“Divining with the Elements: A Conversation about Astrology” with KL Mays and Alice Sparkly Kat

The Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life will present “Divining with the Elements: A Conversation about Astrology” with KL Mays and Alice Sparkly Kat on Oct. 15, 2026, at 5:00pm at the UCSB MultiCultural Center Theater. This event is free and open to the public.

KL Mays and Alice Sparkly Kat are two shamans-in-training who facilitate workshops about elemental divination. Their work takes place on riverbeds, piers, beaches, graveyards, parks, and the street, and they call on their participants to read for the elements in places that are as historically sacred as they are ordinary. The elements — fire, water, wood, metal, earth, and air — reveal coherence as things fall apart. In this conversation, KL Mays and Alice Sparkly Kat share what they have learned about the ethical practice of reading the elements and about collective divination’s power to make history. They will be in conversation with Joseph Blankholm, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, UCSB.

KL Mays is a memorykeeper and artist based in New York City. Mays leads walking tours, using research on geology, social history, infrastructure, ecology, and spirit to uncover events that have happened in a specific place.

Alice Sparkly Kat is an astrologer and the author of Postcolonial Astrology: Reading the Planets through Capital, Power, and Labor (2021). Sparkly Kat also hosts workshops, makes zines, runs a community space, and does client sessions.

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

https://www.cappscenter.ucsb.edu/news/divining-elements-conversation-about-astrology-kl-mays-alice-sparkly-kat