Clara Sherley-Appel (CSA): This is Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is writer and astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat. Born in Zhengzhou, China, Alice moved to Iowa when they were 5 years old. When they got into astrology in 2014, it was after they had spent twelve years living in predominantly white spaces, and interacting with predominantly white institutions. Alice uses astrology to re-chart the history of the subconscious, redefine the body in the world, and reimagine history as collective memory. Their astrological work has inhabited MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum, and they are the author of Postcolonial Astrology, which is the topic of our conversation today.


Alice Sparkly Kat, welcome to Story Behind the Story!


Alice Sparkly Kat (ASK): Thanks for having me. It's good to meet you. Thanks for hanging out with me.


(CSA): Yeah, I think this will be a lot of fun. I wanted to start by asking you to describe what astrology is to you. What do you see as the purpose of astrology or the purposes of astrology and how do you use it in your own life?


(ASK): I think it's a language. So you can do a lot with it.; You can narrate your life experiences with it, you can listen to other people with it. I mean, you can have a lot of fun with it, too. But it's a language so you can do what you like with it. 


(CSA): Hm. This book is largely about the historical context in which the symbols of Western astrology — which kind of make up a lot of that language — came to prominence, and the way that those symbols and the practice of astrology in the West has been used to bolster racist, sexist, and capitalist infrastructure. What does that context do to your understanding of astrology and how does it inform your practice?


(ASK): I think it's a question of how languages are shaped, like: what they're built to talk about. So, we can talk about a lot of things using Western astrology. We can talk a lot about histories of pain, things like that; And there's some things that it really just can't talk about, too. I wanted to just make the book because I wanted to really cut away this idea that Western astrology is universal, cuz it's not. It's a specific language; It can be used to talk about certain things.


(CSA): When you think about it as a language, do you think about that primarily in terms of the symbols, or is there more to it? Tell me a little bit more about what you mean when you call it a language. 


(ASK): What I mean by calling language is, like… (I mean, it's about the symbols and things like that, too). But I think that the purpose of language is to turn reality into fiction, cuz we don't live in reality — we live in ideologies. So language is something that can make us a little bit more aware of it. That's what I mean when I say that astrology is a language. It's not a science. It's not really a religion. It's a language, because it's… I mean, it's used to talk about things. 


(CSA): I really love what you said about, “We don't live in reality. We live in ideologies.” Cuz I think that's something that gets lost so easily in our conversations in the West, right? We tend to try to focus on finding things that are objective somehow. 


(ASK): Yeah, and then we can't find them. 


(CSA): No, they don't exist. (both laugh) But I think it's especially interesting right now because I think we do... We've seen so much over the course of the pandemic; the way that ideologies can affect people, and can impact their realities as well. What do you see as the conversation between… Like, how does language mediate that conversation between the reality and the ideologies?


(ASK): I think it really depends on how you practice it. I do client work, so that's a big part of how I see this happening. Talking to people about what they're experiencing, what they remember, processing a lot of memories with people through astrology. But there's also horoscope writing — that's a whole art on its own. It's very different than [UNINTELLIGIBLE @ 4:10ish]. What you're doing is you're talking about the present or current events, and also this anticipation of the near future. The different forms? Yeah. I mean, I've seen fiction writers use astrology in their work, musicians use astrology.


(CSA): Yeah, I'm very interested in that relationship between astrology and other types of storytelling. There are a lot of fiction writers, for example, who talk about discovering things about themselves or processing the events of their lives through fiction — often without really being aware that that's what they're doing until after the fact when they come to analyze what they've written. As an astrologer, like you said, you're often practicing astrology on and with other people. Is there a similar experience of discovery in that practice? Of self-discovery as well as client discovery?


(ASK): Totally! Now I have a column in my client notes section (of) what I learned from each client, too. Not necessarily about them, but just about things that they're teaching me about life; Things like that. 


(CSA): Can you share an example of that? 


(ASK): Mmmm… a lot of the stuff, I mean… a lot of the stuff… I tell clients (that) nothing we talk about here leaves the session, but just in terms of my own impressions of some of the work: I had a client teach me the difference between being listened to and being understood the other day. I had a client teach me that politics is really about ethics once, a couple weeks ago. Those are the things that are sticking out to me.


