With a Jerusalem cross tattooed across his chest and a Deus Vult symbol on his arm, Pete Hegseth displays on his body the symbolic universe that he promotes at the Pentagon. The Epic Fury strikes on Tehran, which began on February 28, 2026, helped inscribe the actions of the Trump administration within a biblical interpretation. Between Pentagon prayer services, Hegseth’s visible closeness with the Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson, and his insistent rhetoric about America being, primarily, a “Christian nation,” the war in Iran is now being presented to troops as the fulfillment of an eschatological prophecy.
Since the 2000s, it has not been uncommon for American presidents to invoke God to justify war. After September 11, George W. Bush spoke of a crusade against evil. But these narratives were still built around the image of a Christian nation claiming to defend a threatened liberal order. With MAGA in 2026, something has changed in nature. It is no longer a matter of defending a world, but of ending it in order to inaugurate another, new one. Eschatology—the doctrine of the end times, collapse, and judgment—has ceased to be a cultural backdrop and has become the explicit grammar of foreign policy. Trump is no longer a president waging war with God’s help. He has become, in the discourse of his most committed supporters, the figure through whom God wages war.
This framing circulates through the sermons of evangelical megachurches and the figures of the New Apostolic Reformation, who for years have primed their audiences to recognize Trump as a prophetic individual, anointed by God. This message is relayed through the media of the MAGA ecosystem on cable channels, podcasts, and Truth Social. It multiplies, more discreetly, through a constellation of accounts on X and YouTube that produce a convergent discourse, one that is pro-Trump, pro-war in Iran, and framed as a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil, drawing on a source no one expected within this political community: astrology.
This is where a contradiction lies hidden. Astrology and Christian eschatology share common ground in the notions of esotericism, revelation, the idea that the hidden meanings of the world can be read by those who know how to decipher the signs. But within American evangelicalism, which represents a decisive portion of the MAGA base—67% of white evangelicals were members or sympathizers of Christian nationalism in 2025—astrology is something that must be kept at a distance. In the evangelical tradition, astrology belongs to divination and idolatry; Deuteronomy condemned consulting the stars as an occult art.
How, then, has a small network of pro-MAGA astrologers managed to insert itself as a key actor helping to define and narrate the Iran war and become a vehicle of adherence for a base that, by all doctrinal logic, ought to reject it? The issue goes beyond the sociology of an esoteric niche. It touches the very form of political authority that Trumpism in 2026 is beginning to rely on.
A Small but Strategically Positioned Network
Two approaches to astrology are often conflated with each other. Horoscope-page astrology, oriented toward individuals, follows a logic distinct from that of “mundane” (or “political”) astrology, which is typically used to analyze the behavior of states according to their birth charts. For the United States, this chart is established from the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. From this starting point, the astrologer projects current planetary transits and claims to read in them the destiny of a nation. The field is narrow and practitioners are rare. Failure is often exposed in broad daylight, but success, when it occurs, can elevate individuals to the rank of prophet.
This is precisely what has happened in the MAGA movement. Less than a month before the 2016 election, the most prominent American astrologers gathered at the conference of the International Society for Astrological Research in California, where nearly all predicted a victory for Hillary Clinton. The scenario repeated itself in 2024, this time online, where the vast majority of speakers announced a victory for Kamala Harris. In both cases, a handful of contrarians held the opposite position and predicted Trump. By demonstrating their supposed ability to have been right when the rest of the field was wrong, figures such as Joni Patry or Peter Novak gained the trust of many observers.
When, on February 26, 2026, Novak published a post on X predicting a major military crisis in March and April, it drew little notice. Two days later, bombs fell on Tehran, and the post surged past 100,000 views. The crucial point is not that the prediction was correct (after all, it benefited from a considerable Barnum effect, where formulations are broad enough to always seem accurate), but that it was public, dated, and prior to the event. In a media universe saturated with retrospective analysis, the astrologer who announces a war in advance acquires an authority that no one else can claim.
One should not overestimate the size of this network’s following. A few hundred thousand views on a viral video does not constitute a mass audience. But neither should one underestimate its significance. Within the Trumpist attention economy, posts by these accounts spread widely, while secondary accounts imitate their argumentative structure. A small core group of creators produces the content, an intermediate layer amplifies it, and a broader base consumes it. The pro-MAGA astrological network need not be massive to play a structuring role in the broader movement.
The pro-MAGA astrological network need not be massive to play a structuring role in the broader movement.
