One of the things I do on this blog is I PREDICT.

I particularly love predicting elections and have regularly been predicting the US Presidential elections since 2008 when Barack Obama won (and I got it wrong).

I did however get Donald Trump right. Not that it’s something I’d really like to be right about.

I’m often asked why I publish my predictions online. Aren’t you afraid that you will be wrong? Or worse, is there a dent to my reputation as a BaZiologist/Consultant if I get something wrong? Can I afford to be wrong?

The old sages who did most of the R&D on BaZi rarely did ‘predictions’ live. In short, no one was walking around saying Mao Tse Tung was going to be the next big thing in China despite no end to BaZi and Astrology experts sitting around in the Forbidden City. Culturally Asians have a thing about not wanting to be known as wrong. Many of the so called ‘great’ Chinese books are often written in hindsight – it’s easy to be right, or to analyse or point to x or y as the answer to something, when the events have already happened.

Live predictions of real time events like elections, like the World Cup, help sharpen a Consultant’s skills because the stakes are not just real, they are super real. And there is no hindsight is 2020 manipulation through stating the obvious after it has happened. If it ain’t printed, it’s as good as never having said it is my view. So of course, being wrong is very possible but this is vastly overshadowed by the benefit and advantage in terms of knowledge gained of being right. At the end of the day, consultants need skin in the game. And public predictions are the equivalent of stock market calls by analysts – getting it right proves you have the skills. Getting it wrong allows you to be accountable for your mistakes and makes you gain one step more information and knowledge in case your next client wants to be President of the United States.

I nicked this quote off someone’s blog but I think it captures well my objectives in writing public forecasts:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic

Kicking off 2020

In Feb 2020, I was invited to give a talk to some bankers/fund managers about my forecast for 2020. Most of them of course were not particularly interested in listening to what an astrologer has to say presumably because they had already listened to themselves and decided that 2020 was going to be an amazing year. In fact, the CEO of the fund manager that invited me proclaimed that they expected Donald Trump to win the election. Of course, cue Covid19.

This was one of the slides put up for the benefit of those bankers that is most pertinent to this discussion.

Now, we can quibble about the other inaccuracies like ‘assassination’ and ‘choses not stand for re-election’ or whether or not Trump catching Covid 19 means nothing but with less than 3 weeks to go, the bottom line assertion of the forecast is not re-elected.

One of the things that astrologers or destiny analysts rarely do is offer up insight into how they figure things out. Sure, you get the charts and analysis of the Bullying Punishments/Harms etc in a chart. But like looking at Beethoven’s first drafts, the best way to understand a process is to see the mathematics of their thoughts. After all we force physicists to produce their workings and theorems, why not astrologers?

So I thought I would share my astrology calculation (done on the back of a piece of paper) to explain my prediction.

Into the mind of the astrologer…

Of course, one also has to do one for the GOP Candidate so here is Pence and Trump’s numbers.

For the curious: although this is a BaZi blog, in recent years, I’ve started more and more to use Sherry Merchant’s Life Palace method to compliment my annual readings and predictions. i find it offers an interesting added perspective and has been sometimes a little more helpfully accurate where BaZi throws up a conundrum. So the above two photographs represent my working out the Life Palace perspective on the US Election.

As you can see from my first slide, the prediction is TRUMP TO LOSE (which by extension presumes a Biden-Harris victory). So let’s get down to the mechanics of how I came up with my prediction and all the technical blah blah behind it.

Evaluating the US Election

Here’s the other slide in my deck – this talk was given when the Democrats had not finalised their candidate yet so my slides contained a prediction of who the candidate would be – note, Kamala Harris had dropped out at this stage.

Using simple BaZi + Life Palace, the idea was to look for candidates that had the best quality Officer Luck. This means any possible permutation of either combining with Officer in Branch (Best), to Combining with Officer in Stem (2nd best) to Officer Three Harmony Branch Combination (optimal).

