Editor’s note: Way back in the day—the day being 2007, when we used Motorola Razrs and wore True Religion jeans—Vanity Fair published this 2,500 word horoscope by our resident astrologer, Michael Lutin in our January issue. It wasn’t his normal star spiel: usually, he wrote a playful zodiac column called “Planetarium” where he gave unsolicited horoscopes to different celebrities. “You don’t have to be a billionaire to enjoy the finer things in life,” he wrote in October 2004 about Liv Tyler, alongside a cut out of her face. “All you need is Venus in the 2nd house to help you rationalize any purchases and pleasures you’ve denied yourself for too long. You deserve to indulge yourself once in awhile, damn it, no matter what the doctor or taxman says.”
But for our January 2007 issue, he wasn’t in the mood to write about Tyler’s hypothetical shopping habits. Instead, he wrote a chaotic and sometimes dark prediction for America. “For nations, like people, have horoscopes,” he said. “Are we, in the end, ruthless imperialists doomed to be brought down by our degenerate culture?”
Lutin’s essay is worth reading in its entirety. He begins in the 1760s, where he argues that placements of the stars sparked the revolution itself. (“Mother England, once the great protector, was beginning to be the great drag. She wanted payback for all the protection she’d provided. That was when the colonists, starting to exhibit the collective traits of a Cancer nation, came to resent their mother’s hold on them. She was getting a little too bossy. And greedy,” he wrote, as he wove all the way up to the Bush era and beyond.
It’s that “beyond” where it begins to feel eerie. It’s one thing to retroactively apply planetary movements to history. It’s another when you use them to predict the future. Like when he writes the following about the 2020s: “The country’s mood will become darker and much more conservative. It’s not going to be a matter of Democrat or Republican anymore, because the new ideologies will bleed across party lines.” Or: “The words ‘patriot’ and ‘treason’ will lose their meaning, and in some cases they will become interchangeable. What is treason to one person will be patriotism to another…”
In the last several weeks, social media users have resurfaced Lutin’s prescient pose. Unfortunately, Lutin died on November 10, 2024, well before he could learn of the newfound interest in this piece of his work. Below, read Lutin’s original essay from Vanity Fair’s January 2007 issue in its entirety. -Elise Taylor
All alone and more paranoid by the day, President George W. Bush is getting it from all sides, and despite his bravado, which some people call a defensive, adolescent swagger, he can’t trust anybody, not even his mother. (Especially not his mother.) His detractors blame him for the state the world is in. Extremists go one further and say the world is coming to an end. Most of us in this country just want gas prices to go down, the dollar to go up, and America to go back to the good old days.
Astrologers can tell you that that’s not going to happen, but that, no matter what, we’ll never go broke either. They can also explain George Bush’s predicament by pointing out that he’s a Cancer, and that in coming years Cancers are going to be challenged to expand their whole worldview. In fact, we can all gain perspective on what is happening politically, culturally, and socially in America by turning to the Zodiac, especially the signs of Cancer and Capricorn. For nations, like people, have horoscopes.