(CSA): Some of those insights that come out of it. What was it like for you learning about the origin of a lot of these astrological symbols, of a lot of the language that is used in astrology when you learned about it for the first time?


(ASK): I have some things that were pretty surprising to me; I knew that astrology had been practiced by right-wing figures.


(CSA): Right.


(ASK):  Reagan, JP Morgan for example. And things like that. But there's this whole assumption about astrology sometimes that it's based on observable things, and then in my mind I was assuming that there would be astrologers looking at people's lives. Like, ‘Oh Venus, in the 8th house — it shows up this way. Let me write that down;’ Things like that. But that's not what I found, and what I found was that when [UNINTELLIGIBLE @ 6:45] taught - - - as - astrology, he's talking about universal particularities, or universal astrology and then particular astrologies. And then the particular astrology that he's talking about, he's looking at differences in temperament between cultures and geographies, so he's actually looking at race (or what we would call race now). A lot of astrology a lot of the quote-unquote "observable differences” — they are very subjective and they're actually about race. 


(CSA): I think it's so interesting realizing how much of a relationship there is between astrology — historically, between astrology and right-wing ideologies. It's so interesting to me that it is largely seen as a hippie outcropping or a left-wing thing. What do you make of that?


(ASK): There's many different types; so there's, for example, people who are talking about searching astrological techniques, or even people who are doing client work, are very different than people who are practicing horoscope writing. Many different subcultures would [UNINTELLIGIBLE @ 801) astrology. For example, horoscope writers — they tend to not be men because it originated in some of that zine culture that was happening in the '80s; that's what I've heard. It's almost… there's a lot of different subcultures that are all using astrology; and then there's points where people collide, but it's not this cohesive thing, too. 


(CSA): You had an essay that you put out recently… I think it’s called, “Why Straight Men Don’t Like Astrology.” First of all, can you recap that basic argument, and then talk about how you reconcile that, and what the differences are between the astrology that straight men don't like, and the astrology that gets co-opted by right-wing figures like Reagan?


(ASK): Yeah, cuz straight men DO like astrology! (Both laugh). If you go to some of the conferences, it’s mostly straight men, actually.


(CSA): Oh, really?! Fascinating!


(ASK):  But then you go online and then you see these memes, like, “Astrology GF /Stock Market BF;” And then you're also seeing… Someone wrote the other day, “E-girls are ruining astrology.” things like that. And straight men have a really large institutional presence. There's a real difference of what's being talked about, cuz a lot of the stuff that's seen as trivial or unimportant types of astrology tends to be about relationships; It tends to be about emotions. A lot of the astrology that is practiced by men, it does tend to be more about Ancient Rome, and history and stuff. It's all important, it's just, it looks very different.


(CSA): So astrology is often derided as frivolity or pseudoscience. But one of the things I love in this book is how seriously you take it. At the same time, taking something seriously doesn't mean there's no room for play or for fun. So what do you see as the role of play and of fun in the practice of astrology?


(ASK): I think that's an assumption people make about astrologers or people who are into astrology. They see us as very serious people who are serious about a silly thing. But actually, astrology is really serious,but then people who are into astrology are actually really silly. I think that having fun with a language can really change it, so I feel like that's what's really exciting about astrology being practiced today. And it's having fun, but it's also about doing grief work with people. It's also about really having conversations with people, cuz processing emotions — it's not always fun, but it plays a pretty crucial element of it, too. 


(CSA): What are some ways that you have included play in your own personal practice of astrology?


(ASK): Sometimes with having people imagine what certain planets might be telling other planets in their chart, it's pretty fun. Making jokes sometimes, it can be pretty fun. Yeah. 


(CSA): And of course, there's a lot of… One of the ways that I think I see astrology consumed online is through memes and mood boards, and a lot of these structures that come out of fandom (and I know we're going to talk about fandom a little bit later). What do you see as the role of those things in modern astrology? Or, I don't know if “modern astrology” is the right thing to call it, but in the astrology that is practiced a lot today.


(ASK): I think it's just about having a shared language. With some of the memes, people will tag their friends, or send it to their friend, so it's a way to communicate, actually. Same with fandom: it's a shared language. It brings people together. With the mood boards, it's a lot about just self-expression also. 
I got really addicted to the mood boards this last month. There was a ton, but then I saw today, like, ‘oh man, Taco Bell made some mood boards.’


