Moon in Capricorn opposite Mars in Cancer, Part 1

Planets in detriment are the ultimate subverters of capitalism’s mythologies, because a willingness to fail at the expectations laid out for you is required for any individual who wishes to enact effective change in their world. However, capitalism is aware of this, and thus co-opts the stories of detriment planets to illustrate the worst case scenarios for those who cannot comply with the demands of capitalism. It’s no secret that we live in a system built on fear—the fear of not having enough, of not being enough, and the fear of losing out to someone else. This is by design. Capitalism spins these fears into myths we swallow whole, myths that coerce us to continue playing this rigged game for survival. With the upcoming series of Moon-Mars oppositions in Capricorn and Cancer, we will have a front-row seat to watch these myths unravel.

Each of these oppositions between the Moon and Mars in these signs between now and March 2025 brings a chance to confront two of capitalism’s most insidious myths: the myth of scarcity and the myth of competition. These aren’t merely economic strategies—they’re stories capitalism tells to keep us fearful, small, and isolated. But what happens when the Moon, the symbol of care and nourishment, stands off with Mars, the symbol of conflict and action? We start to see through the lies.

The first Moon-Mars opposition in Capricorn and Cancer on October 10th, 2024

False promises

Let’s get one thing straight: capitalism doesn’t care about you, your body, or your well-being beyond what labor they can provide. It’s built to grind you down and convince you that any access to care is a privilege you have to earn. This series of oppositions, starting with the Moon in Capricorn squaring Libra and sextiling Scorpio, raises some critical questions: Who controls our access to care? What systems decide who’s ‘useful’ and who’s ‘disposable’? In the face of collapse, how do we decide which vulnerable populations to protect first?

The Moon in Capricorn is the astrological embodiment of capitalism’s favorite myth: scarcity. The Moon is the planet of nurturing, rest, and care—all the things capitalism insists there’s never enough of. And in Capricorn, where the Moon is in detriment, it’s forced into a cold, rigid framework. Capitalism tells us there’s not enough time, not enough resources, not enough rest. It convinces us to fight for scraps and fear what might happen if we stop working for even a second—these scraps also include community care and time for digesting our emotions, including grief. Capitalism also promises protection from scarcity to those who fall in line, but even this is a lie, because self-determination can’t save you from sudden illness or injury, and being disabled under capitalism is viewed as a personal failure of some sort.

Saturn, Mars, & The Moon: The spiciest throuple

The Moon rejoices in the 3rd house. The 3rd house is about accessibility—not just in the Here’s your wheelchair ramp sense, but in the How do we remake the world to be livable for everyone? sense. Access is more than a physical path; it's about collective care. On the other hand, Mars rejoices in the 6th house. The 6th house is about care work—the labor it takes to provide access to others. This Moon-Mars transit invites us to ask: How do we break down these systems that treat access as a privilege? How do we create a world where accessibility is an inherent right? If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend getting this workshop by Erin Shipley on care work & disability justice through the 3rd & 6th houses.

The sextiles currently happening between Capricorn and Scorpio aren’t here to smooth things over—they’re here to point the way forward: transformation is possible, but it requires us to confront the scarcity myth head-on. This first Moon-Mars opposition on this axis is the one that asks the most questions, and we likely won’t see any answers start to form until January. If Capricorn represents the controlling structures that uphold scarcity, Scorpio represents the collective rage and world-ending power it takes to dismantle and rebuild them. Sextiles may be harmonious, but don’t let that fool you—this is about tapping into the deep, often uncomfortable truths about what we’re willing to change to break free from the chains of late-stage capitalism.

Power & Control

The scarcity myth is also about control. While creating my course, I assigned the myth of control to Saturn and the myth of scarcity to the Moon partially due to the adversarial relationship between these two planets. The Moon struggles in Saturn’s sign, and likewise, Saturn struggles in the domain of the Moon. Mars is assigned to the myth of competition, naturally, and both the Moon and Saturn struggle in Mars’s signs—the Moon is fallen in Scorpio, and Saturn is detriment in Aries. By making you believe all resources (which include abstract things like time) are impossibly limited, capitalism forces you into competition with your neighbors, colleagues, and even yourself.

The squares between Capricorn and Libra are certainly not polite conversations, either. Saturn may exalt in Libra, but these exchanges are still very much defined by friction. Libra asks for fairness, balance, diplomacy—but what happens when those ideals clash with the consequences of capitalism’s demands? You get tension, and while it’s not something to be feared, it is something that must be confronted. Saturn rejoices in the 12th house, a place of isolation and lack of agency; one must utilize Venusian forces of connection to escape it.

Disability & Accessibility

If the Moon in Capricorn is the body beaten down by the system, Mars in Cancer is the spirit that fights back, even when weakened. Capitalism sees Mars in Cancer and scoffs: a warrior that feels too much? A protector that cares too deeply? Capitalism uses disability as a scare tactic and parenthood as a invitation to endless unpaid labor. Subtly and not so subtly, capitalism communicates the message that while those who comply may be met with protection from scarcity, those who do not (or cannot) comply will be punished. The vulnerable are not seen as worthy of protecting, but as no longer worthy of exploiting. But here's the secret: Mars in Cancer doesn't lose power because it's vulnerable. It gains power. In a system that devalues the wounded, the chronically ill, the disabled—this Mars fights for those cast aside.

Disability is capitalism’s Achilles’ heel. The system thrives on constant productivity, so anyone who doesn’t fit its mold is deemed ‘unproductive’—a liability. But that’s the lie. Mars in Cancer shows us that there’s a different kind of power in vulnerability. Just like disability justice movements, this Mars doesn’t want pity; it wants systemic overhaul. It wants justice, not as a concession, but as a demand. However, Mars is in detriment in Cancer and fallen in Libra—working together to meet everyone’s needs and seeking peace through justice are not impossible for Mars, but they do require an unconventional approach. This subversion of the myth of competition is perhaps one of capitalism’s greatest fears, because the artificial separation of marginalized populations is what has prevented the mobilization of the masses.

Asking the right questions

The sextiles between the Moon & Venus and the Moon & Saturn both ask what we’re willing to give up to help someone else, or the greater good. Saturn is already comfortable with restriction, but being in a sign like Pisces adds a certain sentimentality to the reasons Saturn restricts themselves.

Venus, over in Scorpio, wants to know what your most essential values are: if you had a list of 10, could you eliminate 5? Out of those 5, could you whittle your most important values down to 3? Or even 1? This is disaster preparedness, in a Venusian way: if and when push comes to shove, you may not always be able to honor every single one of your values and still survive. So, which ones could you do without? This isn’t about planning to abandon all of your moral principles the second shit hits the fan, but rather about knowing what is essential to you when you are forced to compromise.

Likewise, the Moon in Capricorn is already deeply familiar with giving up what’s not essential in order to survive, but in a much more material sense. Mars in Cancer is poised and ready to defend what’s left over—or who’s left behind. What will you sacrifice to build something better? How far are you willing to go to reclaim the care, the access, the justice we all deserve? Like I said before, we won’t necessarily even begin to see the answers to these questions forming until January, when the 2nd of these 4 oppositions occurs.

