The fate of the 2008 presidential election might already be sealed—in the fine print on Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Was he born at 1:06 p.m.? Or was it just after 12?

According to America’s most popular political astrologers, what happened—or did not happen—during that crucial Honolulu hour on August 4, 1961 could determine the future of the free world.

Since Mr. Obama’s birth time is not yet publicly known, even to his own campaign, astrologers who make their living interpreting the impact of the heavens on the nation’s earthbound elected leaders can’t make up their mind as to whether he has one of the most ready-made “leadership charts” in recent presidential history—a strikingly similar one to Bill Clinton’s, save the seductive planets—or is cursed with the prospect of physical danger and a mentality too cerebral to run a country.

The only existing report of the time, which apparently originated from a shout-out from Mr. Obama over a noisy crowd to astrologer Frances McEvoy during a New Hampshire pass-through earlier this year, places him at 1:06 p.m., coincidently just 300 seconds after the moon transitioned from Taurus, a sign of resolution and leadership, to Gemini, a decidedly less confident constellation. And it’s only an hour before the ascending planet in the horizon, which determines first impressions, transitioned from a deeply powerful constellation to a more wavering and reckless one.

“If he were born an hour earlier, it would make a huge difference,” explained astrologer Michael “WolfStar” O’Reilly, who wrote about Mr. Obama’s alleged campaign-trail exchange with the astrologer on his Web site, NeptuneCafe.com.

Mr. O’Reilly, who has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and is a weekly contributor to StarIQ.com, one of the Web’s most popular online sources of horoscope information, has his own theories on what all of this means for Mr. Obama.

“One of the problems with Obama is he has a progressed Mars in the 12th house—the house of secret enemies—and Mars is the warrior planet,” Mr. O’Reilly said. “And it’s forming some very hard aspects to Pluto, which is the warrior of his chart.” In other words, “he has some very powerful enemies.”

Although Mr. O’Reilly fears that one such enemy might be a gun-wielding lunatic (he thanks the Secret Service for “catching on”), the stars might simply be spelling out “Hillary Rodham Clinton,” who has a formidable chart and who many astrologers believe will win regardless of the moment Mr. Obama emerged from the womb. She enjoys a Scorpio sun—historically the most common sun sign for a president to have—and a Mars in Leo, which, to a statistically improbable degree, according to Mr. O’Reilly, is the most frequent Mars placement for a U.S. leader.

Jeff Jawer, the founder of StarIQ, who invented the first-ever hand-held astrological calculator and cowrites a best-selling annual astrology guide, described Mrs. Clinton as “seriously formidable.” He also said she is not quite who she appears.

“Now, I’m not a Hillary fan, even though I’m a Democrat, but Hillary may be nicer than we think,” he said. He noted her Pisces moon, an indication of innate compassion that no U.S. president before has ever shared. But then he warned of a potentially “Machiavellian” side to her, caused by a Scorpio sun and Scorpio ascendant: “Even people who like Hillary’s Scorpion way, we know there’s an enormous amount going on beneath the surface. Elements of the left don’t trust her. And that’s the thing about Hillary: We will probably never know her. And in the age of media saturation, we love the quality of accessibility in leaders.”

But in addition to Mrs. Clinton, astrologers say, Mr. Obama has yet another foe to potentially worry about: the sun itself.

He will be threatened for only a brief period, four days, in February, when a rare solar eclipse will be ascending in the heavens. The problem: that’s when Super Duper Tuesday—the mega-primary day in which as many as 20 states will be selecting their Democratic nominees—happens.

As cosmic forecaster Dulce Bell-Bulley put it during an interview with The Observer when she stumbled upon this fact, “Wait—no! Oh, my God!”

“That’s very significant,” explained the British-accented Ms. Bell-Bulley, who serves New York clients and has written in publications about topics such as the astrology of the first Iraq election. “It won’t just be which Democrat and which Republican is decided then. In the hearts of the people, it will be which president.”

Wilma Carroll, another well-known astrologer who studied under a Tibetan monk years ago and has appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman and FOX News—and who correctly predicted the 2000 election on Live with Regis—was comparing all the candidates to the eclipse and noting minor potential impacts when she turned to Mr. Obama.

“Hmm … 17 degrees right opposite everything in that mid-heaven,” Ms. Carroll mumbled. Then she gasped. “This hits him really hard!” she said. “It’s down at the bottom of his chart and opposes all of his planets in his 10th house of career. Opposes a lot of them—opposes his sun, Uranus, phew, it’s like knocking the wind out of someone. It can really be frightening to him.”

But if he plays it right, Mr. Obama could also benefit from the sudden influx of cosmic energy. Since the eclipse hits the U.S. chart, as well—derived from Mr. O’Reilly’s increasingly popular view that the United States was born at 2:21 p.m. on July 4, 1776, when John Hancock (might have) signed his name to the Declaration of Independence—perhaps the electorate might be ready to hit that reset button, too.

Either way, according to these readings, Mr. Obama had better brace himself. Or hire an astrologer to run his schedule, as it later emerged that former President Ronald Reagan did for at least six years following the attempt on his life. (Or, for that matter, hold seances with Abraham Lincoln, as Mrs. Clinton was reported by Bob Woodward to have done—a story that the Clintons vociferously denied—in the early, trying years of her husband’s presidency.)

Mr. Obama’s press office in Chicago said they did not know his time of birth, nor where the information might be obtained. And Hawaii, by law, keeps birth certificates sealed.

Mrs. Carroll, for one, is simply so overwhelmed by the ambiguous writings in the sky that she is resorting to her usually clairvoyant “gut feeling” for the time being.

“I just feel Giuliani so strongly,” she said. “You have no idea.”