(CSA): Oh no!
 
(ASK): I don't know how I feel about all that. 


(CSA): I think that's a problem we see a lot with these subcultures that end up getting a lot of exposure through social media or… (primarily through social media…), is that it's so easy, then, for corporations who are also on social media to co-opt that, and to use it for their own purposes. I think that really takes a lot away from the practice. It's not that we can't engage with these brands as well, but if the purpose is self-understanding, what does it mean for a brand to co-op self-understanding? 


(ASK): I'm not too worried about it, and the reason is, I mean, I believe in people. Because a brand can sit there and try to do something with this language, but people are going to do what they want with the language. Fandom is a good example, cuz a lot of the images, characters, verses that we get in fandom — I mean, they start with the corporation, but then people are taking the materials and creating something new out of them. So I really believe in people just being able to respond to just corporate actions. I'm not feeling too, ‘oh man, corporations. They're going to take over people,’ cuz I don't think that's possible actually. I think corporations can pretend to, but I think that people are going to do what they want. 


(CSA): I like that; Corporations can try to take us over, but we do what we want.


(ASK): Because corporations, they co-op queer messages and stuff like that. But, I mean — queer people are still around. (Both laugh)


(CSA): We are here and queer, it's true. 
We talked a little bit about what it was for you to learn the origins of these astrological symbols the first time. When you were researching this book, did you know these stories already, or were there things that jumped out at you and changed your perspective? 


(ASK): There were definitely surprising things. Like the thing I was telling you about how I was like, ‘Oh my God, astrology's not about observable differences in individuals!’ (That was shocking to me.) It's about quote-unquote “observable differences,” — really, assumptions about geography and culture; things like that. So the book, it came actually out of this zine I made called Money Magic that was about an etymology of the moon and Saturn. It was about paralleling those two symbols together, cuz they're often read together since Saturn cycle is 28 years, and then the moon cycle is 27 days, so they collide in a person's chart. And then I was finding some stuff out about the moon and Saturn, just what the relationship between land money could be — cuz the Moon is related to Congress. It's related to money, while Saturn's related to citizenship and land owning. When I was bringing the sun into that conversation — the sun is gold! — I had an idea of what I wanted to talk about, and then I just went from there. And stuff changed because we're comparing three symbols now. With Venus and Mars, I actually thought that I would be talking about sexuality a lot more, but it didn't end up being the case. Because I made the assumption that gender is made for reinforcing sexuality, but I found out through the research that that wasn't the case. Gender is technology that's created for war. It's made to talk about war. It's made to regulate social relations during war — so it's not really about sexuality, and so I cut all that stuff out, and the sections where I was talking about sexuality — but all of that got cut out. 


(CSA): I found that section on Venus and Mars really fascinating, and especially the discussion of different romantic tropes that we see in storytelling a lot: like the Romeo and Juliet trope, (and there were some others you discussed but that's the one that's hitting in my brain right now), and how they really are stories about violence. You talk about Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray at some length, and the way that these are… like, in Twilight, it is really set out as a love story — but all of the things that are about protecting love are really ways of justifying violence. 


(ASK): Yeah, protecting the states — there's so many parallels.


(CSA): And it does follow along a lot of those tropes, right? The Star-Crossed lovers and whatever else…


(ASK): The overprotection…


(CSA): When you're talking about these — I mean at earlier points you're talking about the mythological origins for some of these stories. You talk about the story of Inanna going down to the underworld, and a… it's not parallel, a sort of opposing version of the story is when you're talking about Mercury… is that when you were talking about the opposition of Mercury going down to the underworld and how those are different?


(ASK): Yeah, yeah. Cuz with Mercury and Venus, their inferior planets — which just means that, you know, they're not QUALITY: INFERIOR, they're just closer to the Sun. (Clara laughs) So then we see them in the retrograde cycle — a couple times a year from Mercury, every 2 years for Venus — where they just go retrograde, so that has to do with going to the underworld for Inanna. Mercury is allowed to go to the underworld whenever he wants; he retrogrades a lot.