I determined that the most likely Democratic candidate would have to be either a Bing or Ding Day Master as 2020 is a Rat Year and so Gui Water would be the Officer Star in play. From their BaZi charts (no time of course), I concluded that the strongest candidates would be Bing/Ding Fire DMs if using the Branch of Zi to determine who is in Officer Luck. Of course, one can’t discount the possibility that the Stem might also throw up some positives so after Bing/Ding DMs, Jia/Yi Wood DMs would line up as 2nd options if the Geng Stem is used as the Officer reference. If Geng/Gui was a Resource Star, those DMs would rank in third priority in the pecking order. (side note: why Resource? Well, sometimes likability is the only reason why a candidate makes it to the top of the heap + luck – Resource is what controls this outcome. Resource also means you are handed something – in this case, it’s a nomination by one’s party – resource counts for something here since it’s a close loop of individuals voting)

This criteria allowed me to eliminate the non-starter candidates (RED), determine those who had a potential change (GREEN CIRCLE) and identity the likely winning candidate (BLUE).

Only Joe Biden is a Ding Fire in this year’s entire clutch of Democratic candidates, thus all but assuring he would all but win the nomination.

Joe B vs Donald T

Let us take a look at the BaZi charts of each of the candidates for POTUS in 2020:

Donald Trump is Ji Wei 己未Day Master, currently in a Xin Chou 辛丑 Luck Pillar, with Geng Zi 庚子 facing him in 2020, an election year. It’s worth giving some thought to the year in which he was elected, which was 2016, Bing Shen 丙申, and then place Geng Zi 2020 in context to that year to understand what has changed or why the odds have altered in 2020 for Trump. This also affords a very interesting lesson in the subtleties of the BaZi pillars.

On the face of it, Geng Zi and Bing Shen surely cannot make such a difference to the fate of Donald Trump? Geng 庚 represents the Hurting Officer Star to Ji Earth. In both 2016 and 2020, Geng is present – in the Branch in 2016 and in the Stem in 2020. On the face of it, there appears to be no reason for the outcome to change for Mr Trump.

The significant point to consider here is the difference between being the INCUMBENT and the CHALLENGER. In 2016, both parties were challengers and so the presence of the Hurting Officer Star (representing giving people something ‘different’) coupled with the Direct Resource star (which would be interpreted as ‘give chance’ since Resource denotes helpful people) propelled Trump to the White House despite the fact that there was no Officer Star for him in that year. (Important note: both Clinton and Trump were Earth Day Masters and neither had an Officer Star that year so it literally came down to the day/month energies. We now know from interviews with women who voted for Trump that many made their decisions literally in the ballot box)

By contrast, as a Wu Earth DM, Hillary Clinton was looking at Indirect Resource and Eating God, which would have made her seem stand-offish and overly intellectual to the public. (Eating Gods can come across as ‘fuck-you’ in their manner). To win in an election where both parties are the challenger, in theory, one has to offer something new. The Eating God will never offer something openly new/bucking the system compared to the Hurting Officer eventhough both actually are offering a set of ideas. Hence ‘drain the swamp’ form Trump (although of course, because he was actually in a Eating God Luck Pillar himself, Trump never delivered on his promise to drain the swamp).

In 2016, the Shen 申 in the year doesn’t actually negatively affect Trump’s chart in any way. By contrast, Hilary Clinton is Wu Yin 戊寅 and therefore had her officer star （ Jia 甲 Wood) clashed by the year, thereby making the odds of White House success much lower.

Which brings us to Zi 子 in 2020. Trump’s chart is regarded as a Super Vibrant chart by many masters and so therefore, the presence of Water is arguably negative since it breaks the chart’s structure. However, even without considering the Super Vibrant Special Structure and reading the chart as is, Zi 子 is no fun for this chart. There is a Direct Heaven and Earth Clash to the Officer Star (甲午 x 庚子), Harm to the Wei 未 (Goat) in the Spouse Palace. In 2016, the Hurting Officer Star was ‘below’ in the Branches, so it did not appear so prominently compared to when Geng 庚 is on top in 2020.

