Omri Elisha

OMRI ELISHA, City University of New York, Queens College, New York, New York, was approved funding in August 2020 to aid research on “Enchanting Expertise: Knowledge, New Media, and Professionalism in Western Astrology.” The popularity of astrology in North America reached unprecedented heights in the last decade, aided by innovations in digital and social media and widespread shifts in cultural conceptions of authority, expertise, spirituality, and truth. Drawing on fieldwork, media analysis, and interviews with professional and aspiring astrologers, this project examined how professionalism, peer socialization, and discursive engagement shape how practitioners authenticate astrological expertise, as well as their promotion of astrological knowledge and techniques as forms of cultural capital. While adherents typically regard astrology as a distinct domain of knowledge production, rooted in ancient esoteric and occult traditions and texts, this research finds that contemporary Western astrologers, from private consultants to social media influencers, define and enact expertise in ways that also reference and emulate other more conventional vocations and knowledge systems, including science, psychotherapy, academia, holistic medicine, and the self-help industry. Efforts to cultivate public validation draw as well on media strategies such as personal branding, as many astrologers work as content creators, independent consultants, freelancers, and online educators, continually honing and reflecting upon the requisite neoliberal sensibilities of the gig economy, while at the same time advocating alternative temporalities and ethics of care, identity formation, and political imagination.