Lately, I’ve been reading The Mushroom At The End of The World by Anna Tsing, where she discusses the need to envision a future where we co-create a new world while in the ruins of the old world. Tsing posits that we cannot possibly plan to avoid disaster, because disaster is already here, on a global scale; we must plan to rebuild from within disaster. Her years-long research on the elusive matsutake mushroom is the central focus of the book, and I think it relates a lot to this configuration between Venus in Scorpio, the Moon in Capricorn, and Saturn in Pisces. It’s worth a read, if you have the time (and if you want to borrow a copy from me, just send me an email or a DM and I’ll hook you up).

Thank you for reading. The next installment of this series (aka the next Moon-Mars opposition in Capricorn and Cancer) will be January 27th, 2025.

And thank you for being a supporter of this Substack!

My new course, Anti-Capitalist Astrology, begins October 21st.

Subverting Capitalism Through The Houses

tl;dr: I’m hosting a workshop on February 4th and I’d love to see you there.

Usually, when I begin a session with an astrology client to talk about money, I preface our time together by saying, “Money touches every part of our lives, therefore the relationship to money can be found in every part of the chart.” The purpose of saying is to open up my client’s way of thinking about their chart, and also to give us both permission to flow freely in any direction during the reading.

Money does not just appear in the 2nd house, or the 8th house.

Since money touches every part of our lives, we also know (and probably to a more intimate degree) that capitalism does this, too. It seeps in, like an insidious vapor or liquid, and fills in the spaces it can reach with its toxicity. However, money and capitalism are not the same thing. One is a tool used by the other. Astrology is also a tool, but much like money, I don’t think it is often wielded in the most positively impactful ways.

Capitalism, lacking any inherent tools or self-reliance, siphons from other forms of power to consolidate for its own self-preservation. Everything eventually becomes the master’s tools. Don’t believe me? The master’s tools for the last couple decades or so have been our personal information and public social data, and the effects of that weaponization are playing out in real time.

When we use the master’s tools to defeat or subdue or disarm the master, it’s called subversion: flipping scripts of power and oppression on their heads, using their own tools against them to liberate the oppressed. One example of subversion is the art of drag: taking societal expectations of gender expression (the master’s tools) and turning them upside down to mock the institutions who put those expectations in place and uphold them.

We need folks to create new tools which are born from non-oppressive natures, but for me personally, I work in the realm of subversion.

To me, there’s something creative and delightful and daring in flipping the script—like responding to Sinophobic attempts at censorship in the United States by downloading a Chinese social media app en masse. Oftentimes, however, subversion is not just fun, but necessary.

When so many of us are comfortable touting the phrase “there’s no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism,” sometimes I begin to wonder if we have internalized that into “there’s no such thing as ethical existence under capitalism.” Consumption is only one piece of the machine, but if we take into consideration the root sentiment here, which is that using the master’s tools is unavoidable most of the time, then subversion becomes about survival.

Destroying the master’s tools would destroy a lot more than just the master’s livelihood. There are other forms of collateral damage to consider. There are tools that can even be fully reclaimed, but it begins with the art of subversion.

I’ve spoken before about how astrology is one tool that capitalism has co-opted in its endless drive to sell our personhood back to us. Throughout history, astrology has experienced this type of treatment through many different iterations, because the ability to decode time has always been extremely appealing to those in positions of power. That’s why it’s always worthwhile and important to examine where systems of power may be seeping into your understanding of astrology—whether you spend more time on the consumer side or the practitioner side.

Sometimes you need to subvert your own understanding of astrology.

Where the houses come into the conversation is through a pretty wide-open front door, if you ask me. In the last handful of decades, the rise of psychological astrology (which now takes form as most pop astrology you see in the mainstream) brought upon the idea of “ABC houses,” or the “12 letter alphabet,” which incorrectly fused together the concepts of the signs and houses.

This is the commonly held belief by many beginner practitioners of astrology (I cannot get into the specifics of all house division systems across the globe, so I’m speaking just to Western astro here) that Aries “rules” the 1st house or is “naturally” assigned to it, and Taurus rules the 2nd house, and so on. While there has been more vocal disengagement from this idea in recent years as more public-facing astrologers like Chris Brennan take the time to address its roots and inception, ABC houses is still a very common thing many astrologers go through the process of unlearning when they begin to get deeper into their astrological studies.

Are ABC houses a direct byproduct of capitalism? That’s a tricky question to answer, but at the very least I think I can confidently say the concept is part of the actual trickle-down effects of unchecked capitalism (as opposed to the ones Reagan hallucinated). The long-term effect of capitalism is to flatten everything into a homogenized mass, bleeding out all creativity and nuance, and that’s what ABC houses do to our understanding of astrology.

It’s not just this one misconception that’s responsible for capitalism’s grip on astrology; let me be clear about that. But I do think it is the clearest example we have of the flattening that occurs when capitalism enters the chat.

The 1st House: The Battlefield of the Body

The 1st house (and the Ascendant) isn’t just about who you are, it’s about how you move through the world. From the moment of birth, your body is the vessel that determines your interface with life. The traditional significations of the 1st house—constitution, vitality, and presence—tell us as much about the physical experience of being as they do about the spirit inhabiting it.

Under capitalism, the body becomes the first and primary battlefield. How the world treats you is often determined not by the fullness of your humanity but by the attributes of your body: its perceived abilities, its gender, its race, its size, its appearance. The 1st house speaks to this embodied reality, reflecting how ease or difficulty in movement through the world is shaped not only by the self but also by systemic power structures.

The key distortion in the 1st house is the body as a commodity, rather than something sacred. Health itself is treated, under capitalism, like something that can be purchased through solutions to problems (often caused or exacerbated by capitalism’s demands on the body), rather than cultivating health in a holistic sense that prevents problems from occurring in the first place. Subversion here begins by rejecting the idea that the body must conform to external standards of worth or utility. The 1st house reminds us that embodiment is sacred and unique, not a project to be fixed, and that individual health is public health.

Like I tell all of my clients: capitalism touches every part of our lives, and the houses describe every part of our lives. I’m going to be taking a walk through the distortions and subversions of capitalism available to us in all 12 houses of the chart in my upcoming workshop, Subverting Capitalism Through The Houses. I’d love to see you there.

Can you actually “heal” from capitalism?

Short answer: no.

I realized yesterday that my mission to help fellow queerdos and neurodivergent witches who are “healing from capitalism,” a mission I established in 2022 when I began The Financial Witch, is a pipe dream.

It’s not that capitalism will last forever—it certainly will not—but we cannot heal from active, ongoing harm. In order for healing to happen, the harm first needs to stop. And we haven’t stopped capitalism yet, so there is no “healing from capitalism,” but there is coping. There is mitigating harm. There is imagining a world without capitalism. There is the act of subversion. We still have all these tools at our disposal, if we choose to use them.

Capitalism is not an open wound to be sutured, it’s a chronic illness. It must be lived with and it must be navigated in a thoughtful manner. It must always be accounted for. And you are allowed to resent it for its control over many aspects of your life.

I also want you to channel that resentment, that anger, that harm into solidarity and application. The instinct to self-preserve is not unnatural, but capitalism is, and when we only focus on keeping ourselves safe, we inherently put our comrades at risk. Class solidarity is all we have. Celebrities aren’t your heroes, billionaires aren’t your idols. My hero is the 50 year old trans woman who has worked in the deli at my grocery store for over a decade, well before her transition, and has the kindest demeanor toward people who continuously and deliberately misunderstand her. My hero is the single mom who lives across the hallway from me, who drives buses for the city and has a disabled adult child she cares for, holding together entire worlds on a daily basis. My hero is the man who runs the Hawaiian chicken shop a few miles away, understaffed and sometimes completely by himself, who is curmudgeonly and gruff but also kind, in his quiet way.

