What the astrology star says for 2026: Georgia Nicols' big political prediction

As long-time readers will know, Georgia Nicols’ horoscopes have appeared in National Post from the start. The bestselling author and syndicated astrologer’s predictions have guided loyal readers through the ups and downs for more than 20 years, at times with eerie accuracy. Nicols spoke to us from her wooded home in Bowen Island, B.C. about how she approaches her readings, what sparked her interest in astrology and what the stars tell us about the political unrest in the year ahead.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q How do you approach writing the daily horoscope? Where do you start?

I create a chart for that day, then I see what it is for each sign for that day. There’s a chart for every moment, for example, there’s a chart right now for this conversation, because a chart is just a diagnostic tool. It’s a point in space: longitude, latitude and time. So, if a child is born, then there’s that moment when it takes its first breath, and we do the chart for that moment for that baby. But anything can have a chart: the day you buy a car or the day you move into a house or the day you propose or the day you get married. So I do a chart for each day and then look at how that chart is for each sign.

Astrology is very much based on mathematics. Maybe astrologers can be lazy, so we might say, ‘Jupiter is urging you or giving you something, or Mars will urge you to be active and get physical exercise, because it’s in your sign right now.’ But that is just a way of speaking. The planets up there cannot affect us.

There’s only two things that can affect us from the sky. The sun affects us. There will be more cars in Vancouver at Georgia and Granville at 4 p.m. than there will be at 4 a.m. Obviously, and that’s the sun. And the moon also affects us. Believe me, policemen and hospitals know. So the full moon will show up and in emergency rooms a lot of nurses will say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to work this weekend. It’s a full moon.’ It’s a patterning of knowledge.

If you’ve studied chemistry or botany, all of those things are really just a patterning of knowledge.  Somebody’s making categories and drawing assumptions from it, and that’s what all the early mathematicians did to create astrology. Because astrology, by the way, was devised by mathematicians thousands of years ago.

Q. So it’s a bit like reading a weather forecast?

It absolutely is. Well, put. It is like a weather forecast and the odds are there, but it doesn’t have to be. Years ago, I remember my daughter would ride her bike through the city, because she worked way up at the other end of the city. I saw the next day was an accident-prone day for her, not good. And so I said to her, ‘Please do not ride your bike today or tomorrow. Take the bus.’ And she did. And that day, after she took the bus, she went out for lunch with a friend, and they were driving in his car, and they had a head-on collision with a police car, of all things. She wasn’t hurt, but, I mean, that was unusual, but it did show that she was in an accident-prone day. So, frequently I will say, be careful. It’s accident prone for you.

Q. So you’re translating what you see in the charts into advice about people’s future, right? What is that process like?

What sign are you?

Aquarius.

Aquarius? Oh, I love Aquarius. OK, all the signs have what we would call a domain. They rule things. We use that word rule like Cancer rules food and gardening and cooking. Aquarius rules the heavens. It rules the skies. So most little Aquarian guys, when they’re kids, they all want to be a helicopter pilot or they want to be an astronaut. If I had little Aquarian kids, I’d take them to the airport and they’d all love watching the planes take off or they’re interested in rocket technology, that sort of thing. Likewise, Aquarius rules astrology. How funny that you were assigned to do me.

Q. It sounds like there’s a system in place that you’re following?

Oh, definitely, astrology has been around for 10,000 years or so. Every country in the world has astrology. The Indian continent, they have their Vedic Astrology. The Tibetans have astrology. The Chinese have astrology. What I am practicing is Western astrology, done in North America and Europe. I’m not sure what the Middle East does. I bet they have their own astrology. It’s because all the early scientists — and they weren’t called scientists, mathematicians-scholars, right? — they all devised interpretations of different cycles that they’re seeing up there. So, it’s based on mathematics; it’s a cycle. For example, the most common cycle is the 24-hour cycle. And then, of course, we have the solstice.

So, for me to make a prediction — OK, here’s an interesting one for you. Pluto just now went into Aquarius, it actually dipped into it last year, and this year it’s here for good. The last time it was in Aquarius was in the late 1700s, when they had the French Revolution. Well, Aquarius, what do you expect? Revolution at the gates, you know, that kind of thing. All the outer, slower moving planets are just changing signs this year — so Neptune is moving into Aries. The last time that Neptune was in Aries was in the American Civil War. And the late 1700s was also the American Revolution as well. So then, now we have those two planets occurring at the same time. They didn’t before, but they’re doing it this time. That’s because each one has a different cycle. Pluto takes 250 years to circle the sun. Neptune, I think, 165, then Uranus is about 87 years, so Uranus is now going into Gemini. And the last time it was in Gemini was World War Two, in the 1940s. Now that’s pretty unusual. And take a look at the state of the world right now, right? So all those planets, just so happens, are converging on that new sign, so it’s pretty easy then for me to say, especially looking at the States, that there will be revolution. Get it?

Q. How accurate do you think your predictions are, and how do they compare to other horoscopes?

Let’s put it this way, if people keep reading me, they’re getting something from it, right? Certainly, I govern my own life by astrology. And I’ll tell you one thing, I totally, totally live by the Moon alert. In my columns, at the very top, it says a Moon alert: when not to buy and when to buy. I totally go by that, and so does everybody in my family. And it doesn’t mean that it’s horrible if you buy something during the Moon alert, but I would say if you do, there’s an 80 per cent chance you either return it or you change your mind, or you regret it. And why? Every two and a half days, the Moon is suddenly not aspecting anything mathematically. It’s not making a 45-degree angle or a 60-degree angle or 180. It’s sort of loosey goosey. And so we are sort of feeling like we’re helium balloons floating in the sky, right? So those times when the Moon alert is on, they’re very, very good for creative work, because you can think outside of the box. Your imagination is open, and you’re very receptive to whims and fantasies and whatnot. However, not a good time to decide, OK, today I will buy gold or something like that.

