Why won't Silicon Valley check its horoscope?

Quigley sees the fact that astrology is treated as so much "frivolous entertainment" in this country as the real barrier to her start-up. "I've had a terrible time raising money for this, because most venture people have a knee-jerk reaction to the word 'astrology' and they think of it in terms of the pop astrology, the sort of stupid things that they read in those columns next to the funnies."

This is the frustration of being Quigley. Imagine believing that through years of study you have acquired an invaluable skill that few possess, a talent that can help prevent unnecessary heartache, financial ruin, worry, suffering, even death.

Quigley says, for example, that her chart reading can catch cancer early. She says she advised Nancy Reagan to have her mammograms every quarter in the year her breast cancer was detected.

And now, imagine that, thanks to the Web, you've discovered a way to perform highly individualized calculations for infinitely more people than you ever could yourself, and yet the stigma attached to your craft keeps you from getting the money you need to bring your predictions to the world.

In many ways, she's the classic technology entrepreneur possessed of the conviction that her invention can change the world -- if only someone will just provide the money to make it happen. Quigley wants to help people. "That's why I'm doing it, but it won't hurt my feelings if it makes money," she jokes.

Aha! pounce the skeptics. If she wants to make money, why not just predict the stock market? In fact, Quigley has done this in the past -- on a commission basis for a Saudi Arabian businessman. But she won't be doing any more of that: "I don't like to gamble."

Despite the recent stock market downturn, Quigley predicts a bull market for astrology: "It's recession proof. In Japan, where they've had 10 bad years, astrology is the most popular thing on the Internet." Which brings up the question: If astrology is so popular in Japan, what exactly has it done for the Japanese lately?

At the peak of dot-com insanity, when the mark of success was fast growth and hemorrhaging expenses, Quigley had a different problem in wooing investors. "When I first started in on this people would say: 'Oh, you're going to be profitable. Oh, you can't admit it in your business plan. It's not right to be profitable if you're on the Net.' One of them said: 'You'll never make it on the Internet being profitable.'"

One serious investor got skittish when the market went sour in April. Another was talked out of the deal by a friend who wasn't a believer. But now that profitability is suddenly back in vogue, Quigley believes that her company's fortunes will change. She should know. She sees it in her charts, of course, and she expects to be funded by mid-January. "I have one prospect that might be good, but I won't count on anything until it happens. But it will happen. I don't give up easily."

I wouldn't underestimate her. The author of four books, including "'What does Joan Say?' My Seven Years as White House Astrologer to Nancy and Ronald Reagan," Quigley has faced down a mob of 60 reporters camped out on her doorstep after her name "rocketed around the world," as she's fond of saying. She's stood up to the kind of media scrutiny and ridicule that maybe only Monica Lewinsky could fully empathize with. And she proudly takes credit for helping diffuse Reagan's Bitburg crisis, as well as persuading him that Mikhail Gorbachev was an "intellectual, someone who we could deal with."

But most importantly, Quigley adapts easily. She shows no danger of being forever trapped in those 15 minutes of fame that began in May 1988 when her secret relationship with Nancy Reagan was blown open. Quigley has moved on. Her conversation is peppered with phrases like "rule-based artificial intelligence," "privacy guarantees" and "Nortel and Cisco Systems," as well as "a lot of bosh," "sea change" and "verisimilitude."

After serving me a three-course lunch (clam chowder, shrimp Louie with bread and butter and vanilla ice cream topped with raspberries and some kind of liqueur) on fine china, she forbids me from pouring my own cup of tea. "A proper hostess should pour your tea anyway," she says. But our lunchtime conversation has been dominated by her discussion of a recent article in Forbes ASAP about fiber optics, photons, light and its probable relationship to astrology. "Someday a physicist will discover it, and it will be as big a discovery as DNA or the human genome."

In a fit of pique, she refers to an unnamed congressman as a "jerk" -- then excuses herself with a genteel "Pardon me." Yet her living room contains stacks of Wired magazines and she does Pilates, the trendy exercise du jour.

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