It begins with seeing the divine in your fellow human again; sorry.

The universe isn’t working in your favor, actually

I’m a numbers person. Always have been. And it saves me sometimes when my intuition is clouded.

It saved me when I was in an MLM and realized that my success within that structure would always rely upon a certain number of people existing at the bottom of the pyramid. I couldn’t ignore the numbers that told me how statistically unlikely it was for me to experience any real, material success in that industry. I couldn’t ignore the numbers when I sat down and drew out where and how the money was actually flowing in that industry.

Being a numbers person can also be quite a disillusioned experience. Back when I was still mired in what I affectionately refer to as the Manifestation Industrial Complex, I always found myself bumping up against the cognitive dissonance which occurred when I thought about what it would mean if the universe was always working in everyone’s favor. Mathematically, that just didn’t make sense. Some things that are in one person’s favor are directly in opposition to another’s, and there seems to be a disproportionate amount of suffering in the world compared to the number of people living the lifestyle of “ease and abundance” which I was promised by the law of attraction, The Secret, and other voices from that particular school of thought.

This was before I quite understood what capitalism is and how it functions, so I hadn’t explicitly pieced it together that the luxuries of the lifestyle I was aiming for are almost always built upon a system of colonialism, extraction, exploitation, and the pursuit of endless profit. I didn’t need to understand capitalism to figure that part out—I had numbers, and that includes astrology.

In astrology, the technical concept of the day sect and the night sect refers to the time of day indicated in any given chart, but on a more abstract level, this can be extrapolated into two forms of consciousness—solar and lunar—which reflect a particular duality within our shared reality. Stay with me here. Solar consciousness emphasizes things like oneness and rigidity and visibility and facts, while the other side of the coin, lunar consciousness, refers to the opposite: multiplicity, flexibility, felt experience, and emotions.

Capitalism is a form of solar consciousness. It dominates our shared reality, and thus creates an imbalance. Since the structures of the day sect are focused on funneling resources upward to one centralized source—whether they be money, knowledge, power, or something else—this suits capitalism well. Its essential shape is a triangle.

Lunar consciousness, on the other hand, doesn’t funnel resources in any particular direction, but rather circulates them—its essential shape is, obviously, a circle. In a balanced society, both of these types of consciousness feed off of one another. They’re a duality, not a binary; each one contains at least some of the other.

However, like I said, we don’t live in a balanced society. Our shared reality is dominated by captalism, a pyramid-shaped structure that suits solar consciousness, and thus we ourselves become dominated by solar consciousness. One natural consequence of this, in my opinion, is a school of thought which emerges to promise its subscribers a sense of control within, and daresay even a stake in, a system that is mathematically rigged for them to lose.

The numbers don’t ever lie. It is simply not possible for every person with a vision board and a gratitude journal to manifest their dream life. The world simply cannot support that many coffee shop-book store-plant apothecary owners.

If there’s a way to squeeze in a Mad Men reference, I’m gonna do it every time

This isn’t me shitting on your dream life; this is the inextricable truth of capitalism: the solar few siphon resources and labor from the lunar many, and they give back nothing in return. The very existence of an elite class relies upon an even more numerous servant class to, obviously, serve them. Mathematically speaking, you are vastly more likely to be born into the lunar many (read: anyone who’s not part of the uber-rich ruling class) and remain there until you die than you are likely to ever grace the other side of a million dollars.

Now, I also understand that not everyone’s dream life is to open a cottagecore coffee shop, just like not everyone’s dream life includes luxuries like designer purses or first class trips or private jets, like mine did way back when (I still have the Pinterest boards to prove it). So, let’s get back to my original point:

The universe is not working in your favor. I would even venture to say that it’s actively working against you, against all of us, at all times. It’s no secret that your mere existence is a mathematical miracle, but that isn’t a sign that you are special and chosen and protected by the universe no matter what—quite the opposite, in fact: it’s a sign that you exist in spite of the astronomical odds stacked against you.

Maybe I’ll just say the quiet part out loud here, which is that the idea of the universe as a benevolent and loving force that’s only got your best interests at heart is smacking a little too close to the all-loving (and all-punishing) daddy figure in the form of the patriarchal Christian god which, ironically, many high-ranking members of the Manifestation Industrial Complex were attempting to escape when they fell right into the arms of Abraham-Hicks.

I can’t claim that the nature of the universe is hostile or even indifferent; I’m simply saying that there may not even be a true nature to our universe, it may be a purely randomized simulation for all we know, but what we can safely rely upon are numbers, and the numbers say you and I shouldn’t exist. Furthermore, if you weren’t born into the uber-rich ruling class, then your existence under capitalism is founded on coercion.

Against your will, when you were born and became an adult under a capitalist system, you agreed that your survival was conditional: produce or die. Which isn’t really agreement, but coercion and violence. That is the central message from the ruling class (and their simps): if you do not produce enough labor or value then you do not deserve access to the essentials of life.

If this is the dominant structure of our shared reality, how can it be true that everything is always working out in your favor? Furthermore, if we accept that the universe simply cannot work in everyone’s favor all the time, then who gets to reap the benefits of the law of attraction? Who gets to skip to the front of the line, and why? What qualifies them?

Their thoughts? Their intentions? Their gratitude?

Yeah, this is all getting a bit too puritanical for me.

There’s plenty to be said about the ways much of the MIC is just repackaged prosperity gospel or a trauma response to capitalism in the form of magical thinking, and it’s all been said by others already so I won’t rehash it here. But what if you stopped imagining the universe as your benefactor? What if you released the idea that you are anything but a digit in a series of calculations? If that was true, it wouldn’t make your existence any less of a miracle, but it could help you develop tolerance.

You already know that everything does not work out in your favor, because you have proof. You’ve already lived through things that didn’t go your way. So why draw strength from something that’s patently and provably false? The universe is not working in your favor, and that’s a good thing. It means you don’t have to perform goodness in order to receive proof of miracles—you already are one. So start acting like it.

Digging and distilling on the threshold of a new world: Reflections on Venus in Capricorn

Venus entered Capricorn on November 11th, and will remain there until December 6th. She will be the first planet to conjoin Pluto after its final egress from Capricorn in our lifetimes, meeting the underworldly prince at 0 degrees Aquarius. Consolidating, fortifying, and committing to your values before Venus crosses the threshold to meet Pluto is crucial, but before you can get there, you must be willing to deeply interrogate what you truly value—not just for yourself, but for the collective. This transit challenges us to redefine and root our values outside the structures of control and scarcity that Saturn (and by extension, Capricorn) can often symbolize.

Under capitalism, the archetypal Venus is often reduced to monetary value or base desire—how much we’re “worth,” what we “own,” or the status we can project. The myth of value here is that something (or someone) is only worth as much as they can be commodified or capitalized on. But Venus in Capricorn invites a different kind of reckoning: What are your values when stripped of capitalism’s metrics? Is it possible that living within your values would mean failing capitalism’s standards? What is your relationship to failure, particularly when it comes to not meeting prescribed milestones or failing to live up to a role you’ve been assigned?

