In the days leading up to the 2000 presidential election, most pundits were predicting an intensely close – but conclusive – finish to the race between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
But Susan Miller went on Bryant Gumbel's morning show the day before the election and posited that there were some long uncertain days of counting and recounting ahead.
Was Miller particularly attuned to politics? Did she have some inside connection at Florida's Division of Elections?
Nope. Miller is a well-known astrologer, and she had divined her prediction from the skies. As the election drew to its controversial close, the planet Mercury was in the final stages of what astrologers call retrograde – when a planet, from our perspective on Earth, appears to change its normal path across the night sky and go backward – or east to west – for a few days or weeks. Nothing changes in the planet's orbit; retrograde is merely an optical illusion. Yet, tracing the path of a planet in retrograde on a star map over the course of a few nights makes it look like it's doing a zigzag.
Because many astrologists consider Mercury to be the planet of communication, shipping, contracts and verbal agreements, they associate Mercury's thrice-yearly retrograde – including the current period of Aug. 28 to Sept. 20 – with all manner of wacky happenings here on Earth, including a penchant in people for indecision.
Of course, there's no scientific proof (and plenty of disdain) that an optical phenomenon has any effect on Earth (you may be beaten senseless by an astronomer for suggesting such). But astrology is big business, and it's during times like Mercury in retrograde that astrologers become stars.
"When Mercury is in retrograde, it's strong all the time, but it's strongest at the very beginning and at the very end," says Miller, who remembers that Election Day 2000 was the last day of that particular Mercury-in-retrograde cycle. "On the day of the presidential election, Mercury was going back to normal. It was going direct. But the whole day, it was in stationary direct, and it was extremely strong."
Politics aside, to many astrology devotees, Mercury in retrograde means an increased likelihood of disrupted cell-phone service, faulty TVs, misdirected mail and even contract cancellations.
"The traditional meaning assigned to Mercury going retrograde in the sky is that of unexpected delays and frustrations in everyday life routines and in communications," says Anthony Peña, About.com's astrology expert. "Many astrologers likewise recommend delaying of the signing of contracts and other important life decisions. It is thought to be a time better spent in reflection and rethinking things."
Miller, who writes the Signs of Love column for the New York Daily News, and who also runs AstrologyZone.com, agrees. "It's not a good time to get married, and I'm really glad that J. Lo (and Ben Affleck) decided to wait," she says. "I'm really happy that they put the date off. The situation is very fluid at the time of making the contract. You would have made a different decision had you waited."
But to many lay astrologers, the phenomenon is most closely associated with some kind of computer-related mishap. Dana Groehl, who works at the women's Zionist organization Hadassah, says that she and her organization have been beset by technological problems when Mercury has been in retrograde. For example, during such times, she often finds her computer mouse malfunctioning, and Hadassah recently sent around an all-hands bulletin explaining that no one in the organization was able to send e-mail to AOL accounts.
"In my office, for the last five years, I've been like Chicken Little, 'Mercury is in retro, Mercury is in retro,'" Groehl says. "I now have a regular following, including the IT department, which asks me for updates. To my skeptics, I love getting to say, 'See, I told you so.'"
Peña also attributes some of his technological problems to Mercury being in retrograde.
"During the current Mercury retrograde period," Peña explains, "my wireless phone temporarily went bonkers. I discovered that I wasn't able to make calls (and) folks weren't able to get through to me. And I was receiving voicemail notifications minutes to hours after a message had been left."
Peña says he has the pedigree to know what he's talking about and says the phenomenon has been on people's minds for centuries.
"Babylonian astrologers (from 2000 B.C.) were particularly interested in those times when the planets Mercury and Venus went retrograde in the sky," he explains.
Despite centuries of astrological thought on the matter and significant mainstream buy-in, plenty of people in the field dismiss the theory.
"This is one of the most notorious cases of astrology abuse," argues Rob Brezsny, whose Free Will Astrology column has a widespread following. "Most people who talk about Mercury in retrograde don't know anything.
"They make excuses for a lack of will force in their life, and basically it's a way of saying 'I don't have any control in my life, I'm giving my power over to those invisible forces.'"
Brezsny points out that Mercury goes retrograde three times a year for three and a half weeks each time, a total of nearly 11 weeks a year. "In my estimation, anything that happens so predictably can't be taken as a sign of bad luck. The more you believe that (the phenomenon is) true, the more you tend to attract that kind of experience in your life."
Astronomers, of course, insist all this discussion is bunk.
"Astrology has been disproven so often and in so many ways, it's not very easy to give it much credence," says University of Denver astronomy professor Robert Stencel. "The gravitational force of Mercury is negligible. If astrologers need a different force, they need to clarify what the nature of that force is, and that's not been forthcoming."
But to astrologers like Miller and Peña, when Mercury is in retrograde, otherwise inexplicable things are more likely than usual to be happening on Earth.
"I did say on the air that we will not know a winner," Miller says of her Election Day 2000 prediction. "But all the astrologers knew that. It was a no-brainer."