Geng 庚 as a Hurting Officer is a brutal Hurting Officer – blunt, swinging for the kill, and not very elegant in it’s style. This explains Trump’s first debate performance and the approach to his campaign in these last few months. The focus on Law and Order is vintage Geng (since Geng is the Stem that ‘carries sha’ and is typically associated with justice and the army) and so it is clear Trump is playing into the hands of his chart and the energies of this year. However, this Hurting Officer is an ineffective and not very disciplined due to the absence of any fire and so for this Hurting Officer sticking to the message is hard – it would rather just say whatever emotionally comes to mind (sound familiar?)

In any case, the INCUMBENT facing a Hurting Officer can also be interpreted as rebellion/revolution against the incumbent. When you see a Hurting Officer Star in the year, either you’re the Hurting Officer or there are Hurting Officers going up against you. In this case, Trump clearly has a rebellion on his hands as portions of the American public that voted for him are moving away from him/rebelling against his style and ideas and approach to the presidency as the clock ticks down to election date. His Hurting Officer is indeed causing him problems as the Harm to Wei denotes. Part of the problem is related to money as Zi is Gui, and Gui represents Indirect Wealth – in this case, both Trump’s own personal financial issues and also, the US stimulus program stalling, is causing his problems. Of course, his apparent use of the office to profit personally is also in question.

We see the problem of the Hurting Officer replicated in the Life Palace method, using Trump’s Gua number #9 as the reference.

Life Palace Method (Explained somewhat)

Briefly, the Life Palace Method as Sherry Merchant taught me, utilises a proxy BaZi reading method, which is great because I really suck at numbers. You translate the numbers into their respective Stems (#9 in this instance is Fire, so Bing for Male, Ding for Female) and then read the Star or Gua Numbers as if you were reading Stems. Please take her class (go here: https://sherrymerchant.com/products/life-palace-analysis) for a better explanation as this table obviously doesn’t quite do it all justice and is terribly rudimentary.

STAR	ELEMENT	Direction
Star #1	Water （壬/癸）	North
Star #2	Earth （己）	SouthWest
Star #3	Wood （甲）	East
Star #4	Wood （乙）	South East
Star #5	Earth （己+戊）	Center
Star #6	Metal (庚)	North West
Star #7	Metal （辛）	West
Star #8	Earth （戊）	NorthEast
Star #9	Fire （丙/丁）	South

Life in the Trump Palace of the South

Donald Trump’s Gua Number is #9. And #9’s Life Palace (or Home Palace) is South. So we look at the Star that is in the South in 2020 to get a sense of what is in store for #9 in 2020. Star #2 corresponds with Ji Earth. Now, we read Gua #9 when it’s male as Bing Fire, so in this case, Bing Fire sees Ji Earth which is Hurting Officer. Again, if you are a person seeking to preserve your authority (maintain your officer as it were), you do not want to see the Hurting Officer since this means to go against authority. Read: lose an election.

Now it might be argued that one shouldn’t be looking at the Home Palace necessarily since in 2016, Gua #9 was in the South East Palace, with the #1 Annual Star, and that was the year in which Trump was elected. (note: 9+1 is a Combo of 10, but also represents Gua 9 combining with it’s Officer, Gua #1). Thus, surely we must look at what Palace #9 is in this year? Okay, let’s take that line of debate. #9 occupies the West Palace, which is where #7 resides. So Gua 9 (Bing) sees Star #7 (Xin). In BaZi, Bing meeting Xin represents Epic Defeat. This is because Bing fears the West (the sun sets in the West) and West is represented by Xin (which is what Bing also combines with and for Male Bing Fires in particular, this denotes meeting a woman who is your match at last).