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): If you’re just joining me, my guest today is astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat, whose recent book, Postcolonial Astrology, charts the politicized history of Western astrological symbols, and offers an approach to astrological work that explicitly centers queer and POC practitioners.


When you are taking this astrological language that is built on these things and you're transforming them — and particularly, let's talk a little bit about the Love and War stories, cuz I think they're very interesting. How do you go about transforming them?


(ASK): You mean, like, in my practice?


(CSA): Yes, in your practice. 


(ASK): I mean I use them to talk about things, cuz you know people want to talk about gender a lot of the time, and feel a need to. It looks so different for each person! Because I can talk to someone who's maybe transitioning. It's like, ‘Hey, I'm really processing what gender means to me.’ Maybe I'm talking to someone who's raised as a certain gender family with family dynamics that reinforce that gender dichotomy, and they're trying to process it. It really depends for each person. For myself personally (cuz I feel I have a relationship to these things outside of how I work with other people, too), it helps for me to fictionalize them, because then I'm able to just play with that. I tell stories. I’ve written a lot of love stories, actually. And then I feel like any time I'm writing stories, I'm playing with ideas of gender.


(CSA): Well, and I think you were raising this before, that you had this assumption that gender was about sexuality or was there to bolster particular ideas of sexuality, but that it is instead this sort of technology. And I think in the context of thinking about gender and gender assignment, we can really see the relationship between that view of gender as a technology, and the violence that you see when you are looking at Mars. You can really see the way that assigning people a particular gender, or setting them into these boxes can be a violence. 


(ASK): It can be, yeah. You can use it to describe yourself. You can use it to play with it. I feel like… a lot of times I feel like that's why astrology is so queer: It is actually because queer people are so good at creating meaning while destroying it at the same time. You're taking it apart. 


(CSA): Yeah, we got that cycle. 
Well, I think that this is probably a good time to have you do a little bit of a reading. Can I ask you to set it up for us first? Just describe what we're going to hear.


(ASK): Oh, sure. This is just the last couple of paragraphs from the intro of the book.


(CSA): Oh cool!


(ASK):         (they read)
“The truth is, the thing that is astrology is not what offers healing to astrology fans. The history of astrology developed out of white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy. The ways that we see Venus and Mars and gender, the ways that Jupiter and the Sun and rulership have been defined, have served power rather than working against it. Astrology, as we have inherited it, does not offer us authentic identity. Astrology offers us Roman identity, Roman belonging, and Roman humanity.


This is why we must continually work to destroy astrology as we practice it: because we look for identity from it. The reason why astrology, as a subculture, creates beautiful community and spiritual validation is not because there is anything special about such an occult language or because it has the ability to glimpse into one’s being in a way that’s different from other identity languages; it’s because astrology’s practitioners and fans have made it our own. It works not because there is anything magical about the language itself but because the act of not believing readily, of believing where belief has been earned, of listening waywardly, and of owning the magic of illusion making collectively is magic. Astrology is not magic. The community that recreates it in the contemporary era is.


As a writer, I come from the fandom world, which is a controversial storytelling world because the writers tend to be voices who neither get published, nor work to learn the tropes that can earn a writer institutional validation. Fanfiction writers are often naive writers because we’re untrained writers. It’s not really an industry, because there is no money in writing fanfiction and because the work itself exists within a legal grey zone. We write with characters who will never belong to us. However, fanfiction continues to stick around despite all of those who say it’s too embarrassing, and young femmes need to grow out of it. People like fanfiction because it is a space where they can be heard—because it is a community that contests the authority of authorship.


The mass media that the fandom world digests, like the Roman one that the astrological community digests, is not a neutral one. It is a world overpopulated by white men, where women never see or speak to one another, where the binary between homosexuality and heterosexuality makes it seem as though gay people are an entirely separate natural species, where people of color do not exist at all unless they are characterized in supporting or stereotypical ways. This world of images is genealogically related to white supremacist ideologies. Cartoons were originally based on white men satirizing blackness, and early American cinema developed from the minstrel tradition.