A War Written in the Heavens
The narrative this network constructs about the Iran war weaves together two frameworks: one astronomical and one Christian-speculative. At the center of both lies the year 2026. On February 20, Saturn and Neptune conjoined at 0° Aries meaning that, from Earth’s perspective, the two planets appeared at the same point in the zodiac in the sky, at the beginning of the Aries constellation. In astrology, Saturn is traditionally associated with structure and authority, while Neptune is linked to dissolution, spirituality, and ambiguity. Astrologers regard their meeting at this symbolic starting point as especially significant, as it is the first configuration of this kind since 1523, a period often associated with the Reformation and the emergence of the modern world. Eight days later, the strikes on Tehran began.
Then, between April 15 and 17, six planets gathered in Aries around the new moon, in a stellium that practitioners describe as another exceptional rarity. The last comparable alignments, they claim, date back to 879 (the fall of the Carolingian Empire) and to 1861 (the outbreak of the American Civil War). The list is presented as proof that April 2026 constitutes one of those historical pivot points when the old order gives way.
To this foundation is added an eschatological arithmetic that has circulated for several years in dispensationalist circles—evangelical groups who read history in phases and predict an imminent end of times. If one assumes that the crucifixion took place in the year 33, then the two-thousandth anniversary falls in 2033. Yet the dispensationalist tradition, dominant in American evangelicalism since the publication of the annotated Bible of Cyrus Scofield, posits a seven-year Tribulation preceding the return of Christ. By subtraction: 2033 − 7 = 2026. The calculation has nothing canonical about it and is even rejected by rigorous theologians who remind believers that Matthew 24:36 formally forbids attempts at dating the return—“neither the day nor the hour.” But the narrative circulates nevertheless, intersecting with astral configurations, and transforming an ordinary calendar year into a threshold year.
The pro-MAGA astrological network itself is divided into two tendencies known as Western and Vedic Astrology that rest on distinct traditions and that have their own vocabularies. Where the former speaks of the end times and a new world order in the language of biblical prophecy, the latter speaks of a Global Reset, the end of the Kali Yuga, and the beginning of a Golden Age. The Vedic detour makes it possible to say almost exactly the same thing as Christian eschatology without ever pronouncing the words condemned by Deuteronomy. The doctrinal contradiction between astrology and evangelicalism is dissolved through this lexical slippage: the evangelical listener hears the echo of their own expectations beneath an exotic costume and feels permitted to believe it because no one is telling them they are listening to divination.
This framework would remain abstract if it did not find points of resonance in current events, which the war in Iran has provided in abundance, allowing for a neat, chronological narrative: an annular solar eclipse on February 17, eleven days before the strikes began; a Saturn–Neptune conjunction on February 20, eight days before; a total lunar eclipse on March 3, retrospectively consolidating the entry into war; Mars enters Aries on April 9, one day after the April 8 ceasefire, which is read as the opening of a new phase; then, on April 17, a new moon in Aries, the high point of the planetary gathering, as US–Iran talks stall.
With the uncertainty of the Iran war, astrologers provide supporters what evangelicalism alone cannot […]: an explicit timeline, a cosmic justification, and an interpretive framework.
The military timeline overlays a celestial one announced in advance, turning every date of the conflict retrospectively into a confirmation. The strength of the narrative lies in the fact that it relies upon publicly verifiable astronomical events and on a conflict whose events can be followed down to the hour. To the hurried reader, the fit may appear self-evident. Indeed, for the MAGA movement of 2026, grappling with the uncertainty of the Iran war, astrologers provide supporters what evangelicalism alone cannot offer: an explicit timeline, a cosmic justification, and an interpretive framework.
What remains to be determined, in this story, is who the protagonists are and how it will end. At the moment, the United States and Israel are portrayed as having emerged strengthened by the war after a period of tribulations. This draws, first, on the tradition of Christian Zionism, which sees the State of Israel as the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, and second, on a nationalist reading of the United States’ natal chart, interpreted as that of a providential nation destined to assert its power globally. The narrative allows for setbacks and intermediate losses but never defeat. It is precisely this struggle towards triumph that is supposed to prove, a posteriori, that one stands on the side of good. Thus, military victory is not portrayed as a confirmation of a particular geopolitical strategy; instead, it consecrates and confirms a metaphysical necessity.
This point matters politically. In a war that has caused more than 3,000 Iranian deaths and several thousand regional casualties, triggered a spike in crude oil prices, and repeatedly closed the Strait of Hormuz with lasting economic and food-related consequences, a narrative that precludes, by its very nature, the possibility of failure constitutes a considerable political resource. Where a democratic opposition might demand accountability, the eschato-astral narrative replies that the prophecy will fulfill itself and that the Golden Age lies at the end.
Trust the Plan: A QAnon Without Q
This discourse reactivates an older tradition. During the Renaissance, natural astrology, distinguished from judicial astrology which was openly divinatory, was widely practiced and tolerated by several medieval theologians in the name of divine creation of the firmament. It was the Protestant Reformation, with its strict reading of Deuteronomy, that condemned these practices with a new radicalism. This prohibition, inherited by American evangelicalism, ought in principle to make the alliance we see today impossible.