On November 22nd, Venus will form a supportive sextile to Saturn in Pisces. This is a particularly harmonious setup, as Venus in Capricorn is ruled by Saturn, and Pisces is the sign where Venus exalts. There's an opportunity to realign your values with a more sustainable, more intrinsically connected vision of worth, and it begins by interrogating your beliefs around deserving—who deserves what, and why do they deserve it, and when do they deserve it, and are unalienable rights really universal?

If the consensus is that your ability to live up to capitalism’s standards determines what you deserve, where can you identify opportunities for this consensus to be weaponized?

What is the alternative to deserving?

I believe the alternative to “deserving” is need. A needs-first approach is extremely utilitarian for Venus, but remember that the Moon exalts in Venus’s domain; meeting others’ needs is a sacred form of connection. The opposite of scarcity isn’t abundance, it’s having all of your needs met. It’s not about having more than enough, but simply having enough. And in the kingdom of Saturn, Venus is concerned with sowing her values so that we may all reap the rewards of her care—so that we all may know the warm comfort of enough.

Venus’s sextile to Saturn in Pisces, a sign that dissolves boundaries and invites surrender, challenges the myth of control with the stark reminder that while your sphere of influence may be much smaller than you think, especially in the face of global systems of oppression, the responsibility you have within your sphere of influence is also much greater than you think.

This sextile provides the opportunity to build a foundation of responsibility that is not just resilient, but also adaptive and supportive of your community’s well-being, as is the nature of sextiles. Venus in Capricorn is a time for strengthening your root systems, not through exerting control, but by nurturing genuine connections. You cannot have control over yourself and someone else simultaneously, but you can be responsible for yourself and for someone else simultaneously. You can be deeply connected to yourself and to someone else simultaneously.

The Financial Witch is run by Samantha Young—a stay-at-home mom, writer, astrologer, podcaster, and anti-capitalist currently residing in the Pacific Northwest. Your paid subscription gets you early access to semi-monthly podcast episodes, and supports the unpaid labor of childcare.

Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, deals with control, boundaries, and the structures we rely on to feel secure. Under capitalism, the myth of control is that if we just work hard enough or plan meticulously, if we follow the rules set out before us and never stray from the prescribed path, we can secure a future of stability and safety. In a way, that very myth is one of the structures we rely upon to feel secure in our reality. However, this particular transit asks us to confront the reality that control is almost always an illusion—especially in a world where systems of power are becoming increasingly unpredictable by the hour.

This is where the notion of finality comes in: What structures need to be dismantled to make space for a liberated future?

Venus in Capricorn, just before crossing into Aquarius, feels like the final stitch in a tapestry of values that you’ve been weaving throughout the year—and throughout the last 15 years. The confluence of Venus’s material focus and Saturn’s structural integrity is like the final phase of reinforcing the foundation before a major shift. Venus is speedrunning everything Pluto’s been doing throughout Capricorn since 2008, and with the help of Saturn, distilling everything down to what’s most valuable, what’s actually worth bringing with us into a new world.

The deeply felt sense of finality oozing out of Pluto’s November 19th ingress to Aquarius is also, in part, due to the “changing of the guards” which Pluto is heralding: Uranus and Neptune are also both poised to permanently shift into new environments within the next 18 months—Uranus from Taurus into Gemini, and Neptune from Pisces into Aries. While these imperceptibly large movements are occurring, there will be many chances to toss a wrench into the machine while the grown-ups aren’t looking.

The beauty of astrology is exactly this: it allows us to put a finger on the feeling that we are at the end of an era, to identify this feeling, and then to validate it as evidence of the truth. We are indeed at the end of an era. Venus won’t be in Capricorn for very long, but the seeds you sow until December 6th will inevitably be reaped in the light of a fundamentally different world.

Thank you for reading.

Want to learn more about anti-capitalism through an astrological lens? Check out my course.

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Why running your business doesn't make you a capitalist

How do you build a business inside a system you want to dismantle?

You set out to build something meaningful—something that nurtures your community, aligns with your values, and helps you meet your needs. But the moment your business grows, or any real money comes in, that familiar fear creeps in: What if no matter how intentionally I operate, I’m still feeding the very system I oppose?

Being a business owner, entrepreneur—or even a solopreneur—in late-stage capitalism comes with constant cognitive dissonance. If you aren’t clear on the difference between contributing to exploitative structures and participating in generative commerce, it’s easy to feel trapped in guilt or shame—convinced that every dollar earned makes you complicit.

Every sale feels like a small betrayal. Every profit feels tainted. If you're running a business under capitalism but don’t want to be a capitalist, the guilt can feel unbearable.

What if building a business doesn’t have to feel like a betrayal or like you’re “part of the problem”? What if there’s a difference between commerce that sustains communities and capitalism that exploits them—and the key lies in understanding that distinction?

That fear of being complicit is real—and it’s valid. But it’s also a byproduct of capitalism’s myths, especially the myth of progress. A lot of the guilt and shame anti-capitalist business owners experience about their “participation in capitalism” stem from misconceptions about what actually defines capitalism, what sets it apart from commerce, and how “progress” is defined under capitalism.

One of the 13 characteristics of white supremacy culture, as outlined by Tema Okun, is “progress is better & more.” The capitalist myth of progress mirrors this exactly. It tells us that growth, expansion, and profit are the markers of success—no matter the cost. This myth is perhaps the most recognizable and prolific of capitalism’s stories, which makes it a fitting match for a planetary archetype like Jupiter.

In ancient mythology, Jupiter wasn’t just a god of abundance—he was a force that shaped civilizations, deciding right from wrong and organizing societies. This ancient function of Jupiter gives us a very useful insight into the capitalist obsession with expansion: it’s not just about accumulating more, but about creating systems that define and enforce what counts as progress. One such example of this obsession is the capitalist tales of innovation.

Under capitalism, innovation isn’t simply about creating something useful or meaningful—it’s about doing it faster, better, and more profitably than anyone else. The myth of progress pushes the idea that if you’re not constantly innovating, constantly outpacing your competitors or yourself, you’re falling behind. This endless drive for innovation for its own sake is sold to us as the path to success, but like most unchecked expansion, it often leads to exploitation—of labor, resources, and even creativity itself. The pressure to constantly produce something “new” reinforces the capitalist belief that standing still, or focusing on sustainability over growth—or, god forbid, even consciously choosing not to grow—is inherently wrong. It turns progress into a race (hence terms like “the rat race”), rather than a collective effort to improve the quality or longevity of life.

When we buy into the myth of progress as a moral imperative—the belief that we must grow or be left behind—we become trapped in a mindset that equates our worth and success with constant expansion. This capitalist narrative drives us to believe that standing still is failure and that rest, sustainability, or focusing on quality over quantity are dangerous paths that threaten our survival, because of course there’s never enough to go around so why would you ever stop making your pile as big as possible? The fear of failure under capitalism is such a strong drive that it keeps most people from ever considering slowing down—not when it means a slow, impoverished death.

The kind of “growth” which innovation hungers after is inherently extractive. It pressures individuals and businesses to prioritize profit over people, to push harder and faster even when resources are stretched thin, and to sacrifice long-term sustainability for short-term gains. When we internalize this, we begin to feel that anything less than growth is failure. It creates a moral hierarchy where more is always better, leaving little room for reflection on whether that growth is beneficial or even necessary. Again, “progress is better and more” is a core characteristic of white supremacy culture, and part of this is because this way of thinking is antithetical to indigenous modes of being that held the earth and its resources in a higher regard, viewing the planet and its inhabitants as teachers for humans.

