Club Friday Q&A: Astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat

 
 

By Stacy Lee Kong

Image: Mengwen Cao

 
 

I first came across astrologer Alice Sparkly Kat's content after someone retweeted one of their monthly Twitter threads about the signs onto my timeline. In addition to being very into the idea that there are cosmic explanations for all of my (many) feelings, I loved how poetic Alice's posts were—they're never prescriptive, but they always make me think about my closely-held beliefs about myself, and why they may not be strictly accurate. At the same time, I've noticed more astrology everywhere, from women's magazines to my TiKTok feed (where it often *is* prescriptive). It's been growing in popularity for years now, but something about right now felt like a good time to revisit astrology as a trend and practice. So, I chatted with them about astrology misconceptions, colonialism and how queerness plays into astrology's TikTok takeover.

If you had to explain what astrology is to someone who had never heard of it, what would you say?

Astrology is the practice of building stories using the changing sky. There are a lot of different ways of practicing astrology and it's been around for a long, long time. It's been in alignment and in tension with the scientific perspective. It's really just another perspective. It's a way of communicating about our relationships to the world around us.

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions about astrology?

The biggest misconception about astrology is that astrologers are more serious about and less self-aware of our delusions than non-astrologers. This isn't necessarily true. A lot of what it takes to practice astrology is both a rigorous awareness and a certain sense of humour around the way the imagination works. I think that the reason why this misconception exists is because people try to classify astrology as a religion. It's not a religion. It's a pretty decentralized practice.

How did you first become interested in astrology?

Like many people, I got into astrology when I was in a moment of personal crisis. It helped me get in contact with myself and bring me into different communities around me at the time.

Your book, Postcolonial Astrology,  came out in 2021. What does "postcolonial astrology" mean, and how does it differ from what most people would think of as astrology?

Postcolonial astrology isn't a type of astrology. The book came out in response to what I was seeing a lot around me with people treating the symbols and archetypes within astrology as universal or devoid of historical or political content. The intention of the book was to point out how some of our most abstract symbols already contain repressed memories and erased histories within them. I wanted to reconstruct some of the histories of symbols in order to ask questions around the value and limits of expressing one's imagination.

Why is it important to you personally to understand astrology from a postcolonial perspective?

To me, free-floating signifiers that are treated as universal don't really work. Erasing the politics and history from a symbol and treating it as a merely abstract thing is not about investigation but dismissal to me. I want astrology to support people in our real lives. Detaching from history and getting overly abstract is also not a position that is available to most people in the world. It takes a certain amount of privilege to be able to maintain that distance. That perspective wasn't available to me and I wanted to find a way of working with astrology so that it actually included what I find to be most necessary.

Astrology is experiencing its highest levels of popularity since the '70s—according to YouGov, 25% of Americans say they believe in it, Google searches are up, apps like Co-Star are super popular and it's all over TikTok, as are tarot readings, manifestation and numerology. Not to be super dramatic, but: I think at least some of this has to be about our crushing anxiety over navigating an increasingly uncertain world, but I also would love your perspective on why it's so appealing and who exactly it's most appealing to.

I actually think that astrology is getting more popular because queer people have become more visible in recent years. Not everyone who is into astrology is queer but astrology has lived a long life in queer subcultures. So has tarot. So, you can see the popularity of astrology as one of the ways that queer culture makes an impact on wider culture. Not all forms of astrology have been becoming more popular in recent years. Astrology that is about curiosity about love and relationships is very popular but I wouldn't say that astrology as a divination method through horary astrology is particularly more popular now than a few years back.

While I think for some people, astrology is just for fun, can you speak to the idea that it's it's also bigger and more lasting than that?

Well, I do believe that astrology's power is that it is fun. It's not a religion but a practice. What queer people have done with astrology is make it fun, make it funny, and make it performative. Queer people do this with a lot of powerful symbols. We disorient them and remix them. Queer people have had to learn how to transform some very heavy symbols through fun. if astrology is here to stay then it's due to those efforts and that creativity. Queer creativity is political, sexual and spiritual to me and it's the thing that makes me stick with astrology as an imagination framework. 

What can astrology actually offer us? And, what *can't* it do for us?

Astrology is practiced by people and it can offer us what other people offer us. It can't offer us things that no one can offer us.

I find it very comforting when a tarot account comes across my TikTok feed telling me good things are coming. (I remember seeing a video of Dan Levy saying he likes tarot because he'll take anything that tells him he'll be okay, which is relatable!) But... I don't always feel good after watching a bunch of these videos in a row. Do you have any concerns about how these accounts are approaching astrology and tarot?

I'm not on TikTok (I lost my password until very recently but still never really open the app) so I can't really speak to any content on the app simply because I'm not very aware of what is going on in it. [But] I do know a bit about the deterministic way of using astrology, telling people who they are and what is coming, things like that. Usually, when there is a need for determinism in a session I will try to bring in awareness of that desire so we can get curious about it. There have been times when I found a deterministic image to be useful as something for the client to respond to in their own way. This has surprised me, that determinism can be a mode of expression and it's usually anxiety that expresses through determinism. But I generally avoid consuming video content personally, just because I don't like watching a lot of videos. I've also seen some videos that are really funny with people performing as different signs as a theatre exercise almost or doing some comedy and I've enjoyed those videos.

I think that it's important to remember that when astrologers write or perform using astrology that this is the astrologer's expression. In a similar way, when I write, that's my own expression. When I work with clients, it's about the client's expression. It's about the client's imagination and not my own. I guess my concern with video content is that people watching videos will use the content about their signs as information about themselves when in fact these things are projections that the video maker is expressing about things they have seen and witnessed. There's nothing wrong with expressing projections, since that's what performance is in some ways, but relating to a performance is not the same as determinism. But I don't know, I'm not too worried about that. I also have a lot of faith in people's ingenuity. When we encounter deterministic content, we usually have a reaction to that content that's not completely obedient. To believe otherwise would give too much power to images. Images don't really work on their own. They work through imagination.

Of course with any kind of social media I also have concerns about speculating on community through technologies that are actually about surveillance, but that's not necessarily limited to astrology content online.

Do you have any advice for how people can engage with astrology in the most meaningful, healthy way?

Use it in an honest way. It's just a language so it's up to you whether you are honest with it.

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Club Friday Q&AStacy Lee KongAlice Sparkly Kat, astrology