And yet the rhetoric of pre-destination has returned. The doctrine, once central to classical Protestantism, holds that God has foreordained all that comes to pass, leaving nothing to chance or human choice. If planetary alignments announced Trump in 2016 and the strikes on Iran in 2026, then these events must belong to divine design.
What remains to be understood is why this mode of explanation is experiencing a contemporary resurgence. The most economical hypothesis is that of demand: in periods of radical uncertainty, tolerance for ambiguity diminishes, and the need for a framework that renders the world intelligible again intensifies. Apocalyptic evangelicalism does indeed offer such a framework, oriented towards the end times and the return of Christ, but without precisely dating or operationalizing its premonitions. Political astrology, by contrast, produces circumscribed predictions anchored to publicly verifiable triggers—eclipses, stelliums, conjunctions. Where biblical prophecy waits, astrology measures time and anticipates it. This is also what allows it to merge with a political imagination already prepared to read history as a hidden plan.
“Trust the plan” was the central slogan of QAnon, the movement that, between October 2017 and December 2020, disseminated nearly 5,000 cryptic messages (“Q drops”) accompanied by a vocabulary that left a lasting mark: “Great Awakening,” “wake up,” “do your own research.” Then, in December 2020, the Q drops stopped. The anonymous prophet fell silent, but his grammar survived: it became orphaned, in search of a new text to decode.
It is this audience that political astrology has come to reclaim. The work of Charlotte Ward and David Voas, and of the Conspirituality collective led by Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker, has mapped the mutual magnetism between the world of self-development and pro-Trump conspiratorial networks from as early as 2020. Political astrology inserts itself into this fault line and offers, where the Q drops had failed, something more solid: publicly verifiable astronomical calculations, a millennia-old tradition, and a documented track record of success. It is, in a certain sense, a QAnon without Q, stripped of its phantom oracle and plugged directly into the sky.
It is, in a certain sense, a QAnon without Q, stripped of its phantom oracle and plugged directly into the sky.
The Natural Leader, Anointed for Battle
It is upon this foundation that the most politically significant part of the apparatus has been built: the figure of a natural leader, designated by the very nature of the stars, without human mediation. “[Trump] is going to bring the world around to a good place,” Joni Patry, Vedic astrologer, repeats to her subscribers. This formula appears deceptively innocuous. It is committed to a vision of history, namely the “Great Man Theory” associated with Thomas Carlyle, according to which the course of history is moved by exceptional individuals rather than by collective forces. It is the “chosen ones,” those whose natal charts contain rare configurations, who determine its direction. The people, at best, ratify the leaders’ decisions; at worst, they resist and slow things down. A clear messianic tone is thus present in this theory.
In a democracy, a leader’s legitimacy rests on delegated authority and the checks and balances that constrain it. In the Great Man Theory, legitimacy rests on the leader’s nature, on what he is before what he does. The stars do not validate a project; they designate a person.
In Trump’s case, this designation rests upon precise astrological coordinates that must be taken seriously—not because the stories told about them are necessarily true, but because they produce an effect of reality upon those who hear them. Trump was born on June 14, 1946, at 10:54 a.m. in New York. His ascendant (or “rising sign”) is in Leo, Mars sits there in conjunction, and the fixed star Regulus—the great royal star which, since Babylonian and Hermetic antiquity, signifies the legitimate king—lies less than one degree away. These signs, in both Western and Vedic astrology, produce a signature of power and authority.
But the Vedic tradition adds an element that occupies an outsized place in pro-Trump discourse. Astrologers divide the zodiac into 27 nakshatras, or lunar mansions. The first nakshatra of Leo is called Magha. Its tutelary divinity is the group of the Pitris, the royal ancestors; its symbol is the throne; its emblematic star is precisely Regulus. Now, with Mars conjunct, Trump’s ascendant falls within Magha. That is to say, according to the Vedic grammar, he is a native of the throne. The homophony between Magha and MAGA is too perfect to go unnoticed, and the idea that the movement’s name is no coincidence circulates on social media platforms. The phonetic coincidence becomes a kind of cosmic signature.
This construction is articulated with a parallel reading of the natal chart of the United States. One destiny joins the other. Trump is no longer merely a man; he is the incarnation of the United States, its personification at the decisive moment. The individual leader and the providential nation merge. In the theory of the cosmic leader, heaven’s chosen one is also the war leader, and the war leader derives his legitimacy from celestial election. This fusion is, strictly speaking, a pre-modern regression.
Trump is no longer merely a man; he [becomes] the incarnation of the United States, its personification at the decisive moment.