Like astrologers—who are often not genealogically related to the Romans but seek to transcend cultural frameworks that are called too naive and too specific to be studied outside of anthropology—fanfiction writers are often not white men, but they often reproduce images of white men in order to tell stories about themselves. Like astrologers do with their archetypes, fanfiction writers often genderbend or racebend their characters, and sometimes make them into inhuman creations or animal hybrids. Like astrologers, fanfiction writers often find their source material less than satisfactory, and the available tools used to speculate new realities away from colonized imaginations disappointing. However, fan fiction writers stay in fandom for the same reasons that astrologers stay in astrology: because it feels good to speak to one another, to make inside jokes, because fellow fans and astrologers work to see us when we write stories or horoscope interpretations—because we belong in subculture even when we don’t belong in culture.


What saves astrology from itself today is that it works the fandom world. It is a community-created subculture that takes what has been mass-produced and digests it. Rather than a consumer-oriented cultural movement, which tends to spike in interest when there are big blockbuster releases from a centralized creative power and ebb after the hype has died down, fandoms that are community-created tend to stay stagnant in terms of capturing interest. After a certain magical point, fandoms are no longer dependent on the canon, and function quite well on their own, neither growing nor diminishing in size — The Sailor Moon fandom is a good example of this, if you want to look up the numbers on this topic on Tumblr user Destinationtoast’s blog. This means we are not out to evangelize or to grow as the capitalists tell us that we should be if we are to stay viable. We are out here sharing ideas, healing each other, and inspiring each other on a daily, non-accumulative, non-accelerationist scale. There is no central corporation that pumps out astrology books that all of us then follow. Doing astrology simply means we are listening to one another. It means we are listened to.”
        (they finish reading)


(CSA): Yeah, I really like that, and it resonates a lot with my experience. I came to astrology also through fandom, somewhat obliquely: I co-hosted a podcast that dealt with The Magician's fandom, and my co-host (who I met through Tumblr through the fandom) has been very into astrology for a long time. And for me, one of the huge uses of astrology in my life has been to have those connections with her, and with some other fans who are inhabiting that same space. And just as a… I mean, you said language, but, communication tool — It's just what a language is, right? As a way to validate what we see in ourselves and in each other. 
I’m curious to hear a little bit more about your fandom experience, and how that… I don't know if it is linear in the transition to astrology or if there's just a conversation between them, but I would love to hear you talk about that.


(ASK): I'm a Yu-Gi-Oh fan. I dilly dally in other fandoms too, but I'm a Yu-Gi-Oh fan first and foremost. It's not a really large fandom. I mean, I feel there's maybe six other Yu-Gi-Oh fans that are still active out there. (They laugh)


(CSA): Probably a few more, but… (She joins in the laugh)


(ASK): But it's fun! It started on fanfiction.net, so a lot of the fanfiction now is on Archive of Our Own. It's not really big on Archive of Our Own, cuz it's an older fandom. It's a little bit adjacent to the Naruto fandom, but not really. I got into BTS recently, too, in the last couple years. So I'm not an ARMY or anything, but I write BTS fanfiction also. I named my cat Yu Gi. 


(CSA): It's so interesting to me — the phenomena of writing fanfiction about real people. But I think you actually have a section in the book where you talk about K-pop in particular, and about the ways that K-pop, as an industry, is constructed in the way that the icons are constructed. Can you maybe speak to that a little bit?


(ASK): I know that K-pop idols, they're quote-unquote "real people,” but when we're writing fanfiction about them, we're not treating them like real people; They're characters too. They have a persona that they're crafting a lot of times. It changes from era to era. So they're providing us with a fictionalized experience. I was a DBSK fan also, when I was a teenager — that's an older K-pop group, and one of their marketing strategies was, like, the members would write fanfiction about themselves.


(CSA): Oh, I love that!


(ASK):  Yeah. so, they’re ok with it. I know that sometimes it can feel creepy to write fanfiction about real people, but I don't feel so creepy about it with K-pop cuz I know that it's a big part of the culture. 


(CSA): And to some extent, I mean, this is what we're talking about (bringing it back to the astrological work), that the way that many people practice astrology is writing fanfiction about themselves and the people in their lives. 


(ASK): I was reflecting on this. I feel there's a cultural difference in general, where a lot of times we expect American celebrities to function from this place of authenticity. Like if I’m queer, I'm going to come out or something like that. But I think it's a little bit different in Asian pop cultures, where it's like, your identity as a celebrity, it's a social agreement between your fans and you. So there isn't this expectation you're going to reveal all about yourself. 


