About Postcolonial Astrology

Astrology is a language that millennials, Gen Zers and many others continue to build fluency in, and look to to inform their everyday lives, decisions and relationships. But so much more than a fad, astrology is an intersectional, political and magical language with a cross-cultural history that informs our relationships to the planets. According to Brooklyn-based astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat, astrology is the ideal magical lens through which we can parse the harsh neolliberal and colonial systems of power that harm marginalized people. It’s these very systems that misappropriate the language, symbols and wisdom of the planets to prioritize self over the collective.

Impeccably researched and informed by the author’s deep knowledge, Postcolonial Astrology offers an advanced course in politicized astrological history and application, and an explicitly Queer, POC and instersectional resource. This is not a “learn your sun sign” introductory guide. Rather, the book serves as a history and toolkit, decoding the planets from a postcolonial perspective. In one chapter Sparkly Kat traces the disparate cultural applications of the planet Saturn. Once symbolically linked to fortune and a mythic agrarian “golden age” of abundance, Saturn’s qualities have been co-opted by political agendas and misused by power and capital interests. We see this misappropriation of Saturn’s wisdom embodied by the Jeffersonian vision of a white, land-owning state that mythologizes an imaginary agrarian golden age that perpetuated violence against marginalized bodies.

Other topics discussed throughout the book include the Moon and money, Venus’s gender evolution, and Mars and masculinity, in addition to many other potent conversations.

Postcolonial Astrology by Alice Sparkly Kat

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What People Say:

Chani Nicolas

"Alice Sparkly Kat asks us one of the most important questions that can be asked of any profession: Can we make astrology responsible for its impact thus far and into the future? It’s a necessary interrogation and the only way to truly show how much we love and care for this ancient art and much needed practice."

Fariha Roisin

"In Postcolonial Astrology, Alice Sparkly Kat writes, 'We use astrology to see each other.' As a student of astrology for over a decade, I am incredibly moved by the audaciousness, the humor and the sublime realness of this book. It is unlike anything I've ever read before, and a tome I've long awaited for—one that asks questions about our emotional, psychic and social construction—and then endeavors to lay the groundwork with how we interact and weave through our astrological paradigms. It's a book that strikes a challenge: How do we move forward dislodging ourselves from the cruel machinations of white supremacy and colonization? How do we claim ourselves for our bright, collective future? I saw myself in this book, and it was a bold, timely reckoning!"

Banu Guler, CEO and Founder of Co—Star

"Many people do astrology, and some of them know from where the tradition emerged. But very few rigorously consider how and why the language of astrology has developed in relation to power. With a critical eye and expansive research, Alice Sparkly Kat examines the historical significance of astrology's symbols to trace an alternative genealogy of modern Western astrology. This important work is crucial to a discipline as steeped in tradition as astrology is; without a deep consideration of history, how can we create space for new astrologies to root and take hold?"

Samuel F. Reynolds, MA, CAP ISAR, NCGR-III

"Alice Sparkly Kat's [book] does something immensely paramount: its sweeping analyses rip off the togas worn by Western astrology's planetary gods that Rome appropriated from the Greeks. Alice shows how their loosely woven fabric drapes nothing but white privilege created at the expense of stolen land and the labor of people of color for millennia. In their book, there is no lapsing into trying to track astrology's depths through the jungles of Jung's putative collective unconscious. No awestruck adoration of Western astrology's masquerade of itself as a path toward transcendence, a map for the evolution of consciousness, or a gateway for freedom from the tortures of our supposed ids, egos or superegos. Instead, Alice stays rooted in a body of critical theory and post-modern analysis to expose Western astrology, as an "anachronistic archive" and a myth-making machine more for racism and maintaining whiteness at the expense of the poor and people of color. Yet, Alice doesn't commission the reader to discard all Western astrology's borrowed and tattered notions. They instead direct us to look at the shredded heap of its motley meanings as just one important story that can indeed be told differently. We can learn to connect the dots of astrology's fabled constellations of motley meanings, assembled with blood and burglary, in ways that create a canopy of heaven that includes all peoples of Earth and leaves us whole and restored."