Astrology Has A Capitalism Problem

The question: can we solve it?

Astrology is, first and foremost, a tool. Some people treat it as a belief system, others as a type of data science project, and others treat astrology as a type of worldview, a lens through which they process and derive meaning from their lived experiences. All of those groups are correct in their aims, and yet at its very core astrology is still simply a tool. It’s a form of technology—timekeeping technology, to be exact—and just like any other tool, astrology’s effectiveness depends entirely upon the aims (and skill level) of the user.

It’s no secret that astrology has been used by monarchs and billionaires and politicians alike, for various purposes ranging from avoiding assassinations (sometimes unsuccessfully) to thwarting coups, down to electing the precise moment a bill should be signed into law. But what may be a secret to some is exactly how much of a hold the occult has had on politics—particularly right-wing politics—since at least the 19th century.

I’m not here to ascribe capitalism to any political party, because capitalism transcends the power of any one faction, so this isn’t about how capitalism is right wing and bad and anti-capitalism is leftist and good. It’s simply not that binary. According to Lucian Staiano-Daniels, astrology functions similarly to political ideologies because it is a way for participants to “articulate meaningful narratives about the world and their place in it.” Astrology most certainly has evolved into a participatory culture, but part of its uniqueness is due to the fact that it is simultaneously a participatory culture and a consumer culture, despite these two concepts’ opposition to one another. And, like most other things happening on our planet right now, astrology has a capitalism problem.

Whether you interact with astrology on a minimal and lighthearted scale, via magazine horoscopes and astro meme accounts, or you’re a professional astrologer who spends more time looking at charts than you spend looking at your friends & family, you’ve likely noticed this problem. Capitalism has gotten its claws into astrology and commodified sun signs to a degree (no pun intended) that has never been seen before.

The reason astrology can exist as both a participatory culture and a consumer culture is partly due to this commodification. Participants in astrology contribute to the culture in the form of published works, such as memes or Substacks or books or workshops or podcasts or YouTube videos, and in turn, capitalism contributes to the consumer side of astrology by giving us something to purchase that easily signals to other folks that you are a participant in the culture.

While there’s not necessarily anything wrong with identifying with all or part of your natal chart, the problem with astrology as a tool for self-identification is that it becomes a tool into which anyone can insert their own ideologies. With enough influence, astrology and occult practices in general can be just as effective in perpetuating harmful ideas that benefit oppressors.

Heinrich Himmler, one of the key Nazi leaders, was deeply involved in occultism and astrology. Himmler’s SS incorporated rituals and astrological symbolism to reinforce the racial and mystical ideals of the Nazi state. His personal astrologer, Karl Maria Wiligut, played a crucial role in creating the SS’s occult framework, making astrology central to their vision of an Aryan empire.¹ By tapping into spiritual and astrological beliefs, the Nazi leadership could claim a kind of supernatural or preordained authority, which they believed would bolster their hold on power.

It goes even further: the use use of astrological symbols, like the swastika (originally an ancient symbol of fortune), was co-opted into Nazi iconography to suggest the divine or cosmic destiny of the Aryan race. This built an ideological framework that linked the Nazi agenda to something larger than politics, giving it a mythic, almost religious aura.

In Nazi Germany, astrology and the occult were used to distract from the political and social realities of fascism, while in capitalist societies, personal spirituality or mysticism can be used to distract from critiques of capitalism itself, focusing on personal development or cosmic destiny over collective liberation.

These particular critiques of astrology are hardly anything new. In 1952, Theodor Adorno, a German musicologist and social theorist, argued that horoscope columns and astrology in general actually reinforce the status quo and encourage followers of astrology to take a passive role in life’s problems, or to focus on self-adjustment rather than questioning or changing one’s external conditions. He also warned against the outsourcing of one’s own judgment to the assumed authority of a columnist, or the stars themselves. Adorno’s arguments aren’t without merit, and it certainly doesn’t make a good case for astrology as a tool of liberation—quite the opposite, in fact.

