THE picture above shows a wealthy, well-turned out woman sitting at a desk. If you thought, San Francisco heiress, fixture at the ballet and the symphony, classically furnished apartment in Nob Hill, you would not be wrong. Her hands, though, seem strangely configured. The green stones in her jewellery have an eerie glow. Most disturbing of all, an arrow seems to be embedded in the mirror, aiming at the reflected back of her head. Her stare, meanwhile, could wither up a mandrake root at 30 paces.

Those who saw Joan Quigley as a dabbler in the devil’s trade (at one time, most American churchmen), as a dangerous fantasist (most scientists) or a joke, might well fasten on oddities like these. But she defied them. She was no occultist, or crystal-ball-gazer, or scribbler of cheap Sun-sign columns in the newspapers, which were written by “idiots” and “clowns”. Her work was in the charts, mathematical and technical, lying on the desk before her. She was engaged, moreover, in the oldest science of all, the study of the influence of stars and planets on the lives of illustrious people. As she told the incredulous press after 1988, when the news broke that she was advising Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the White House, Moses had probably been an astrologer. Newton had believed in it. And didn’t Einstein write that human beings “dance to a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible player”?

Not invisible to her. In her charts, drawn up in hundreds from each subject’s birth-time, she could see almost everything. That Reagan would not win the Republican nomination in 1976, because Saturn was adverse. That Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 was bound to end up badly, because of a horrendous two-year configuration of Uranus. That the marriage of her friend Merv Griffin, a talk-show host, would break up in two weeks, again because of Uranus. She also told Merv’s friend Nancy Reagan that she could have predicted Reagan’s brush with an assassin in March 1981, if she had looked at his charts. From then on she was paid, though rather less than she was worth, she thought, to keep looking.

Between 1981 and 1988 little happened in the White House without her say-so, in long cross-country phone calls to Nancy. The times of press conferences, election debates, negotiations with foreign powers, requests to Congress and all departures of Air Force One were set by her, to ensure the stars were right. The president’s calendar became a mosaic of green (good), red (bad) and yellow (iffy) days, with additional notes from Nancy: “March 10-14 no outside activity!…April 3 careful”.

Some timings, frustratingly, were set by law, but Miss Quigley tried to adjust them to improve matters. Thus Reagan’s second swearing-in, meant to be at midday, was at 11.56:50 EST, more auspicious to the second. Important negotiations, particularly those with Mikhail Gorbachev at Geneva and Reykjavik in 1985 and 1986, were stretched out as long as possible, since Mr Gorbachev was revealed in his birth-chart as someone America could work with. All went well, so well that she claimed to be providing “the Teflon for the Teflon presidency”, until late in 1986. Some events, she sighed, were absolute fate, unalterable by free will and beyond the power of any astrologer to avert. When the Iran-contra scandal broke, the major cosmic forces turned so decisively against Reagan that there was nothing even she could do.

The Sun in Aires

Up to that point, the president’s horoscope was the most brilliant she had ever seen. His Sun was in Aquarius, as Lincoln’s and FDR’s had been, meaning he was both balanced and visionary. Then his Jupiter was in Scorpio, giving him great strength and vitality. (By contrast, Jimmy Carter had an afflicted Virgo in his chart, which had hobbled him in the debates.) In fact, the only problem with Reagan was that his stars were a little too like Lincoln’s for comfort.

As for her, she was a Republican and a natural elitist, less because of private schools and heroic hairdressing than because her Sun was in Aires, a splendid fire sign that made her imperious, brave, forceful and pioneering. Apart from a stint as a columnist in Seventeen magazine, she did not make forecasts, or cast up horoscopes, for ordinary people; only for corporate figures, celebrities and those who guided the destinies of nations. Her mother had thought astrology an afternoon lark, but it captivated Joan from the very moment when, at 15, she first saw the lady “soothsayer’s” charts. Once out of Vassar she took instruction from her—finding the subject as essential as medicine, and so exacting, if done accurately, that it required all the maths she had taken in college.

In short, it was serious. When people could not see that, she was stiffly angry. When the Reagans disowned her (“Lie!” ordered Nancy), she got her own back in a haughty memoir. After several uncomfortable years in the spotlight, she was disappointed that she could not persuade venture capitalists in Silicon Valley to invest in a bespoke computerised prediction service, her one step towards the mass market. As she served up shrimp Louie and raspberries to one visiting reporter, pouring the tea herself, she could only conclude that “Struggle has been in my charts.” As she, of all people, should have known.