4 Sessions, Thursdays, May 5/6-5/27, 7 PM ET
Sliding Scale $100-$200
Tapping into the political power of magic and astrology for social, community, and personal transformation, Alice Sparkly Kat’s cross-cultural approach to astrology as a magical language unmasks the political power of astrology, showing how it can be channeled as a force for collective healing and liberation.
Fearless, radical, and fresh, Sparkly Kat’s Postcolonial Astrology, to be released in May, ushers in a new wave of astrology revival, refusing to apologize for its magickism and connecting its power to the spirituality and politics we need now. Intersectional, inclusive, and geared towards queer and POC communities, it uses our historical and collective constructs of the planets, sun, and moon to re-chart our subconscious history, redefine the body in the world, and assert our politics of the personal, in astrology and all things.
At each session of this workshop, Alice Sparkly Kat will present a 45 minute lecture on the language of astrology. Astrology will be compared to race and gender as systems of magical thinking that are built to speculate and not describe. The presentations will end with questions that ask the audience to reflect on the differences between representation and storytelling in terms of race, gender, and astrology and what it means to claim languages that were built to exclude.
Too often, magic and astrology are divorced from their potency and cultural contexts: co-opted by neoliberalism, used as a force of oppression, or distilled beyond recognition into applications that belie their individual and collective power. By looking at the symbolic and etymological histories of the sun, moon, Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter, we can trace and understand the politics of magic–and challenge our own practices, interrogate our truths, and reshape our institutions to build better frameworks for communities of care.
**E-Mail tle@aaww.org for accessibility needs. This workshop will be captioned.
***Intended audience: queer, trans, and nonbinary BIPOC storytellers who are interested in astrology or archetypes, whether they are musicians, writers, journalists, graphic novelists, or filmmakers working in nonfiction, fiction, or fanfiction. If you are an ally, we ask that you take a step back in order to maintain care for our community.
Alice Sparkly Kat is an astrologer. They use astrology to reimagine history as collective memory, identify the body in the world, and to understand the treachery of language. Their astrological work has inhabited MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. Their book Postcolonial Astrology is coming out May of 2021. Follow Alice Sparkly Kat on Instagram & Twitter @alicesparklykat.