You might say, wait a minute but Xin also represents Wealth to a Bing Fire. Why can’t it be Donald Trump gets rich? It’s entirely possible that will happen because certainly Trump will be asked to write a book and his White House memoirs will no doubt fetch good money for him. But the White House big job is not exactly known for its salary. So it is more logical to argue that the interpretation here is that Trump needs Money. Bing wants/lusts after the Xin, but ends up combining and producing Water, the element that is dislikes the most since this clouds the sun. The combination arguably produces the Officer Star but this can also be interpreted as legal problems for Bing Fire since it is the product of a combination. In light of Forbes recent article about who and how much Trump owes and needs to pay back in 2021, it is quite logical that finding ways to get money/avoid paying money is what Trump is looking to achieve by being re-elected.

Now, things may not look great for the Donald but in order for Joe Biden to win the presidency, his chart has to actually show it can be achieved. Remember, a tough time by one candidate does not necessarily denote victory for the other automatically. Biden’s chart (and to some extent, one needs to read Kamala Harris’ chart to proxy support the conclusion of a Biden victory) must support success, by virtue for example, of a strong Officer Star. In a 1:1 type scenario as in this case, the other party must show a decisive Officer in order to be successful.

Ding – Sleepy or Bright-Eyed and Bushy Tailed…

Biden is a Ding Chou Day Master, born in Hai 亥 (Pig) and currently in Ji Wei 10 year Luck Pillar – an incredible coincidence (there are no such things in astrology!) if one considered that this is DONALD TRUMP’S DAY PILLAR. Significantly we don’t know Biden’s Hour Pillar so this to some degree makes the forecast a bit harder to do because his age – 77 – means the fourth pillar is significant since that would be the age point that he would be in.

A quick word on Ding Fire. During much of his campaign, Trump has blasted Biden as “sleepy Joe” and that he hid in his basement conducting his campaign during the pandemic. Trump famously is known to use Feng Shui but perhaps he isn’t keen on astrologers. The thing about Ding Fires is that they are famously adaptive – they go quiet yes, as a flame dies down when it thinks that there’s no way to make progress…but then just as a little oxygen and kindling shows up…WHOOSH, it comes back up. And that is Joe Biden. So all the while he’s been in his basement, the Ding has been waiting for the right moment to come back. And the first debate is when Ding shone.

The significant thing to consider in this chart is that the Zi 子 (Rat) completes the full season of Water in Biden’s chart. Admittedly, there is a problem with the clash to the year – the Horse is throwing a spanner in the works as far as the Rat coming into the equation is concerned. BUT, this doesn’t detract from the fact it IS a seasonal combination and a full season of water for that matter. And one can argue that the Hai 亥 (Pig) that combines with the Wei 未 (Goat) in the 10 year LP helps because it produces wood, which Ding Fire absolutely loves. Whilst there is a clash to his Officer Star in the year pillar, this is not as severe as the Heaven and Earth Clash that Trump is seeing in his chart. The Ren Water that represents Biden’s officer Star is clashed at the base but the Pig that anchors that Ren Water is not affected. By contrast, the Jia Wood in Trump’s chart, which already has no roots below and is counting on the soya bean sized Yi Wood in the Goat 未 is walloped on both fronts.

So TL:DR – it looks good for Biden by way of the strength of his Officer Star relative to Trump’s chart. The year’s energies largely favour him. There is a tiny issue in that the election is being held on 3 November, which is NOT taking us into the Pig month yet. However, the Bing Xu month that is October 2020 can be read two ways – it is Ding’s Rob Wealth, which means Biden has increasing popularity. It does represent Resource for Trump BUT, it is a Fu Yin to his Resource Star in the year.

But it’s in the Life Palace analysis that things get seriously fun.

Doing the Number

If you go back up and look at the screen cap of my astrology math, you will find that it roughly is saying this:

Now, we also want to look at the month of November 2020 because this month is significant since whomever is victorious SHOULD technically see an Officer in this month. This is where things get fun because for Trump, November 2020 is Ding Hai, which actually is a 3 Harmony Combination that strengthens his Officer Star temporarily. However, Hai (Pig) is also Biden’s Officer Star and Biden is Ding.