Alice Sparkly Kat, in Postcolonial Astrology, describes Jupiter’s power as a judicial one—a “future-making power.” Whoever holds the authority to define right and wrong decides which behaviors, ideas, and ways of relating are acceptable. In doing so, they dictate not only what’s possible in the present but also what carries us into the future.

This is the essence of the myth of progress: it’s not just about movement forward, but about whose version of the future gets to take shape—and at whose expense.

Here’s where things get tricky for business owners trying to do meaningful work within this capitalist hellscape. The myth of progress convinces us that business, growth, and money are inherently tied to exploitation and extractive practices. To participate in business is simply to become a part of capitalism, both contributing to and benefiting from this system. It tells us that to participate in commerce is to participate in capitalism—but that’s simply not true, and this conflation didn’t happen by error, either. It happened by design, because capitalism co-opts systems and mythologies that support its aims and reflect humanity back at itself. This makes capitalism seem like something innate, or ultimate, like it perfectly mirrors human nature and is inextricable from The Way The World Works.

Like Jupiter in ancient mythology, you stand in a position of power in your business, deciding what’s right and wrong, what’s acceptable and what’s not. Jupiter’s role wasn’t just about ruling over expansion—it was about creating the systems that define what progress looks like, what behaviors are valued, and what kind of future gets built. Similarly, capitalism has co-opted this power, forcing its own version of progress onto society—one that glorifies endless growth, profit at any cost, and the exploitation of people and resources.

But here’s where the difference lies—and where your power as a business owner or solo entrepreneur becomes critical. Commerce—true, generative commerce—isn’t inherently exploitative; it’s simply the exchange of goods, services, and resources. This is something that has existed across cultures, long before capitalism took hold. Commerce can build communities, create meaningful connections, and meet people’s needs without draining them dry, whereas capitalism has a long track record of destroying communities, severing our connection to the planet’s natural rhythms, and sacrificing the needs of the many for the desires of the few. What separates capitalism from commerce is the intent behind the exchange.

In contrast, commerce—when practiced with intention and care—can become a force for mutual benefit. This is something capitalism could never achieve. It’s a way to sustain communities, to ensure that value circulates rather than being hoarded or funneled toward a select few. It’s rooted in relationships, not profit margins. This is where your role as a business owner or solo operator comes into play. You get to define what kind of exchange takes place in your business. You get to decide if you’re playing by capitalism’s rules or if you’re rewriting them—creating a future that isn’t about exploitation but about shared prosperity.

Jupiter helps us see how systems get built and how power shapes society, but he also shows us something else: that power is always up for grabs and no king’s reign is ever eternal. Just as Jupiter’s decisions defined entire civilizations, your decisions—how you run your business, how you engage with commerce—have the power to shape the future. You can choose to reject the capitalist myth that commerce must be exploitative, in the name of progress. You can choose to build something different.

Thank you for reading.

Want to learn more about anti-capitalism through a capitalist lens? Check out my course.

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Is the death of capitalism written in the stars?

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.

Humans are context-based creatures and our behaviors are dependent upon an innumerable amount of visible and invisible contexts. This adaptability helps us survive, and it’s also the reason why I call bullshit on there even being a singular “human nature” at all. An individual cannot and should not be expected to behave the exact same way within every context. If your house was on fire and you were to walk out of your burning house at the same leisurely pace with which you leave to go for a walk to the park, you’d probably die.

In that case, every single thing you and I do, every behavior we exhibit, takes place within the context of capitalism. But it does not mean that capitalism reflects what humans fundamentally are—there is no monolith. Everything depends on context.

Astrology, under the context of capitalism, is thus turned into a tool for endless self-reflection and self-improvement and self-discovery. Capitalism, through its co-opting of astrology, sells your idealized self back to you as an achievable goal. All you have to do is remediate your debilitated planets! Just spot-treat your astrological placements and extract their negative qualities like you’re playing Operation!

It was this that kept me coming back to an anti-capitalist framing of the planets. I’m not the first person to do this—Alice Sparkly Kat has an entire book examining the planets through capital and power and labor—but I wanted to be someone who brought new depths to the concept.

Thus, my course was born.

When you stop looking to the planets to describe your personality, and begin observing their cycles and the mythologies associated with each planet, you are already doing anti-capitalist astrology.

Is my course for anti-capitalists or astrologers?

My answer is an emphatic yes.

If you’re someone who loves to pull on threads, search for patterns, and dream of a world after late-stage capitalism, then Anti-Capitalist Astrology is for you. It’s not about reading birth charts or predicting the future—it’s about learning from the stars to create the future.

Doors are open now. Lessons begin 10/21.

Venus & the Myth of Value (or: Why Chappell Roan Doesn’t Owe You Shit)

Where does value come from? How do we truly know what something is worth? What causes the value of something to change? Can value be assigned to anything, including a human life?

These are all Venusian questions.

Venus, commonly reduced in pop astrology to the embodiment of beauty, connection, and pleasure, also reveals the inherent volatility and subjectivity of worth through her history of representing various goddesses of war and justice. In both mythological and modern contexts, Venus disrupts the capitalist notion of “stable value” by highlighting how what we cherish is as easily discarded as it is celebrated—and we can see this clearly in the treatment of celebrities in our current epoch, particularly women. The capitalist myth of value—a belief that the worth of any thing can be measured and quantified based on a number of known factors—collapses under Venus’ influence, where value is shown to be fluid, relational, and subject to the whims of desire and discord.

Understanding the Polarity: Socially Constructed Value vs. Fixed Capitalist Value

Fixed capitalist value emphasizes the idea that everything can be commodified—bought and sold—but in order to commodify something, it needs to have a value (price) attached to it. This results in the myth that the value of all things is quantifiable and can be measured, standardized, and expressed numerically. Capitalism seeks to create a sense of stability and predict the future by assigning fixed value metrics that suggest worth is inherent and enduring, reinforcing the notion that markets can objectively determine value, instead of relationships or social perceptions or historical context. This type of value is often constructed by those who hold social, economic, or cultural power—and it does spill over into the way value is placed on individual human lives.

“What is an economy? You might say it is how people who cannot predict the future deal with it.”

Derek Thompson

Socially constructed value, on the other hand, refers to the idea that the worth or importance of something—whether it be money, goods, people, or ideas—is not inherently fixed or objective but is created, maintained, and modified by collective social agreements, perceptions, and cultural norms. This value is determined by shared beliefs, historical context, and societal needs rather than any intrinsic and measurable quality of the object or person being valued. In this sense, socially constructed value is also incredibly dependent upon the epoch it occurs within: what is considered valuable within a society or culture can shift (sometimes drastically) over time.

These two types of value systems are not a binary, but rather a polarity: each one contains a bit of the other, and they rely upon each other to tell the full story of value. Socially constructed value can be altered by the influence of fixed capitalist value, which can make certain commodities increase in social value by assigning them a high fixed value (price) and slapping a “luxury” label on. “Luxury” is a story, and we respond to that story through our own context-based value systems. The inverse of this is the way trends work: the socially constructed value of something increases based on a shared experience or some other type of cultural context, and then capitalism responds by either commodifying it for the first time, or simply assigning it a new (higher) monetary value.

