Astrology's Influence in Washington, DC and Wall Street: A Conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Sally Quinn | Vanity Fair

27 February 2026 1832

For my Halloween party this fall, I invited four specialists to come and do readings for my guests: a tarot card reader, an astrologer, a palm reader, and a medium. Unfortunately, they proved so popular that soon everyone was upstairs in the reading rooms. Guests were queuing in the hallway. Downstairs—the actual party—was completely empty. I had to send up bottles of wine to keep my friends from getting unruly.

Toward the end of the evening, when they’d finally descended, various Washington types—journalists, politicians, pundits—were ecstatically comparing notes: “She told me I was going to meet someone!”; “He said I was going to change jobs!”; “She warned me that someone was out to get me!”

This town has been rife with the occult for years. Plenty of DC power players, especially the diplomats, have consulted experts in the occult sciences. Caroline Casey is the queen of astrology in Washington and has been for over 40 years. Svetlana Godillo was a flamboyant Russian who at one point wrote an astrology column for The Washington Post. And Joan Quigley, the Hollywood phenomenon, offered regular astrological guidance to Nancy Reagan.

But none was as powerful as Evangeline Adams, the Roaring Twenties astrologer whom Andrew Ross Sorkin studies in his riveting new book, 1929. Described as “the stock market’s seer,” her ascent was so phenomenal that Adams held Wall Street in thrall up until the crash of 1929. 100,000 people reportedly subscribed to her newsletter, and she had the ear of top New York financiers and celebrities. She consulted with them on their portfolios for $50 a session, and her client list included J.P. Morgan, Charles Schwab, Mary Pickford, Eugene O’Neill, and Charlie Chaplin.

Evangeline Adams: astrologer to the bankers and the stars.

Though she was arrested three times for fortune telling—which was not legal then—each time she was acquitted or the case was dismissed. “The defendant raises astrology to the dignity of exact science,” Judge John Freschi declared during her 1914 trial. A few weeks before the 1929 crash, she predicted that “the Dow Jones could climb to heaven.” Many bought into the market based on her predictions, but like most of her followers, she was wiped out in the meltdown.

Most people don’t think of CNBC host and New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin as shy, but he is when it comes to discussing the occult. I think he would have much preferred to discuss the big financiers with me rather than Evangeline Adams, but he didn’t stand a chance. I will confess that I dragged him into this conversation—though as reluctant as he might have been, he lost his composure at one point and asked me what my sign was. Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Andrew Ross Sorkin: Charles Merrill, who cofounded Merrill Lynch, in 1928, he told everybody to get out of the market. And you’d think, Oh, that looks smart, even in retrospect. But not really, because from the beginning of 1928 to September of 1929, the stock market went up by 90%.

Sally Quinn: Right. As Evangeline Adams predicted it would.

Sorkin: As she predicted it would. I found her to be such a fabulous character. She wrote a memoir in 1926, and I wish she had written more about her life. She passed away in 1932, so it was hard to find that kind of granular detail to fully tell her story, but I was fascinated by her. The fact that all of these people believed in her is so interesting. But you’ve been thinking about astrology for a long time, it sounds like.

Quinn: Well, I have. I’ve been seeing the number one astrologer in the country right now. She lives in Washington. Her name is Caroline Casey. She’s been reading my chart for 50 years. She graduated from Brown with a degree in semiotics and studied at the famous Astrological Lodge in London. Her father was a congressman. She comes from this really intellectual background. So she looks at astrology from a philosophical, intellectual, religious point of view. It’s very believable. She’s taught me a lot. And it works for me.

Sorkin: Do you know lots of powerful people who you think spend time with astrologers? Is it like seeing a psychiatrist or a therapist?

“Evangeline—up at The Plaza she would always have her own table and everybody would come swirling around.”

Quinn: All of the above. And yes, I know many powerful people over the many years who go to astrologers.

In the State Department, I once suggested they hire an astrologer on their staff. All of the people in the Middle East and India—half the world—they all have their own shamans or astrologers. It’s really important to know what their astrologers are telling them! If you have someone who can read signs and tell you what’s going on in [Russian president Vladimir] Putin’s chart, you might have a better idea of what he’s going to do. Because they’re all reading the charts.