(CSA): I really liked your discussions about authenticity, both early in the book and later, and particularly in that early section (I think it was in “[Etymology of] the Sun,” but it might have been in “[Etymology of] Saturn”; I'm trying to remember…yeah, it was in the Sun) of the way that authenticity functions and what it means when you're constantly watched, into the discussion of the sun as the eye and the panopticon. 


(ASK): Oh yeah,  it means something really different in a surveillance culture, actually. I was reading this book… I was reading two books concurrently, recently; One is called The Perfect Police State, and the other one is called The Circle by David Eggers —


(CSA): Oh yeah!


(ASK):  The Circle is about this person who is forced to be hyper visible and then also surveilled, The Perfect Police State is about surveillance technologies in China being used against the Uyghurs. It was like, ‘oh, whoa. What is authenticity, even?’ You know, the push for authenticity, it's so much about just being surveilled. 


(CSA): Yeah, and I think so much about this, in thinking about a lot of fan culture in the US particularly, that so much of it does seem to be about an expectation that you'll have access to and be able to see into parts of the lives of people, of artists, and people who are celebrities in other aspects.
I was struck by this line in the passage that you read, “Astrology works not because there's anything magical about the language itself, but because the act of not believing readily, or of believing where belief has been earned, of listening waywardly, and of owning the magic illusion making collectively is magic. Astrology is not magic. The community that recreates it in the contemporary era is.” When you're doing a reading for a friend or a client, or you're working on your own astrological stories. How do you cultivate that magic? How do you listen?


(ASK): Thinking about what am I trying to say using this language? What are we trying to do with it? Cuz reproducing a language, it doesn't really do anything. You're actually trying to say something, so that's something I actually want to work with people on. I'm going to start a class called “Writing Astrology,” and it's going to be about, how do we use this language to really describe things to do something really substantial with it? Cuz that's a common issue with astrology writing. And this is just a detail, but a lot of the older astrological writing that you find— I mean this is from Valens, and things like that from ancient Rome, is that it's usually a list of keywords. So then what tends to happen when people write about astrology, is that that structure gets reproduced, where it's like, ‘Hey, I'm listing a list of keywords related to the planet or the sign or something, but in these anthologies they're not trying to say anything with astrology. It's just a list of keywords. So like, we can do something a little bit more creative with it. 


(CSA): What do you hope for when you're getting a reading from another astrologer? And what part do you see yourself playing in the process of as the person being read? 


(ASK): That's a really great question. I've gotten so many readings from so many different people, and then sometimes I'll go in with, like, ‘Hey, this is what I want to talk about.’ But sometimes I’m not. Sometimes I'm just really interested in what this astrologer is doing. 
I got a reading from Giselle Castaño; I was like, hey: I want to talk about how work is impacting my life right now with you. I got a reading from Sam Reynolds, and I was really interested in talking about my solar return (my birthday that year) with him. I got a reading from Oscar Moises Diaz and I was interested in Oscar's technique of using star parans — looking at fixed Stars, and then what happened was we found some really cool patterns between me and my lineage with the stars. Cuz stars, they're so localized, actually. They really affect the local place. I got a reading with Alicia… (I don't know her last name, actually), but I wanted to process some grief in that reading. Different astrologers with different techniques, but also just different experiences and things too. 


(CSA): And do you feel like… I would assume that you, if it's a good reading, you would feel you learned something about yourself. Do you feel like there… What is the thing that you're looking for when you go? If you're going to different astrologers, is it as simple as just different perspectives?


(ASK): I think different perspectives, different kinds of information, different expertise. Because there's many forms of astrology, actually. So you might go to an astrologer who's, for example, a medical practitioner, who if you're trying to get pregnant or something like that; You might go to an astrologer who does relocation if you're trying to, maybe, look at your immigration history or even like, think about where you want to move. So it's really what you want to get out of it. And there's no one different type of astrologer; There's so many people practicing different things. 
Yeah, so do your research if you ever get a reading. Look at what people are like, what their practice is about, cuz it's so day and night. Are there particular approaches to astrology, particular astrologies that have really shaped or transformed the way that you think about your own practice?