The Evolution of Venus

The transformation of the goddess from Ishtar to Astarte to Aphrodite—all ultimately represented by the planet Venus—illustrates the dynamic and even volatile nature of value and desire. For instance, Ishtar’s dual roles as a goddess of love and war emphasize how value and power are socially negotiated: whether propitiating Ishtar resulted in conflict or restoration of order often depended on who was in power at the time. Her transformation into Astarte in the Levant brought forth attributes that aligned with the local needs for a goddess of fertility and warfare, again reshaping her value to fit new social desires. Finally, as Aphrodite in the Mediterranean world, Venus became the epitome of beauty and seduction, further altering her value to reflect the society’s evolving ideals.1

Venus is not just a symbol of beauty; she is a reflection of societal values. In mythology, Venus’ capacity to stir conflict (e.g., the Judgment of Paris) demonstrates that what is deemed valuable is often what generates the most desire, even if it leads to discord.

The Rise and Fall of Celebrities: A Venusian Cycle

The specific way we elevate celebrities and then discard them is a contemporary expression of Venusian dynamics being co-opted by capitalism. Just as Venus can incite both admiration and conflict, celebrity culture thrives on desire but is also quick to pivot into disillusionment or disdain, illustrating the fragile nature of socially constructed value when it collides with consumerism.

Remember, capitalism has no meaning of its own, and its only purpose is to self-perpetuate. Neptune has been in Pisces, the sign of Venus’ exaltation, since 2011, and in that time there’s been a huge ramping-up of this deify/discard cycle with regard to the rich and famous. As someone rises in popularity, as Chappell Roan has done this year at neck breaking speed, there is a rush of admiration and desire. A person, who was formerly just a person, undergoes a process whereupon their socially constructed value skyrockets as more and more people begin to form emotional—albeit parasocial—connections to this person. In the eyes of the public, they cease to be a person and are turned into a functional deity, a figure upon which many folks feel comfortable projecting their desires and insecurities.

Capitalism’s place in this process is all about profitability. Capitalism, hoping to latch onto the meaning and mythology being created in real time when someone is on the rise to superstardom, supports this deification process. Capitalism needs celebrities, and in a way, celebrities wouldn’t exist as we know them today without the aid of capitalism.

Chappell Roan wasn’t aiming to become a global pop phenomenon, and even if she was, she certainly wasn’t counting on such a meteoric rise occurring almost overnight. However, once this rise was underway, the profitability of Chappell Roan—the celebrity, the project, the public figure—skyrocketed. Even just adopting elements of her style, like a pink cowboy hat or a white painted face with big auburn curls, conjures the spirit of Chappell Roan. Her trending success creates a cascading effect whereupon others can also profit from her fame, despite having had little to no involvement in her rise to stardom. As I write this, Halloween is just around the corner, and there’s sure to be scores of Chappell imitators roaming about at the end of the month.

While Chappell and her team will not receive royalty payments for every single Chappell-inspired costume sold in October 2024, a few folks at the top of certain retail chains will likely make a small fortune on those costumes. People who choose to go the custom route will be able to put money in the hands of small business owners who are seamstresses and costume designers. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, and when Venusian concepts such as these become co-opted by capitalism, imitation can often result in cold hard cash.

However, the rise never lasts forever, and particularly for female-presenting celebrities, the “downfall” is to expected as part of this Venusian cycle. There’s many different conversations that can be had about the effects of cancel culture ramping up in recent years for both celebrities and average folk alike, but for now, the conversation I want to have is about the sign of Libra.

Chappell Roan is a Libra rising, and while her birth time is not publicly known, I would be willing to bet her ascendant falls within the first decan of Libra. This decan is represented by the Two of Swords tarot card, and speaks to the more war-like side of Venus. This isn’t a contradiction of Venusian principles, but rather a different expression of them: in order to achieve harmony and peace and justice, conflict and discord and injustice must first be brought to light so that they may be confronted and transformed. Sometimes even a neutral stance is received as a declaration of war, when values collide.

On an interpersonal level, the first decan of Libra is where we speak up, even at the risk of initiating conflict, because we care very deeply. This is where the uncomfortable but necessary things are said. This is where imbalances are brought to light. When Chappell Roan was quoted saying that she didn’t feel comfortable giving an official endorsement for any presidential candidate in the United States’ election this fall, adding that “there’s problems on both sides,” she wasn’t trying to create conflict, but rather (I believe) attempting to draw attention to an inherent injustice within the United States political system—the two-party divide and the often futile nature of voting in a system where gerrymandering and a racist electoral college make most of the actual decisions before a single vote is cast. Her stance of neutrality, which came from a lack of trust in political institutions such as the Democratic and Republican parties, within an emotionally charged pocket of time for her nation, sparked outrage.

As a result of the outrage and pushback she received when attempting to clarify her feelings further, Chappell (who has been public about her multiple mental health diagnoses) cancelled a festival slot she was scheduled to perform at, and this is where the second part of the Venusian value cycle of celebrities kicked in for her. People who were neutral or even supportive of Chappell’s comments beforehand were now upset—why? Because now, money was involved. Profitability came into question, along with a lot of other things about Chappell Roan’s ability to ‘handle’ an unprecedented rise to global fame. Frankly, most of the takes about Chappell’s festival cancellation were riddled with poorly-veiled ableism (“I care about mental health, buuuuuuut…”), as well as complaints about lost money due to travel expenses and ticket purchases. Disappointment is a natural emotion to experience when your plans fall through at the last minute, but this wasn’t just about people’s feelings of disappointment or frustration, it was an overwhelming sentiment of discarding Chappell Roan and discrediting her as an artist that struck me as incredibly Venusian.

When the socially constructed value of a person or object begins to fall, capitalism responds. Profitability is all that matters, so the second the social scales tip and it’s no longer profitable to co-opt a person or a narrative, capitalism dips out. Another way to explain this phenomenon would be the market adjusting to changing demand. While I certainly don’t believe these recent incidents are enough to topple Chappell Roan’s newly minted spot as a pop star for good, it did give me pause. It made me think a lot about cancel culture and the way, when whole humans are treated as disposable based on the whims of socially constructed value, we have effectively internalized capitalism.

Viewing whole human beings—which celebrities are, too—as passing fads or wholly disposable the second they don’t reflect your own internal values back to you is an example of how capitalism has attached itself to the ways human beings create meaning. Capitalism doesn’t need to try so hard to perpetuate itself when it has people perpetuating it on its behalf. The myth of value, in this sense, isn’t the myth that value exists at all; we’ve clearly seen that socially constructed value is real and tangible and has direct consequences. The myth of value, in capitalist terms, is the myth that all value can be quantified and standardized. If nothing is except from being assigned a numerical value, then it follows that under this capitalist myth, nothing is exempt from commodification, either. Nothing is sacred under capitalism, and this flies in the face of all that Venus knows and is.

Thank you for reading.

If you enjoyed this article, you’ll love my upcoming course, Anti-Capitalist Astrology. Find more info and join the waitlist here.

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Thank you, and I can’t wait to bring you more anti-capitalist astrology and magic.

A new chapter of The Financial Witch

When I created The Financial Witch in 2022, my goal was to help people like me—whom I dubbed “money misfits”—feel less ashamed about money and make more of it, so they could develop a healthier relationship to money. As someone with a personal connection to the occult, who’s experienced homelessness, chronic poverty, undiagnosed neurodivergence, and the exhilarating journey of solopreneurship, I knew that I was far from unique. There are actually so many of you (my audience) who identify closely with all of those categories, and we all have a similar experience of feeling like we missed out on some crucial financial education that all of our peers received, and they all seem to be having an easy time navigating money as adults while we’re left floundering and ashamed. Hence “money misfits.”