Sorkin: See, what was so interesting to me when I was thinking about Evangeline Adams—clearly there were lots of bankers going to visit her, including reported visits from J.P. Morgan back in the day. But today, a lot of the hedge fund managers, I don’t think they go to astrologers. They go to “performance coaches” like Tony Robbins. Paul Tudor Jones talks to Tony Robbins apparently every single day. I think it’s more about how to think about things, but I don’t think it’s about the stars necessarily.

Quinn: Well, that’s a whole other thing. That’s more like a psychic. You’re all looking for advice beyond yourself that you can’t know from facts. It’s all part of the same occult. J.P. Morgan is thought to have said, “Millionaires don’t use astrology, billionaires do.”

Sorkin: Yes.

Quinn: Well, there you have it. Now we’ve got a lot more billionaires than we used to, so I’m telling you, there are a lot of people going to astrologers right now.

J.P. Morgan reportedly turned to Evangeline Adams for astrological guidance.

Sorkin: I’m unclear about that quote, because back in 1929, or back when J.P. Morgan was alive, there was really only one billionaire in America, which was [John D.] Rockefeller. The second billionaire was Henry Ford in 1929. Have you done any research on people on Wall Street who listen to astrologers? I’ve tried to find them. There’s not many that will admit it.

Quinn: They won’t admit it! But they do.

Sorkin: I’ve asked around about whether there’s a modern-day Evangeline Adams. No one will cop to it.

Quinn: Well, I learned while I was preparing to talk to you that the Roman goddess of money and seeing was Juno Moneta. That’s where the word money comes from—Moneta. This has been going on for a long time. John Winthrop founded America, and his son, John Jr., was very involved in the occult. He used divination to help people. It was about nature and goodness. The stars wanted you to be kind to people. So that was sort of the beginning of welfare and the protection of people that we now don’t have anymore.

Sorkin: When do you think people turned against this whole idea? A lot of people think astrology is for quacks.

Quinn: People who say astrology is quackery don’t know about it. My brother, who is a lawyer and has a PhD in religion, studied astrology because he thought it was a bunch of quackery. He got in there, they would read charts of world leaders without knowing who they were, and they would all come up with the same personality description. He was blown away by it. I’ve been stunned by the astrological readings I’ve had. It works for me.

Sorkin: I was told that something terrible was going to happen to my career or my life when I was 42 years old. I’m 49 now. But I will tell you, the entire year when I was 42, I was so worried. I really believed her.

Quinn: [Laughs.] Maybe she was off by a few years!

Have I talked to you about Svetlana?

Svetlana Godillo was an astrologer in Washington. She was a real character. She wore robes, her apartment was filled with draperies and beads and candles. She smoked these long dark cigarettes and had a very husky voice: “Darling, let me read your chart.” Everybody in town went to her. I actually got Barry Goldwater to go to her. She told him not to run.

Sorkin: That’s wild.

“She wore robes, her apartment was filled with draperies and beads and candles. She smoked these long dark cigarettes and had a very husky voice: ‘Darling, let me read your chart.’ Everybody in town went to her. I actually got Barry Goldwater to go to her. She told him not to run.”

Quinn: I thought she was so good that I got The Washington Post to give her a column. The Post still has an astrology horoscope, which Abe Rosenthal at The New York Times used to mock. But he wasn’t laughing during Watergate.

Sorkin: What does Jeff Bezos think of the horoscope, do we know?

Quinn: I haven’t heard. You might want to ask him. I would imagine that Lauren Sánchez has had her chart done.

Anyway, Svetlana’s column was a huge hit. But she was politically—she had very strong opinions. She would start writing negative things about politicians she didn’t like—she couldn’t stand Teddy Kennedy—so they were always getting bad news in their charts. And the ones she liked, like Ronald Reagan, always got fantastic charts.

There was a woman named Joan Quigley, who was Nancy Reagan’s astrologer. She advised Nancy on when Air Force One should take off, to the minute. It got to be a scandal when the news came out. Joan Quigley advised Nancy that Gorbachev and Reagan had very “congenial” charts, and that they would be good friends. [Nancy] gave her credit for turning Ronald Reagan around on Russia.

Sorkin: That’s incredible. I had no idea the political class was so engaged with astrology.