(ASK): I'm Chinese, too. Part of how I’m processing grief around my grandfather passing is he left me a lot of books about Chinese cosmology. For example, the only way I know my birth time even is cuz my aunt — she delivered me, she gave me this small coin with a monkey on it, and so, I mean… the way I learned how to tell time, too, was learning through learning the Chinese zodiac; You have to memorize him you're toddler in China. That's the first astrology I learned actually. And then I feel like there's just certain things that Chinese astrology talks about very different than what western strategy talks about. For example, a lot of the language of Chinese astrology, it's actually geographical. I mean, it's talking about time cuz, you know, space/time is all one thing, but it's mostly geographical. That's what we have feng shui; it's locational. It's good for talking about change, too, cuz it assumes that change is always happening. Even with, you know… there's, Ying is always changing into Yang, and things like that. There’s definitely things built in the syntax that encourage [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. 


(CSA): I really like the idea, in the passage you read (again), of magic not as an inherent power, but as something that we create through collective imagination. And one thing that it made me think about is labor organizing, and the way solidarity — which is this thing, honestly that we have to cultivate and teach, right? I don't think solidarity comes naturally to most people. It gives transformative power to people who, otherwise as individuals, would have very little. How do you see astrology's collective power, and do you see it as playing a role in collective struggles?


(ASK): I think so, cuz it creates a lot of relationships. Again, it seems really frivolous but it's not so easy, actually, to make friends outside of institutions or work; it's not so easy. It's actually pretty impactful, even if it seems a little bit frivolous. 


(CSA): I think that comment about how difficult it is to make friendships outside of work and institutions; I think people are feeling that more over the last year to half as we've been isolated in our own homes. 


(ASK): Oh, totally! Yeah. Yeah. 


(CSA): Are there patterns that you've seen and the things that your clients are coming to you with over the course of the pandemic? 


(ASK): I don't think so. I think there's as many pandemics as there are people, cuz everyone's experiencing it in such a different way. Cuz people ask me, ‘hey are there any things you notice?’ And it's just so hard to say, cuz some people are like, ‘My life stopped!’ And some people are like, “Hey, look my life sped up; you know? Nothing changed.’ Some people experience the stop of the speeding up of capitalism a little bit as a relief. Some people are like, ‘Covid's about death.” It's just very very different. 


(CSA): That's really interesting. I certainly think that,for me personally, right? It took a while to realize that what was happening underneath all of the conversations about — all the corporate wellness conversations and insistence on taking care of yourself — that, at that same time, we were actually making less space for it. 


(ASK): For sure. Even my house, too. Cuz I live with five people, but all of us experienced a different Coronavirus. 


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): If you’re just joining me, my guest today is astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat, whose recent book, Postcolonial Astrology, charts the politicized history of Western astrological symbols and offers an approach to astrological work that explicitly centers queer and POC practitioners.


One of the things you say in your conclusion, which is a part of what our discussion has been so far, is, “Use Western astrology to only acknowledge the influence of the West and to talk about capital, power, and labor. Don't use it for your own stuff. Make some room for your stuff. Make up your own stuff.” Talk to me about what that means about how to use Western astrology to talk about capital, power, and labor, and what kind of stuff people are making up?


(ASK): Western astrology is really good for talking about pain. Like, the Sun and Moon? That's your family. I mean, you're talking about family pain. You're talking about pain of relationships, pain of citizenship. It is so useful for talking about pain, so it's all these Western symbols. So we're having a lot of good conversations about just how our pain is shaped on the day-to-day using Western astrology. But then I'm not going to use it to talk about my ancestors — even my grandparents! They don't even know their birthdays on the Gregorian calendar. So I would have to calculate what their stuff is and everything like that. I'm not going to use it to talk about the whole world, but it is useful for talking about relationships to what the West is, cuz it exists as this thing.


(CSA): I like that idea of using it to talk about pain, and I think that's one thing that I find really prevalent in a lot of the meme culture around (particularly) “big three astrology” is that so much of it is talking about pain, right? I think when a friend sends me a meme, or when I sent a friend a meme, it's often… people talk about it as being digs against people, but I don't see it that way. What I think it is is pointing out a specific wound that somebody might have, or the way that they might experience that wound. 


(ASK): Right, cuz humor is about pain, too. 