The VPs are also an interesting proxy to look at. Harris is a Ren Water, Pence is a Geng Metal. Neither of them particularly are getting much benefit from a Geng Zi Year

• Biden is Gua 4 – Harris is Gua 6 – together they are a Combo of 10. Remember, we like special things like Combo of 10 (although typically this means making money). We regard this as DESTINY.
• By contrast Pence and Trump are 2 and 9 respectively. Not much going on there. Not sure if they even like each other although Trump is probably giving more to Pence than vice versa.
• Significantly 46 is what the next POTUS would be if Trump is not re-elected. (side note: one of the reasons that I called 2016 for Trump was because in winning, he would become the 45th president of the United States. 4+5=9 – Trump is Gua 9.
• Biden Gua #4 is Yi Wood and his Life Palace is SouthEast. In 2020, South East sees the #6 star, which is Geng Metal. Yi sees Geng is Yi seeing Direct Officer. 4+6 is also a Combination of Ten and whilst it is usually associated with money ( probably explains why Biden has been raising record amounts of campaign funding) it does also represent an exceptional meaningful combination.
• Where is #4 in 2020? It is in the South West Palace, which is where the #2 resides usually. #2 is Ji Earth, and represents Money to a Yi Wood. So again, explaining why Biden is successfully raising A LOT of money for his campaign but what’s going on in the SE palace is probably also significant.
• Kamala Haris is Gua #6 and is read as Geng Metal. Her Life Palace is the NorthWest. In 2020, the Northwest contains the #8 Star, which is Earth. Earth to Geng Metal is Resource – this is why Biden PICKED her. Remember the VP doesn’t need to necessarily see Officer per se because they are picked to go along on the ticket (you don’t vote separately for POTUS and VP). What about the palace that #6 occupies in 2020? In 2020, #6 is in the South East Palace which means #6 (Geng) sees #4 (Yi). Geng Sees Money seems like a rather odd interpretation for a politician but Money or DW can also be interpreted as ‘JOB’.

In the Life Palace department, it gets also interesting. So we want to look at the South (Trump), Southwest (Pence) Southeast (Biden) and NorthWest (Harris) palaces to see what is going on for these four individuals.

• South Palace (Trump) sees 3 (Jia Wood/Resource)
• Southwest Palace (Pence) sees 5 (Earth/Friend)
• Southeast Palace (Biden) sees 7 (Xin – 7 Killings)
• Northwest Palace (Harris) sees 9 (Ding – Officer)

The data rather speaks for itself suggestively.

CONCLUSIONS….(READ THIS FIRST IF YOU ARE LAZY)

After that very long discussion about the technicalities of the charts, the bottom line is that things don’t look very good for Trump at all. By convention, Rat years are rather unkind to the Orange One. In 2004, Trump Hotels and Casinos declared bankrupt. In 2009, Trump Entertainment Resorts declared bankrupt. Both these took place during Mr Trump’s Pig and Rat 10 year Luck Pillars. He also doesn’t particularly like the Dog either – during his 10 year Dog Luck Pillar, the Atlantic City Taj, and two other Taj properties went bust. And what do we have in 2020? A Rat year, and a Dog Month. The slow boat piled up with turds is slowly but surely making its way to Donald Trump’s doorstep if his past astrological experiences are anything to go by.

Based on this analysis is how I arrived at my conclusion that Donald Trump will lose the US presidential election 2020.

In so writing this piece (which took 3 different nights to compile), my aim is to show to students of BaZi and astrology HOW you work out the answer to a question. Whether it’s deciding if POTUS is going to remain POTUS or be thrown out, or something more simplistic, the process is the same. And I hope that in showing how I do the astrology maths as it were, students of BaZi can better understand how it is that the information in a BaZi chart is meant to be wielded. But more significantly, that the method to successful forecasting and reading is knowing what the astrological benchmark of the conundrum you are facing should be (in short, what stars/outcomes are you looking for – in this case, Officer Star is the answer) and then trying to prove the hypothesis in the charts.

See you in 15 days.