Of course, comparing our financial situations to others is a natural impulse but always an incorrect assessment, because you truly never know the intimate details of someone else’s relationship to money. We can’t escape money, not yet anyway, and sometimes it’s difficult to dissolve your financial shame when you’re still in a state of struggle. Feeling like an outcast, comparing your struggle to your peers’ successes, and hiding from your finances are all symptoms of financial shame.

Between 2022 and 2024, I sat down with over 100 folks over their birth charts, and used astrology to help people understand that their experiences weren’t happening in a vacuum, and that their struggles or insecurities or negative self-talk around money were not a symptom of their failures but rather a tool of capitalism.

A system that relies on exploitation will thrive when the people it’s exploiting feel personally responsible for their inability to climb into higher tax brackets. A system like this will perpetuate the “crabs in a bucket” theory to turn struggling people against each other, claiming their neighbor’s doubtfulness is the reason they can’t get ahead, while glossing over the fact that crabs do not naturally occur in buckets; someone with more power has to put them there.

So much of my astrology readings with folks centered around this concept: no matter what your placements are, there’s no “optimizing” your natal chart to win at capitalism, and furthermore, winning at capitalism isn’t actually a worthwhile goal. Actually, the goal of “winning at capitalism” is what perpetuates capitalism at all, so perhaps it’s something that’s worth distancing oneself from to establish one’s own idea of “thriving and resourced”—because that’s what we actually want when we’re trying to win at capitalism.

From 2017-2022, I was part of an MLM, and part of what they preached to newcomers was that the perils of late-stage capitalism are very real, and therefore you must create your own pile of money, your own source of cash flow, to insulate yourself and your loved ones from said perils.

Healthcare is too expensive? Better make your pile bigger.

The cost of raising children is going up? Better make your pile bigger.

There’s a global pandemic forcing working-class people to risk their lives for their jobs? Better make your pile bigger.

Climate change is making fewer places on earth habitable for humans? Better make your pile bigger.

Louis Vuitton throws you personal shopping parties when you spend a certain amount of money with them? Better make your pile bigger.

The illusion was shattered for me when I finally asked myself: what happens when everyone is just trying to make their pile bigger? They say it’s for a good reason, and they say good people should be rich so they can do good things in the world, but if everyone is always focused on making a bigger pile for themselves, is that actually helping anyone besides… themselves?

Is the answer to capitalist resource hoarding just… more resource hoarding?

Who are you really serving when you decide your life’s purpose is to make a huge pile and then give it all away? If the salvation lies in giving your pile away, why do you need the pile in the first place?

What if we all just had enough?

Eventually, just like with the MLM I was in, the illusion became shattered with regard to the work I was doing as a financial astrologer. Astrology is an excellent tool for many things, including figuring out how to make more money in your business. I can recommend you some fantastic business astrologers.

But I can no longer allow teaching folks how to make a bigger pile to be my purpose as an astrologer.

I still believe that most of the time, the majority of people’s problems would be alleviated with more money coming into their life. That’s just a fact of capitalism: money is power, money is life, money is time.

But I don’t believe my best work is simply to teach people how to be good at making money. My best work lies in teaching people how to locate the myths of capitalism when they’re being co-opted and played out, and then showing them how to subvert and reclaim these myths to build the world they actually desire, a world where money can still be a resource but doesn’t make the difference between life and death.

I believe that capitalism’s mythology includes the lie of individualism, and teaching people to use their birth charts as diagnostic tools for why they aren’t financially stable just doesn’t sit right with me anymore. The problems are much bigger than individuals, and though capitalism benefits from the lie that every outcome in a person’s life is entirely due to their personal choices, it is indeed a lie.

There are a multitude of socioeconomic factors that contribute to your quality of life and a likely staggering percentage of them are outside of your control. While cause and effect certainly isn’t canceled out in this case (folks manage to change their financial situations, for better or worse, through sheer will all the time), capitalism perpetuates the myth of individuality to make you believe that your suffering is entirely your fault and also that your successes are entirely up to you. But in reality, in the rest of the natural world, that’s not how anything works.

All species are interdependent on one another, and dreaming up a new world must involve a worldview that doesn’t place humans at the top of a pyramid or in some special category due to our cognitive abilities. Relating to the planets as ancestors isn’t required, but it does help orient yourself in the cosmos as one instance on a web of timelines, utterly dependent upon the entire planet you inhabit.

I pulled back from The Financial Witch for the first half of 2024 while I internally recalibrated and asked myself some big questions about what I truly want to accomplish with this business & this platform. And while I did that, what I realized with increasingly disturbing clarity was that astrology itself had been co-opted by capitalism and was in great need of its own recalibration.

Thus, Anti-Capitalist Astrology was born, and so was a new era in my business. Astrology doesn’t always have to be about the individual’s psychological layout and how to optimize one’s perceived weaknesses in the birth chart. This is a capitalistic approach that erodes the animist and collective nature of astrology, because astrology at its core is a timekeeping system.

Time happens to all of us. Capitalism feels inescapable because it has attached itself, like a cancer cell, to the very concept of time and infected it with the myth of progress. We cannot escape time, but it’s also not the linear, never-ending forward march to an unforeseeable End of mythological progress, where human life is fully optimized and leisurely, which the capitalist ethos claims to be creating.

Astrology is a meaning-making device that also happens to be a giant clock in the sky. Capitalism has no purpose outside of perpetuating itself, therefore it must attach itself to the ways humans make meaning out of life in order to co-opt a purpose and masquerade as a natural facet of human nature. The myth of competition is one such co-option we are all familiar with.

If capitalism is successful in co-opting something, then it will no longer have to try so hard to perpetuate itself because humans will apply meaning to it all on their own, and eventually even take up arms on its behalf. The people who defend capitalism (even when they own no capital to speak of) are not defending an economic system; they’re defending the meaning they’ve made out of it, or the meaning they’ve been told to take from it. They’re defending the idea of themselves they hold in their mind because capitalism has co-opted the idea that every person consciously creates themselves and is in full control of their own destiny. They’re not defending capitalism, they’re defending their self-concept. It’s very dangerous to threaten someone’s self-concept in an individualist society.

I knew I did not want to work with folks who needed to be convinced that capitalism is not good for them; that’s not my wheelhouse. What I realized during my recalibration phase is that I’m great at empowering people who know they feel a certain way, but struggle to articulate why or defend their feelings against scrutiny.

If we want more people to understand anticapitalism, we need more people to talk about anticapitalism. And if we want more people to talk about anticapitalism, we need to make it simpler to talk about. I knew a certain type of translation was needed. But you know what else involves a lot of translation? Astrology.

Now, my focus as The Financial Witch has shifted. I’m still an astrologer, and I will still be teaching and doing readings, but no longer with an individualistic perspective. I now teach and interpret astrology through the lens of collective liberation, of understanding core mythologies and developing goggles through which one can easily locate the myths of capitalism being perpetuated. I give people an education in anti-capitalism in laymen’s terms, without assuming that everyone who is interested in anti-capitalism already has a robust working knowledge of global politics and economic systems.