Nancy Reagan reportedly turned to Joan Quigley on questions of aviation and geopolitics.

Quinn: I would imagine that some of the people who work for Trump are involved in astrology. I can’t imagine he would go for it, but if it says he’s going to be king of the world, he might believe it! Have you ever felt you got wrong advice? Like your 42-year-old thing?

Sorkin: Well, so far so good. I could still get hit by a bus on the way out of here today, but…

Quinn: Andrew, let’s not talk about that. You’ve got to think positively.

Svetlana told me something really awful when I was pregnant. She was getting in trouble at the paper because of her political prognostications. They asked me, “What are we going to do about Svetlana?” and I said, “Don’t ask me.” She got carried away with her own power, because everybody was reading her. She told me something really awful about what was going to happen to my baby, Quinn [Bradlee]. And she was wrong. But I was really angry with her.

Now, Ben [Bradlee, my husband] thought it was all quackery. But whenever I’d have my chart done, I’d come home and he’d say, “What did they say about me?”

Sorkin: [Laughs.] Right. And then he would believe it.

What is—dare I ask—your sign?

“Joan Quigley was Nancy Reagan’s astrologer. She advised Nancy on when Air Force One should take off, to the minute.”

Quinn: Cancer. I’m a double Cancer. My rising sign and my sun sign are both Cancer. And what are you?

Sorkin: Well, it depends on what magazine you read. I’m right on the cusp between being an Aquarius and a Pisces. I was born on February 19.

Quinn: I would say Aquarius.

Sorkin: My wife thinks I’m definitely a Pisces.

Quinn: I don’t know. I think your whole “shtick” is Aquarius. Let me just ask you a question. Is there a place in your head where, when things just get out of control, you can disappear off somewhere else? And sort of feel like you’re looking down on everybody, and that it’s your own private space?

Sorkin: I mean, I’m in my head all day long. All the time. Alone in my head. I mean, yes. I do have that place. But I don’t know if I go to that place—maybe I do it to get away from reality, but I think I go to it…. I just feel like my brain is spinning. I feel like I can’t make it stop sometimes.

Do you know when you meet somebody, exactly—I mean, even if I hadn’t said when I was born, would you know?

Barry Goldwater rejected an astrologer's advice and ran for president.

Quinn: Sometimes I can tell. I could tell that Bill Clinton is a Leo all the way. Some people are so obviously who they are. But Pisces is the most complicated sign in the zodiac. It’s hard to get your hands around water. I have a lot of Pisces friends, and I like them, but sometimes I just can’t fathom what’s going on in their heads.

Sorkin: That sounds about right to me. Talking about what’s going on in our heads, what do we think Vanity Fair wants to do with this conversation?

Quinn: Apparently they’re going to scour it and use whatever they think is viable.

Sorkin: Well, I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of stuff about Washington. I wish I had more about modern-day Wall Street. When I think about Evangeline, she obviously had 100,000 subscribers, which is a shocking number for that period of time. She would go into The Plaza Hotel—up at The Plaza she would always have her own table and everybody would come swirling around. She was a huge celebrity.

“Now, Ben [Bradlee, my husband] thought it was all quackery. But whenever I’d have my chart done, I’d come home and he’d say, 'What did they say about me?'”

Quinn: I went to Bob Barnett’s funeral [in November] and there was someone very prominent in the government who I had sent to Caroline Casey years ago. She came over to me, and she said, “Oh my God, looking at you reminds me of Caroline. Is she still working?” I said yes, and she said, “I’ve just got to call her. I’ve got to know what’s going on.” And she was very high up in the government.

A lot of men are too embarrassed to go, because they feel they won’t be taken seriously, but a lot of the wives or partners go. You never had your chart done?

Sorkin: I have not. I mean, maybe when I was in London in my early 20s. But she was wrong.

Quinn: Well, you could go have your chart done again and have somebody look back at what was going on at that time.

Sorkin: Maybe we’ll do that for this article.

Quinn: You should get Jamie Dimon to have his chart done!

Sorkin: [Laughs.] I will ask Jamie if he wants to get his chart done. We’ll take video of that.

Quinn: He doesn’t have to do anything, all he has to do is give them his birthday. That’s the plan. Jamie Dimon’s chart.

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