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SITTING IN HER warm and sun-suffused ninth-floor Cambridge condo, a tawny cat lolling next to her, Joyce Levine lays out her astrological bona fides. She cites, for instance, a client back in the ’80s who liked to gamble. "So I was picking out some lucky days for her. She and her husband went to Atlantic City during that time frame and won $200,000."

Works for me. Even more striking is when Levine reads from her book, A Beginner’s Guide to Astrological Interpretation. "With Pluto transiting Sagittarius from 1995 until 2009, religion, philosophy, higher education, and even long-distance travel take their turns being regenerated. Since Pluto brings out the dark side of a sign before regenerating it, scandals involving financial misappropriations and sexual misconduct and religious organizations ... will be even more prevalent than they are today. Increased terrorist activity on airlines is another likely manifestation before the world changes its current religious and philosophical tenets." Hmm. Enron ... the Catholic Church ... 9/11. Levine wrote the book in 1992.

Astrological changes, of course, are not demarcated into tidy 365-day years. So, predicting what will happen over the 12 months of 2005 is something of a fool’s errand. But Levine says she foresees pretty much more of the same until Pluto moves out of Sagittarius in 2009. "Now until 2009, the likelihood of more terrorism worldwide is just higher than normal," she says. "In terms of another terrorist attack, I think until 2009 we can’t count that out. Because Sagittarius also has to do with religion. Pluto was in Sagittarius when Christ started preaching, it was in Sagittarius when Martin Luther was ordained." And, she says, it’s a big reason why lately the "the fundamentalists have taken over everywhere."

Levine doesn’t claim to always have a clear sightline on future happenings — though she did predict that Pedro Martinez would split town for another team (she also predicted Jason Varitek would re-sign with the Sox). But she didn’t expect President Bush to be re-elected. "Truthfully, I thought things would catch up with him sooner," she says. Still, she thinks the Teflon might be wearing a bit thin on this guy. "I think his term is going to end up like Nixon’s," she says. The reason? Saturn is in Cancer, and will be until July of 2005. "Saturn in Cancer has been very unkind to US presidents. Saturn was in Cancer when Nixon resigned. The only ones who were ever re-elected with Saturn in Cancer were FDR, who died in office, and Bush."

So expect things to get worse for the Bushies. "I think there’s going to be more scandal with Cheney and Halliburton, and that’s going to have an effect on everybody," Levine says. "I think we’ll start to see, in May or June of 2005, more revelations coming out, and more questionable things about [Bush]. And I think around September there will be even more skeletons that come out of the closet. His popularity is going to start to sink. That may not get him out [of office] right then, but it’s the beginning of a trend.

"I think the relationships between Washington and Saudi Arabia are [going to deteriorate]. I looked at Halliburton’s chart" — corporations have charts, apparently — "and I think Halliburton’s stock is gonna go down. I think there’s more military problems in Iraq late January and into February, and, if I was Rumsfeld, I’d stay out of the war zones in June."

For his own personal safety?

"Mmm-hmm."

Levine predicts that Massachusetts will do better economically than the rest of the nation in 2005, but does fear that "the country’s in trouble. There’s only one way for the stock market and the dollar, long term, to go, and it’s not a pretty picture.... The economy of the country is clearly precarious. And all the budget deficits are going to start catching up. Jobs are hemorrhaging out of the country, and those jobs are not coming back. So we’re becoming more and more like South America. We have the rich and the poor, and the middle class is disappearing."

On the other hand, when looked at on a global scale, "we’re headed in a direction where, in 100 years, everything will probably be equal. But the timing ... between the developed countries and the non-developed countries, it’s not going to be pretty for the developed countries. The East is coming up and the West is going down. We, in this country now, are like where Britain was at the end of the 1800s. Americans today think that we’re the center of the world. [But] this country’s in bad shape." Still, says Levine, one aspect inherent to astrological cycles is that "when something gets bad enough, it changes." So it’s got to get worse before it gets better? "Oh, it’s not going to get better. I don’t know if it’s going to get worse. After 2009 it will start to heal, but not before then."

AS PRESIDENT of the nonpartisan, nonprofit World Future Society, Timothy Mack takes a more grounded view of what might happen in the year ahead. The educational and scientific organization, founded in 1966, scours think tanks and research groups, gleaning the latest scoops on current trends, and extrapolating what they might bode for the future. It’s "sort of a clearinghouse for people to talk to each other," Mack says. "We kind of disseminate esoteric information about the future that might not otherwise be available to the general population." With members ranging from government analysts to corporate strategic planners to academics, WFS centers around the credo that "the future doesn’t just happen. People create it through their action — or inaction — today."

Looking toward 2005, Mack doesn’t only see war and strife, economic stagnation and environmental despoliation. He sees the benefits of new technologies and telecommunications growing apace. "One of the things I’ve seen a lot of, and I think there will be a lot more of, is the growth of technology in terms of building new kinds of communities," he says. "Look at the growth of groups like Craig’s List. Or there’s a site called Deviant Art, where essentially you work on each other’s art." Other examples he cites include the collaborative composition system Wiki. Or a group like MoveOn.org, an Internet meeting place that has significant and tangible effects on real-world goings-on. With all this coming together, with these new definitions of community, Mack says, he’s hoping that perhaps "this red-state/blue-state stuff is part of the past."