My upcoming course, Anti-Capitalist Astrology, is a thorough exploration of the history of capitalism and the myths of capitalism, delivered with an astrological perspective that connects the myths of the planets with the myths of astrology. For astrologers, you’ll be able to use what you learn in ACA to structure your practice in an anti-capitalist way that aligns with your values. For astrology enthusiasts, you’ll gain a new perspective on capitalism’s grasp on astrology and how you can locate & combat harmful narratives when you see them show up in astrological content. For non-astrologers, ACA is a wildly valuable foray into the power of mythology and astrology as meaning-making practices, where you’ll gain insights to widen your anti-capitalist perspective and connect it with other ideas in complex & fascinating ways.

I’d love to have you there. Trust fall pricing opens in a few days for waitlist members only, so make sure you sign up before then to get access.

Thank you for reading.

I’m starting a podcast!

The Cosmic Co-Op is coming soon, and I need your help. Go here to leave your 100% anonymous submission for me to respond to with future guests.

Thank you, and I can’t wait to bring you more anti-capitalist astrology and magic.

The 8 Myths of Capitalism

Happy Jupiter day, my friends. In the spirit of the big gas giant, I want to pop some bubbles today surrounding capitalism’s take on Jovian mythologies.

Mythology and storytelling are some of the most powerful tools of humanity, because they allow us to process universal life experiences and develop meaning from the things that happen to us. The power of the myth is the personal relationship you have to the story being told, and how you locate the presence of myth in the world with your unique perspective. I’ve been exploring the concept of capitalism as a series of myths, or more accurately, a collection of myths that have been co-opted to suit capitalism’s aims.

Part of the reason capitalism feels harder to escape than gravity is due to the way it has attached itself to these fundamental stories that help us to contextualize and process humanity and life and death. Capitalism has co-opted myths that exist in the collective consciousness and claimed that they support its existence. Like a cancer, it has attached itself to the very thing we use to define humanity, in order to proliferate and consume its host—our planet.

The 8 Myths of Capitalism

1. The Myth of Progress - One of the most fundamental myths of capitalism, this myth claims that humanity is constantly progressing, moving toward time on a straight line forward. Time and land are both savage resources to be tamed in the name of progress. Technology is the tools of a people and progress is represented by advancements in technology.

2. The Myth of Control - This myth claims that each person is in control of their own destiny, and capitalism is a vehicle through which their destiny can be realized. Self-determination and a willingness to exploit your own labor are merits, as well as the ability to “control” one’s thoughts and emotions.

3. The Myth of Competition - This myth claims that competition is not only a beneficial thing for both humanity and progress, but a necessary thing. Endless growth and innovation, according to capitalism, cannot be produced without this “necessary” drive to have more than one’s neighbor. Trusting others is risky.

4. The Myth of Individuality - This is the myth of the hero, the lone protagonist who embarks on an adventure to realize their destiny. This myth says self-sufficiency and independence are traits to be valued above all others, and vulnerability must only be selectively shared. Competition against one’s own self is a virtue because it indicates a state of constant progress.

5. The Myth of Meritocracy - This is the myth that those who are the most deserving and hardworking will be the most materially rewarded under capitalism. This myth idolizes billionaire CEOs because making more money means you are more important and more powerful and possess more valuable insights than your fellow humans.

6. The Myth of Value - This myth states that everything, from physical objects to labor to ideas, can be assigned a monetary value and traded for currency. This is also called commodification. The myth of value, at its core, is about quantifying the impact of a human life.

7. The Myth of Scarcity - This is the myth that there are not enough resources on our planet to support humanity, and it supports the idea that competing for scarce resources—time and money, in modernity—is a natural and necessary part of human life. Sometimes this even goes as far as manufacturing false scarcity in the market in order to justify higher prices.

8. The Myth of Permanence - This is the myth that capitalism is the ultimate economic system, or even that late-stage capitalism signals our arrival at the “end of history”. This myth is present in every suggestion that there can be no viable alternative to capitalism.

What’s particularly insidious about these capitalist myths is that they can co-opt ancient human mythologies and other meaning-making devices, particularly in the case of astrology. The foundations of Anti-Capitalist Astrology are these myths and how each planet in modern astrology can be connected to one of them.

We understand planets and signs as celestial bodies and environments which they inhabit, thus providing a template onto which anyone can imprint their own ideologies and use the planetary cycles to justify their viewpoint. This isn’t always as malicious as it sounds—in fact, I believe if this system of meaning-making can be co-opted as a tool of capitalism, then it can be subverted to become a tool of liberation. Astrology is neutral; it’s all about how you use your tools.

You’ll have to join the course in order to learn about the planets as they connect to the rest of the myths, but I wanted to share about Jupiter and the myth of progress because Jupiter is the planet that is most commonly co-opted by capitalism. The myth of progress is also, uncoincidentally, the most foundational and insidious myth of capitalism.

Jupiter and The Myth of Progress

Judicial power is a future-making power, because it is also a civilizing power.

Alice Sparkly Kat, Postcolonial Astrology

In Roman mythology, Jupiter was granted by his mother the ability to decide right from wrong. This type of power granted through divinity, not necessarily through trial or conquest, can be used to examine the myths of white supremacy and manifest destiny. The ability to determine right from wrong is the foundation of civilization, and it is the savage, ‘natural’ world that must be tamed in order to secure a civilization. This includes the “internal savage,” sometimes referred to as a person’s “shadow,” or any kind of dark impulses that the myth of progress says each person must seek out and root out, in order to civilize oneself.1

Jupiter and the myth of progress are both about turning the wild into the ordered; the urge to contain the chaos Jupiter fears. In this way, we can see these myths represented in both the colonizers and the colonized: the colonizers who view the untamed world as a blank slate upon which to inscribe their imperialist “destiny,” and the indigenous peoples who inhabit these “empty” lands, described as animalistic and wild. Myths are explanations of universal truths, and thus can be witnessed on both sides of conflicts where it seems right and wrong couldn’t be more obvious. We don’t need to throw out the myth in order to throw out capitalism’s interpretation of it.

The story of Jupiter overthrowing his father, Saturn, is also inherent in the myth of progress as it’s seen as both a right and a rite of passage for the new generation to usurp the previous generations and surpass them, on both technological and intellectual levels. Capitalism’s endless growth doctrine (the same principle of a cancer cell) has usurped a myth that’s more about fathers and self-actualization and the circle of death and rebirth than anything else and turned it into a story of constant conquest: we must conquer the past through technology, we must conquer ourselves through self-improvement, we must conquer the earth through extracting its resources, and we must conquer the future through material security.

The snake sheds its skin just as the moon sheds its shadow.

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The snake gets a bad rap in a lot of Western culture due to Christian mythology, but in many other cultures, the snake is a good omen and a sign of rebirth, or shedding old notions of the past. Jupiter exalts in Cancer, the domain of the moon, because it is also a shapeshifter like the moon. Right and wrong are subjective, no matter who ultimately puts them into writing and turns them into law. While Jupiter is the planet that is most co-opted by astrology, it also has the most potential for subversion, and can be extremely effective in turning capitalism on its head—when it’s placed in containers that allow it to take the right shape.

Thank you for reading.

My new course, Anti-Capitalist Astrology, begins October 21st. You can learn more about it here.

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Thank you, and I can’t wait to bring you more anti-capitalist astrology and magic.