What Do Planets Feel Like?: Metaphysics and Metaphors of Presence in Modern Astrology, with Omri Elisha

The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life will present “What Do Planets Feel Like? Metaphysics and Metaphors of Presence in Modern Astrology,” with Omri Elisha, on May 6, 2026, at 5:00pm at UCSB’s Henley Hall Lecture Hall. This event is free and open to the public.

This lecture explores the significance of planetary bodies and metaphors in the lives of professional astrologers in North America, in a time when Western astrology has never been more popular. Drawing on ethnographic research among diverse practitioners, from professional consultants to content creators, the talk will consider how celestial symbols become vehicles of temporal presence and embodiment, encouraging states of mundane awareness while animating modes of spirituality in which distant and otherwise “alien” planets are experienced as immanently and intimately familiar. 

Omri Elisha is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Moral Ambition: Mobilization and Social Outreach in Evangelical Megachurches (2011) as well as essays and articles on North American evangelical revivalism, religious activism, ritual performance, and astrology. 

This event is co-presented with a grant from the John Templeton Foundation as part of a nine-lecture series on contemporary metaphysical spirituality.