(CSA): Yeah. Very much so. 


(ASK): Yeah, yeah.


(CSA): Did it take you a while to come to that point where you felt you could make your own stuff up? Or was it something that was very natural to you? 


(ASK): It took me a while to feel like that's okay, but I was always making stuff up, cuz my mom's a Pisces who makes a lot of stuff up. Like, a lot of the facts I got from her about the world just turned out to be wrong. I mean, I guess it's part of how I grew up also.


(CSA): I think that's really interesting given what you were saying earlier about how so much of your approach to astrology, but I think (I’m interpreting here—) but I think some of your approach to life is about fictionalizing things, right? Fictionalizing the things that we see. There's a real value in making stuff up, in creating those stories, and in even transmitting them — especially if we can… When we were talking earlier about that collective magic, a lot of it for me is about suspension of disbelief; you can know that something isn't true and still find truth in it. 


(ASK): I think you're right. I think you're totally right. Where it's, not only do you suspend disbelief, but you're also engaging in this fiction. Being aware that it’s a fiction.


(CSA): Right, and engaging in that fiction with somebody else, you're providing some validation for whatever the underlying truth is for them.


(ASK): That’s the storytelling, yeah!


(CSA): You end your book by saying (among other things) that there's no one way to practice good astrology, but I'm curious — not so much what a practice of good astrology is, but what conceptually good astrology is to you?


(ASK): That's really hard for me to say, cuz I don't know. Cuz I have my own biases and filters. A lot of what I do with people, again, is memory processing; we're looking at people's past a lot. I know that when [UNINTELLIGIBLE — “pure form”? @45:53] astrology actually does more future projecting, future imagining with people. I was like, ‘Whoa, that's really cool!’ Cuz I mean, I feel like I don't have the same mindset to do that with people. I don't know, I feel there is no one way to practice good astrology.  I mean, I think making a connection with people. I feel it can be a little bit bad if you're just an astrologer TALKING; If you're reading paragraphs of your ideas about the science or something, but you're not having the connection, if you're not also learning. 


(CSA): It's one of those chapters near the end or a subsection where you talk about… it's called something like, “The unimaginable world.” And I think hearing you talk about that focus on — or the astrologer who does that more future projection with people and future imagining — I think I hadn't really made that connection before between what that is, which is finding a way to imagine what a future could be; not just what it is, but what it could be. And potentially outside of a lot of these really restricting structures that we have now. So what would it look like? What would your future or my future look like if we didn't have capitalism? If we didn't have, you know, if we didn't have racism and homophobia, what could those futures look like? I love the idea of astrology as a way to get there.


(ASK): That's a really powerful, powerful way of doing astrology. I'm not good at it; People will say like, ‘Hey, can we talk about the future?’ I'll be like, okay and then… I, you know, I just don't have the same tools for some reason about talking of the future as the past. But, it's cool. 


(CSA): So this is the part where I ask my guests what they're working on, what they're paying attention to now. So what's in that category for you? What's next? What's coming up? 


(ASK): I’ve been focusing on the client work for the summer. Recently, I've been quarantined because my roommate had covid so… 


(CSA): I'm so sorry!


(ASK): Honestly, for the last 10 days I've been in this anxiety funk. But I created a course called “Writing Astrology.” I'm really excited about that because it's just going to be, I mean, we're going to try to write about ourselves using astrology, and we're going to try to do it really extensively together, so that's something I'm really excited about starting in August. But that's pretty much it. I'm trying to take it easy this summer, and just try to stay healthy.


(CSA): I think that sounds good. I hope your roommate is okay!


(ASK): They recovered; We're all vaccinated so their symptoms are pretty mild. It's just like…


(CSA): Scary.


(ASK): Yeah, it’s just scary.


(CSA): Well, Alice Sparkly Kat, Thank you so much for joining me today!


(ASK): Thanks for having me.




(CSA): You can learn more about Alice at their website, alicesparklykat.com (and that’s “Kat” with a “K”), or you can buy a copy of Postcolonial Astrology wherever books are sold.


Catch Story Behind the Story the first Friday of every month from 5 to 6 p.m. on KSQD 90.7 FM. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at Clara@KSQD.org. 


The Story Behind the Story is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons; He also wrote our theme.