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The Commodification of Astrology

To commodify something means to turn it into a product that can be bought and sold. You may be thinking, “astrological services have been bought and sold for multiple millennia, since way before capitalism, so how can this be a new thing, and why is it a bad thing?” which are perfectly valid questions. For the purposes of this piece, what I’m specifically talking about is the commodification of sun signs and pop astrology, via things like horoscope columns and psychological astrology and capitalist tales of heroic individualism. What I’m talking about is the base-level, widespread interpretations of only one planet in a person’s entire nativity, altered 12 times to fit 12 archetypes and expected to apply to scores of humans, whether or not they read their horoscope. What I’m talking about is the belief that rather than a natal chart telling the story of an individual lifetime, an individual simply is their birth chart and each of the stories contained within—placements, aspects, and the like—are facets of a person, like personality traits. This is also referred to as psychological astrology.

Before I go any further, it’s important to note that I am not disparaging psychological astrology itself, but rather illustrating the connection between this particular branch of astrology and the rise of capitalism in the 20th century specifically. I would never discredit the work of the many talented psychological astrologers I know and have worked with, so I hope nobody reading this takes what I’m saying as such. It’s not the fault of psychological astrologers that this branch of astrology became so heavily commodified by capitalism. Now that we are all on the same page, let’s establish what I specifically mean when I’m talking about this branch of astrology.

Psychological astrology emphasizes self-knowledge, individual potential, and the use of astrology as a tool for personal development. Rooted in Jungian concepts such as archetypes and synchronicity, psychological astrology suggests that the natal chart is a map of someone’s inner psychological landscape and all potentialities contained within. At first glance, this seems empowering—after all, who wouldn’t want to better understand themselves and their path in life? However, within the context of capitalism, it’s easy to see how psychological astrology becomes easily co-opted to serve the very structures it could potentially critique.

Capitalism thrives on individualism, particularly now, in its late stages, where the focus is on personal achievement, self-optimization, and consumerism as a path to happiness. The narrative of individual responsibility is central to this system, reinforcing the idea that success or failure rests on the individual's shoulders, ignoring larger systemic issues such as inequality, exploitation, and injustice. Psychological astrology, with its emphasis on the individual’s personality and inner world, provides a perfect framework for this capitalist narrative. It encourages people to look inward, to focus on personal traits and potential, rather than to question the external forces shaping their lives.

By turning psychological astrology into a product—one that promises personal transformation and self-understanding—capitalism commodifies a deeply introspective practice and repackages it as a tool for personal improvement. This reflects the broader capitalist trend of turning everything, including spirituality, into something that can be bought and sold. Astrology apps, personalized readings, and horoscopes are marketed as ways to "unlock" your potential, emphasizing a notion of individual destiny and control that fits perfectly into the capitalist ethos of self-reliance. You’re just one Venus remediation away from finding the love of your life, don’t you know?

The Lie of Individualism

This commodification serves to reinforce the capitalist lie of individualism—the idea that individuals exist in isolation from larger systemic structures, or that every outcome in a person’s life is entirely due to their personal choices and can thus anyone’s material circumstances can be revolutionized simply by a change of mind. The lie of individualism also suggests that self-understanding through astrology will lead to success or fulfillment without acknowledging that many of the challenges individuals face are not personal failings or astrological destiny, but are instead the result of living within a capitalist system that is designed to keep people both eternally suspicious of and in competition with one another, rather than in solidarity.

The commercialization of “pop astrology” has reduced the complex, multifaceted nature of a person’s entire astrological chart into a consumable product, often focused on a single sun sign. This simplification reinforces the capitalist tendency to reduce people to their marketable parts, much like it reduces workers to their productivity or consumers to their buying power. If you view yourself as a collection of planetary placements that represent fixed personality traits, and you’re also viewing yourself through the lens of what is individually possible for you to achieve or accomplish through your own will, then your relationship with the planets (and with astrology itself) also begins to imitate the relationship between capitalism and the masses: extractive & exploitative.

This kind of pop astrology removes the study from its context and waters it down through memes and satire that oversimplify the signs, which capitalism tends to do.

Gabes Torres²

This is the same point Adorno was making in his takedown of the Los Angeles Times astrology column 70 years ago, though he was not quite as concerned with the reaches of capitalism (or at least, not explicitly): capitalism feeds the idea that self-optimization is the key to success, that your planetary placements are merely helpers in your grand cosmic destiny, perpetuating an endless cycle of consumerism—whether through astrology apps, books, or personalized readings—all aimed at helping people "fix" themselves or remediate “bad” placements, while the real issues, rooted in capitalism itself, remain unaddressed.

