Is the death of capitalism written in the stars?
Only one way to find out
When I first was struck with the idea of teaching on anti-capitalist astrology, my immediate reaction was to feel very silly about it. Who the fuck would take something like that seriously? It sounds like a punchline in a comedy routine about the Pacific Northwest.
And yet, the idea wouldn’t leave me. Because astrology is about time, at its core, and I saw the hijacking of time by capitalism as a fundamental diversion from this ancient system of knowledge. A grand distraction: replace the dome of the stars with a different circle covered in different symbols, and thus co-opt something integral to the human experience. Let them eat clocks, or however the saying goes.
Equipped with the knowledge that astrology is a device that describes time, and thus is used for making meaning of what humans have experienced, it was honestly kind of a horrifying realization when I put the dots together that capitalism had successfully co-opted not just certain myths, but the essence of mythology itself. This feels so insidious, and it is, because myths serve to help us make sense of universal human feelings and experiences. By co-opting this, capitalism has effectively convinced a whole lot of people that this economic system is simply reflective of “human nature,” and is thus universal, or the ultimate. Nothing can come after it, because nothing else can accommodate the human spirit of desire and conquest so flawlessly.
I simply call bullshit.