Penfield’s claim a Japanese turdburger.

You have to know one other story about Zayin Cohen which is so completely insane it can hardly be believed. His wife Karen Victoria Cohen messaged Scottish astrologer Mark Cullen to tell him that Cohen would no longer be able to answer any questions about Hillary’s birth time because he has colon cancer. If you take a look at Ms. Cohen’s Facebook profile, you’ll see she has a totally not fake profile which was totally not created by Zayin himself. The purpose of these comments were totally not to stop people from pestering him with questions about his lies concerning Hillary’s birth certificate and birth time. Also, Ms. Cohen’s photos just happen to look exactly like two different models you can image search on Google in 10 seconds. I wish Zayin Cohen a speedy recovery from his cancer, but something tells me his colon is probably fine. I think the bigger problem is that his ass is where his mouth is.

Once more for all the people in the back – ZAYIN COHEN IS A DELUSIONAL LIAR AND PROBABLY HAS ACTUAL MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS. BEWARE. Cough, pardon me.

I did an interview with Eric Francis on his Planet Waves radio show about the kerfuffle (interview starts at 1:22:10 and goes to 1:45:48). On the same day, Justin Moyer from the Washington Post contacted me about Hillary’s birth time. He was unaware of the Wall Street Journal story. Chris Brennan let him know about the Penfield brouhaha, and I knew Steven Stuckey had Penfield’s number, so he passed it along, and once Penfield was confronted with a national reporter asking him point blank about his claims in the video he retracted his claim saying it was “a bit of an exaggeration” and that “it’s part of my personality”. When I read that I was all like:

So yeah he lied about confirming the 2:18 am time. Period. And his retraction isn’t a lie in order to protect anyone because the state of Illinois never took him seriously about breaking the law. Privacy laws are kind of hardcore in the state of Illinois. He’s a free man because his original claim was not true. Much better to be a liar than in prison. For everyone who was skeptical of Penfield’s claim, this is some vindication, although I’d much rather have Hillary’s real birth time than just knocking down fake ones.

ISAR 2016

So the Washington Post article with Penfield’s retraction came out during the week of the ISAR 2016 conference. One would think that this revelation would cause Ray Merriman and Shelley Ackerman to back down from the time, or formally acknowledge the error in some way. Instead they just kind of ignored it and still have not officially disavowed it, possibly wanting it to fade away in the mists of time. And hey, after this final victory lap I think we’re all ready to move on from this. I went over all the gory details of this story with Chris Brennan in a new podcast to capture the whole story on the record.

The conference itself was awesome because I got to see so many old and new friends. I also did my very first lecture, titled “Little Lots and Arabic Parts: Big Differences in Similar Charts”. It was pretty well attended, and I received many kind words about the speech. In retrospect it was a fairly ambitious topic – tackling a millennia-old skeptical argument against astrology via a very complicated Hellenistic timelord procedure in 45 minutes is a tall order. I tried to inject some humor into the proceedings given the dryness of the subject with a large side of gross-out humor, which I might have overplayed, but I’ll know for next time. All in all, not amazing, but not a total failure either. You can actually purchase the lecture from ISAR for $15, and you can access the slides here for free (although they may not make much sense without hearing the presentation).

I also owe a great deal of thanks to AYA, or the Association for Young Astrologers (cough, Austin Coppock) for sponsoring my talk and giving me the opportunity to speak at ISAR. I kind of forgot to thank them on the day of my speech and they didn’t let me forget it. Also, you should totally join the Association for Young Astrologers. No age limit. If you’re a more experienced astrologer, there are opportunities to help out the younger generation, and if you’re a young astrologer, they have a ton of great resources. Also they have a brand new President who is super cool, the brilliant Alia Wesala. Congrats Alia! Join today!

BUTTPLUG

I guess this is what happens when you’re in a Jupiter-ruled year while Uranus conjoins your Jupiter in the 9th. You make your first astrology lecture, get an unusual degree of attention in mainstream publications on arcane topics and you make good calls. Now I have to face down my Saturn return in 1 month in a Saturn-ruled year, and I can already see that it’s not going to be pleasant. You can help me make it a little more pleasant by supporting my work in astrology.

You might have noticed some of my articles have been password protected upon being published. My supporters on Patreon have a special password so that they can access new articles a day before everyone else does. If you’d like to get first dibs too, support me with just $1/article so I can keep doing my thang. There are other benefits with larger subscriptions, but I am just thrilled by the level of support I have already received, and I am so thankful.

I said I would sing the praises of anyone who supported me at the $3 level, and that’s Johanna Mitchell and Rick Levine.

To the tune of “Maria” from West Side Story:

Johanna, I just got 3 bucks from Johanna,
I can’t believe that she, would give that much money, to meeeee
Johanna, you don’t know this money’s like manna,
You really couldn’t know, how much your support means, to meeee
Johanna, say it loud and your ears are ringing,
Say it soft, too soft and I’m straining,
Johanna, I thank you so damn much Johanna!

To the tune of “Love Divine All Loves Excelling”:

Rick Levine, much thanks for gen’rously
Giving me 3 bucks on Patreon
Hard to think that I deserve it
Blogging about turd burgers from Japan
Rick Levine I’m ever so grateful,
To you it’s small but to me it’s profound
I’ll keep on blogging and studying and never
even take a bathroom break.

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