And again, I must insert the caveat here that I’m not saying there is anything inherently wrong with doing any of this, or using astrology in this manner; I’m simply pointing out the way capitalism has taken these actions and assigned greater cultural meanings to them, however subtly or overtly. The same way that the Nazis understood that co-opting occult practices meant they could appear to be divinely ordained to carry out their will, capitalism and the ruling class continue to flourish when we all keep our most critical eye turned inward, attempting to fix ourselves individually in the face of issues that cannot be created or solved individually.

Astrology as a Response to Powerlessness

In the 20th century, astrology was re-introduced by capitalism as a response to capitalism’s failures. Astrology has famously fallen in and out of the general public’s favor throughout history. In the 1910s, the earliest published horoscopes arose in the form of birthday horoscopes for famous people, such as President Woodrow Wilson, or daily horoscopes directed at folks who were born that day. The one that “went viral,” however, was a 1930 horoscope by R.H. Naylor for the newborn Princess Margaret. Naylor’s horoscopes, which were purely mundane at that point, gained popularity as several of his predictions proved to be true.

It wasn’t until 1937 that Naylor began writing horoscopes for each of the 12 sun signs, but it’s hardly a coincidence that the rise in the popularity of horoscopes occurred at the same time as the global Great Depression, which began in earnest in 1930 and resulted in widespread poverty and unemployment throughout the entirety of the decade. Whereas astrology throughout the teens and twenties was more of an eccentric entertainment mostly focused on the stars & celebrities of the era, the advent of birthday and sun sign horoscopes turned astrology into more of a personal affair, and this is where we see the beginnings of the commodification of astrology via the treatment of astrological placements (or specifically just the sun) as categories of identity, as pieces of oneself to be examined and embodied.

But why were more people open to astrology during a time of economic crisis? How can these things be related? Simply put, it’s about control. But on a deeper, more spiritual level, humans have always relied upon myth and storytelling to define reality, and when reality seems uncertain and unpredictable—especially the future—it’s a simple choice to turn to astrology because it’s a time-based data information system based on symbolism and mythology.

For archaic man, reality is a function of the imitation of a celestial archetype. Events, actions, even the process of becoming must follow the structure of celestial paradigms.

Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return

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Can astrology’s capitalism problem be solved?

While the seeds of late-stage capitalism were being sowed a century ago, astrology’s popularity began to rise as both a response to collective feelings of hopelessness and as the first stages of the commodification of astrology by capitalism. Valid criticisms have been made of the way astrology is used to placate the masses with magical thinking, self-determination, and perhaps a fatalistic attitude toward world events. But here we are in 2024, and more people than ever believe astrology can be a tool for radical social change and progress toward liberation. More than ever, folks are convinced of astrology’s efficacy in creating a new myth, a new world, and yet the critiques of horoscope columns from seven decades ago also hold truth today.

The reasons for this belief are many-numbered and many of them have to do with reclaiming one’s power of self-expression and self-exploration from a dominant system or structure, such as Christian hegemony. Astrology is also a deeply indigenous practice and is centered around the earth itself, which offers an alternative perspective to the rationale of capitalism, which sees the earth as merely a tool and exploits its natural resources for as much profit as possible. Revolutionary astrological thinkers such as Chani Nicholas and Alice Sparkly Kat (as well as many others) have already been doing the work of framing and contextualizing astrology within a more liberatory and post-colonial framework.

As I said at the beginning of this article, astrology is a tool, and a highly effective one. Whoever wields it correctly can use it to achieve their own aims—or at the very least, convince others to join their cause. And perhaps that’s what’s missing in this equation: numbers. People. The more people who are using this tool toward building a future without capitalist exploitation and rampant climate abuse, the more powerful it becomes.

I’m launching a course next month called Anti-Capitalist Astrology, and it will be a comprehensive look at the planets and houses through an anti-capitalist lens. Paired with historical context and guidance from me, this course will help you begin or alter your own astrological practice to become a tool in your anti-capitalist toolkit.

Sign up here to receive updates about the course as they come out.

Thank you for reading.

1. Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology, p. 177

2. Torres, “Can Astrology Be A Tool for Liberation?” https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2023/07/13/astrology-liberation