In the modern tradition, the legitimacy of a head of state rests upon three distinct elements: a received mandate, a limited function, and a bounded temporality. Pro-Trump political astrology sketches a man designated by the stars, whose mission is cosmic, and whose endpoint is written in the sky: it would be absurd to challenge him, for to do so would be to dispute the equinoxes. Added to this are predictions concerning his possible re-election in 2028 despite the constitutional prohibition of the 22nd Amendment. These predictions generally do not conclude in favor of re-election, but their apparent seriousness suffices to establish the idea as a conceivable possibility. Little by little, supreme authority becomes an acceptable fact—then, an expected one.
Post-Trump: The Transmission of the Throne
The televangelist Paula White-Cain, director of the White House Faith Office, publicly and regularly compares Trump to Christ. On April 12, 2026, Orthodox Easter Sunday, Trump himself circulated an AI-generated image depicting himself in openly Christ-like iconography on Truth Social, only a few hours after publicly attacking Pope Leo XIV for criticizing the war in Iran. Following outraged reactions from Christian circles, Trump removed the image the next day, insisting that he thought it portrayed him “as a doctor.” The denial invited much amusement. But the initial gesture reveals something else, something deeper. It suggests less a blunder than a temptation on Trump’s part. His messianic image was already growing; it was just voiced too early and too explicitly.
Still, one question haunts this astrological network. Several of its predictions from 2025 and early 2026 suggest there will soon be a major political shock: a death at the summit. The wording is deliberately vague, but its existence alone suffices to introduce into the audience’s mind the theological figure of sacrifice necessary for the inauguration of a new age. Without bloodshed, the Golden Age cannot arrive. This figure bears a precise name in Christian culture: it is Christ. Jesus dies so that the Kingdom may come.
Vice President J.D. Vance is said by MAGA astrologers to share with Trump an uncommon astrological characteristic.
The imagery of sacrifice is bolstered by the prospect of a clear successor. Vice President J.D. Vance is said by MAGA astrologers to share with Trump an uncommon astrological characteristic: a Leo ascendant at approximately the same degree, and a conjunction with Regulus, the same royal star. Thus, Vance is not simply next in the constitutional order; he is astrologically prepared, himself a bearer of the celestial throne, capable of inheriting not only a political mandate but a cosmic mission.
This is the structural strength of the narrative. Democracy renders each leader perishable because it makes them only a revocable delegate. By contrast, messianic theology renders one indispensable, turning them into the unique chosen one of the moment. Political astrology combines the two: each leader is temporarily indispensable, but the mission can be transmitted to another, similarly designated, successor. The throne is embodied by men, but it is not exhausted by any one of them. One recognizes the old logic of hereditary monarchies, where “The king is dead, long live the king” referring, not to two persons, but to an institution through which individuals pass.
What War Validates
The final effect of this political astrology network may be the most discreet. By describing war as a cosmic necessity, it legitimizes the values that war demands. Mars entered Aries on April 9, marking the moment of confrontation. Aries, the warrior sign par excellence, is described as the sign of decisiveness. The stellium is read as a cosmic demand for boldness, while peace and diplomacy—which would characterize a law-based foreign policy—are implicitly relegated to outdated values, virtues of a dying Kali Yuga that must be left behind. What is valorized instead belongs to the martial register of struggle and purification through fire.
Hegseth himself openly cultivates this discourse. His Pentagon, renamed the Department of War, advocates for a “warrior ethos” among its soldiers and a norm of “maximum lethality, not lukewarm legality.” The astrological narrative grants these values a cosmological grounding, as though they belonged to an order older than the will of any single man. Warrior values, which two centuries of liberal thought had sought to contain, here recover a primordial legitimacy, portrayed as the expression of an order willed by heaven.
Within this grammar, contesting the war amounts to withdrawing oneself from destiny. Political dissent implies a form of rebellion against Heaven.
This narrative, more than the personality of a president or a secretary alone, helps insulate the Iran war from criticism among Trump’s core supporters. Within this grammar, contesting the war amounts to withdrawing oneself from destiny. Political dissent implies a form of rebellion against Heaven.
The shift is considerable and extends far beyond foreign policy. It touches the very nature of the power that Trumpism in 2026 seeks to consolidate: a power founded upon cosmic designation, in which democratic contestation immediately falls under suspicion. The stars do not vote. When a leader derives authority from a narrative held to be predetermined, voters are, little by little, reduced to witnesses, only there to recognize what presents itself as destiny.
Sarah Rodriguez-Louette is a Research Associate at Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris 3). Her research focuses on the strategies of influence employed by racialist organizations in the United States, as well as contemporary transformations of identity. She examines these dynamics through the ideological evolution and transnational mobilization strategies of white nationalist movements.
Image made using “Red sprites at La Silla Observatory (potw1505b)” by European Southern Observatory (ESO) licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
