It’s elemental

When astrologer and social theorist Dave Bromberg told me I was about to have a couple of bad days, I wasn’t sure I believed him. But, sure enough, when I sat down to my keyboard the next morning, I noticed that I was feeling a little bummed out. Maybe it was the power of suggestion, but maybe it was, as Bromberg predicted, a function of my own personal 10-day lunar cycle, and the inevitable physical and emotional trough I had just entered into.

Then again, maybe I was a bit depressed at the prospect of trying to cram the essence of Bromberg’s astrology-based “sociological calculus” into this column. It’s a system he has hammered out over 30 years of travel and careful observation. And he gives it out for free in the form of the Nostradamus News, a Web site and newsletter he issues every third Thursday from his Carmichael home. There, you’ll find out why the world is entering an age of “meanness,” which sounds about right, and why we’re also in for 2,000 years of socialism, which … well, we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed. There simply isn’t room to do justice to his theories here. For the whole ball of wax, go to www.nostradamusnews.com.

First, you have assigned astrological signs to all of the countries of the world. Can you explain “Gulliver"?

This is Gulliver, [shows me a drawing of a reclining Gulliver, overlaid by a map of the world]. If you look at the human body, I say there are 12 chakras in the human body: the head, the jaw, the arms and shoulders, the bosom, the heart, the stomach, the tush, the reproductive organs, the legs, the knees, the shin and the foot. That’s how you get to this Gulliver thing. Each culture comes from one of these chakras. The English are the head people, all their TV shows are about head games, you got all the wigs on the barristers. Come over to America, which is Gemini, we are the arms and shoulders of the world. That’s why we have all the boxing titles in America.

With the exception of Lennox Lewis I suppose?

Yeah. I was really hoping Mike Tyson would beat him. Anyway, then you have the bosom, that’s the Deep South. Every song in the South is about the love of a woman, and so forth. … Then you have the Pacific Ocean, ruled by the sun, the Leo sign, everybody in Los Angeles is a star. … India is the knee of Gulliver, that’s Capricorn. Capricorns are goats, and they’re climbers. They’re always climbing the social hierarchy, and India has a hierarchical social system. … Russia, Sweden and Scandinavia are Aquarius, which rules humanity and socialism.

Socialism?

That’s right. In fact, we’re entering the Age of Aquarius and the Age of Socialism. Scandinavian-style, quasi-socialism, with lots of good capitalism in there. Everything will be taken care of, as they say, from birth to suicide. That’s the joke, you know, about the Scandinavians. Three Aquarian cities are Moscow, Stockholm and San Francisco. Those are your new paradigms. Even though socialism has fallen apart in Moscow right now, for the next 2,000 years, that’s the paradigm.

We’re just coming out of 2,000 years of the Age of Pisces. That’s the Age of Religion. We all know when the Age of Aquarius started; it was September 11. Boom, the old age is out. All of the sudden we see religion in trouble. Islam is in trouble, it’s at war with the West. Christianity is in trouble, the Catholic Church, you know. There’s all this stuff going on.

You also say we’re coming into an Age of Meanness?

Absolutely. That’s the Age of Aquarius. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

What about the 10-day lunar calendar?

You have a bad moon every 10 days. The moon spends two and half days in air, two and half days in water, two and a half days in fire, two and half days in earth. That’s 10 days. Then it happens over again. So here’s your calendar. You see, today is a bad day for fire [signs]. Then there are bad days for earth, bad days for air, then for water, then we start again. So, whatever sign you are, you’ll have a normal two-and-a-half-day depression every 10 days.

It looks like I’ve got some bad days starting tomorrow …

Yeah, I’m afraid so. You’ll feel a little down, a little put upon and unhappy.

You think people could profit from your calendar …

I think this is a fantastic discovery. I didn’t invent it, I discovered it, and this, to me, is going to be a billion-dollar industry. And you’re hearing it for the first time right now.

“Drink Coca-Cola on these days, and that’s how you can cope with whatever," you see? It’s going to be huge. Either that or someone will come along and they’ll say "Bromberg, we don’t want this," and then, bang, they’ll kill me. Either way, it’s going to be a huge thing.