Every system of power believes it’s unshakable.
Kings build monuments to their glory, corporations weave their names into the skyline, and capitalism rewires our imaginations to believe that its grip is eternal. But every great system has a weakness, and it isn’t always shattered by force. Sometimes it’s a single thread pulled loose in a quiet rebellion, or an unassuming act of defiance. This is subversion: the slow unraveling of power from within, using its own rules and tools against it.
Subversion isn’t about toppling the tower in one heroic strike. It’s about planting seeds in the cracks, repurposing what was built to control into something that liberates. In this workshop, we’ll explore how the astrological houses—once shaped by ancient systems of power and now saturated with capitalist ideals—can be reclaimed and reimagined.
Astrology and capitalism both ask the same question: do you have free will?
And the follow-up: If so, where can you enact it effectively—and when you locate opportunities to do so, how can you make sure you’re prepared? They ask for different ends, but the inquiry is worthwhile either way.
Under capitalism, you believing that you always have a choice is central to the system’s functioning, even as choice is removed for all but a select few. Everyone else becomes disposable; fodder for the labor and extraction machine. And yet, if you’ve been categorized as fodder, capitalism still needs you to believe there’s a way out through a series of correct choices made by you and you alone. The illusion of free will serves a powerful purpose.
Within the ancient practice of astrology, the question of free will determines how you approach the planets. I’m less interested in settling the debate than I am in reading conditions. The chart names patterns, timings, terrains. Some paths are open roads; some are switchbacks in fog. Fate, in this sense, is a weather report, and agency lives in how you travel: what you pack, who you travel with, when you wait out a storm, when you move at night.
This is where capitalist realism creeps in: the sense that “there is no alternative,” that our imagination has been fenced. It narrows astrology, too. It flattens the twelve houses into productivity metrics and self-optimization lanes. The 2nd house becomes “money mindset.” The 10th becomes “career ladder.” The 6th becomes “grind or perish.” When the map is colonized, travelers forget there were ever other routes.
And yet: money does not just appear in the 2nd or the 8th. The twelve houses touch every part of life—body, home, work, kin, community—and our interpretations often uphold dominant systems, which limits their power as tools for reimagining resistance. Money touches every part of our lives; so does capitalism. It seeps in like vapor, filling whatever space it can with its toxicity. But money and capitalism are not the same thing.
Capitalism, lacking inherent tools or self-reliance, siphons from other forms of power to consolidate for its own preservation. Everything eventually becomes the master’s tools. When we use the master’s tools to disarm the master, that’s subversion: flipping scripts of power and oppression on their heads to liberate the oppressed. Destroying the tools outright can cause collateral damage; some tools can be fully reclaimed. But it begins with the art of subversion.
Sometimes you need to subvert your own understanding of astrology.
Astrology is a tool, and tools aren’t neutral. If we care about wielding it properly, we have to see where capitalism has distorted the houses—and then reshape the tool for liberation. That reshaping is imaginative and practical. What does a de-capitalized 1st house look like in a disabled body? What happens when the 10th is read as radical responsibility instead of endless advancement? How might the 11th become infrastructure for solidarity rather than networking for clout?
Subverting Capitalism Through the Houses is a guided practice in this kind of reading. Together, we will trace the capitalist storylines grafted onto each house, offer liberatory reframes rooted in history and lived experience, and locate the windows where will can be enacted—personally and collectively—without feeding the machine.
What you’ll receive
a 20+ page written guide with house-by-house distortions, reframes, and reflection prompts you can mark up and return to
a live 90-minute session on November 1st for orientation, a few case studies, and open Q&A
a recording + transcript for accessibility and your own tempo
Astrology isn’t neutral. Capitalism isn’t inevitable. Bring your imagination. Let’s pull a few threads and see what unravels.