Pentagram Papers

"There is one menace to the career and potential of George Wallace," claims self-styled Queen of Witches Sybil Leek in her Astrological Guide to the Presidential Candidates published two months ago. "The nearer he gets to his goal, the greater the danger of political assassination. Yet he is likely to transform this danger into an asset, for if an unsuccessful attempt is made on his life, he could turn it to winning many thousands of votes throughout the country."

Written in early 1971, these words were of more interest to horoscope buffs than to political ones. But when Arthur Bremer, nearly 18 months later, fulfilled the prophecy,* some political pundits and poll watchers decided to take a closer look at what is written in the candidates' stars. Not that Leek's peeks into the future have always proved entirely accurate. She once predicted, for example, that in 1970 Richard Nixon would become embroiled in a saucy sex scandal that would jeopardize his renomination by Republicans.

As for this year's remaining Democratic presidential contenders, Leek is apparently scoring quite a few more misses than hits. Although accurately prophesying that the Wisconsin primary would mark a turning point in the campaign of Senator George McGovern, born on the cusp of Gemini and

Cancer, she botched the prediction by adding that "the odds of success favor his Arian opponent [Edmund Muskie]." Giving the Maine Senator a slight edge over Geminian Hubert Humphrey, the Astrological Guide also miscast Muskie as the probable winner in Oregon and California.

Republican Leek feels that the planets show Capricorn Nixon's chances for re-election to be uncertain, partly because his horoscope does not show him to be in tune with most of the nation's 25 million young people eligible to vote for the first time this year. According to her own "Astrological Gallup Poll," those new voters born under the six signs of Gemini, Cancer, Virgo, Sagittarius, Aquarius and Pisces will vote Democratic, while only the five signs of Arians, Taurians, Leos, Libras and Scorpios will lean heavily toward the Republican presidential nominee. She considers the Capricorns as a tossup, giving the Democrats a slight edge in the signs.

But Nixon's prospects for re-election are not irretrievable. Indeed, Sybil believes there is only one Democrat on the horizon who could surely beat him. The man with "the greatest astrological potential for becoming President"--and perhaps not so coincidentally Congress's leading student of the occult--is one who has long since withdrawn from the race: Iowa's Aquarian Senator Harold Hughes.

* Actually, Sybil was a bit off; she thought that the danger of assassination would be the greatest for Wallace, a Virgo, between late July and November.

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