Q. Why do you think people like to read their horoscopes?

I think a lot of people say, Oh, I just read it for the fun of it. If I don’t like it, I dismiss it, but they like to read it right? It’s kind of reassuring. Here’s something that happened to me. I was at an event. It was a family event at a nice hotel downtown. This was about 20 years ago. My son was getting married and he left on the honeymoon, and I did not have time to tip all the lovely people. So I went back later and I took a bottle of Remy Martin, and I gave it to the captain, and then I gave $50 bills to all his staff for helping. And then looked at what I wrote for that day. And I read for Leo, and it said you’re feeling really generous today and you’re tipping really big. I read that, and my mouth fell open.

Q. How did you start writing horoscopes, and when did your interest in astrology begin?

I think it was when I was 12 or 13 years old and getting crushes. I would get a crush on a guy and I would lie on the floor in the living room, and I would read the horoscope. I would read his, and I’d read mine. I think I was looking for answers or hints or anything. What was all this horoscope business? The school didn’t talk about it, the church didn’t talk about it, my family didn’t talk about it. But when I discovered it, I was quite intrigued. So that’s how I started to read horoscopes, and then later it kind of left me. But in my 20s, I started reading books about it, and began reading more and more. And then I became completely involved, starting buying a lot of books, spending a lot of money.

Then I took an office downtown at Georgia and Granville (in Vancouver) and decided to do readings. I’d been doing readings for free for my friends, for people, you just first train yourself. Then there was a health publication, and I offered to write a column for them. And then Monday magazine in Victoria saw it, and said, ‘Will you write a weekly for us?’ And then when the National Post was started, they took me. So I was in National Post ever since it started.

Q.How do people react when you tell them what you do for a living?

I would say that some are interested. I think most people are slightly dismissive. And, you know, hey, I’ve got a graduate degree. I’ve been to university, but nevertheless. Most people who know me just know me now as a celebrity, right? But I can remember one time being ready to fly somewhere and I was at the airport and somebody said, Oh, and what do you do? And I said, I’m an astrologer. And I think if I had said I was a stripper, they would have given me more respect.

Q. Do you see that changing? Are we seeing a resurgence of interest in horoscopes?

Oh, definitely, in the last 20 years, there’s no question about that.

Q. And are you worried in the future that AI might put you out of a job?

Absolutely, that could happen, but I think there’d be no personality in that. But yes, it could. Are you afraid that AI can put you out of a job?

Q. Well, if it can carry on a conversation with you, then yeah, I would be worried. How do you cope with a personal reading that is difficult for someone to hear?

I no longer do readings, but I can still answer that question. If I looked at a reading and I saw something horrible for the person, I mostly would not say it. Or I would try to put the most positive spin on it and find the strength in that chart. What you would tell anybody, yourself, right, work with the strengths, because they’re going to meet this challenge, that kind of thing. Maybe they were going to have a financial problem. You might urge them to be conservative and save their money right now and build, things like that.

Q. What you do is very abstract in a way, so you kind of have to package it to make it about the person?

Perhaps, but often, when a person comes to you, and many people do a reading over the phone, you don’t know a thing about the person. And if they say very little, you don’t have much to go on. You’re doing all the talking. I think you think it’s a bit softer and a bit — what’s the word — more psychic than it is. This is nothing like crystal ball, hand reading, palmistry. This is astrology. It’s nothing like that. Isaac Newton was an astrologer. Galileo was an astrologer. Copernicus was an astrologer. Joseph Kepler — Kepler College in Seattle is an astrology College, and they named it after him. I mean it when I said all the great mathematicians were obviously in astrology if you think about the logic of it. And so astronomy and astrology is all sort of mushed up into one back then.

Q. I think there’s an art to it, though, in the way you handle advice. And like you said, you don’t give bad news.

Oh yes, I do agree there. I would tell you this:  If you went to a counsellor or a shrink or somebody, they can only be as good in giving you advice as they have developed as an individual themselves. If they’re not very wise, if they’re lacking in wisdom and inner growth they can only share with you the level to which they personally have achieved.

Q. You have a sense of humor in your columns, and I think people enjoy reading you.

I think people like that, and I like to kid around. It’s just who I am,  and I like to make it interesting. And I like to give a person a lift to their day now and then, if I can.

Q. What’s your sign?

I’m a Leo, and I have my Moon in cancer, and I’m Libra rising — those are the three big things for everybody. So the time of day that you’re born is very important, but most people don’t know. But the time of day gives you your rising sign, which is sort of your game face, if you will, how you look out there to the world, and the sign that everybody looks up in the calendar that is their sun sign.  Maybe they just think, oh, it’s my sign. But, for example, your sun is in Aquarius, but you have your Moon somewhere, and your rising sign depends on the time of day you were born and where you were born, what city or town, and then beyond that, you have Mercury somewhere, Venus somewhere, Mars somewhere. So it’s a big cocktail that makes you, gives you the characteristics you have. So let us make one distinction here: astrology primarily does two things. It can describe, it can be descriptive. So it would describe your characteristics, like what I said to you about Aquarius before, right? So that’s descriptive, but what I do mostly in horoscopes is predictive.

Q. What’s your favourite sign? Who are the best people?

I don’t have a real favourite sign because nobody is just one sign. That’s the whole thing I’ve been talking about. So how could you have a favourite sign? Because nobody is just one sign. And here’s another funny thing, the rising sign can be just as powerful as the sun. So let us pretend that I really like Aquarius. I do. I could meet a person who could be a Cancer, but they’re Aquarius rising, they would almost be more Aquarian than you. So, we’re such a complicated cocktail. A person is not just one sign. We’re not that simple.