United Astrology Conference 2026

I spent the last week at UAC—the United Astrology Conference—which is the largest astrology conference in the world. This year, it was held at the Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile in Chicago, Illinois. There were over 180 presenters, and at various points throughout the week, I heard different people report that there were between 1500-1800 people total in attendance. There were over 290 sessions over the course of five days, and a marketplace with over 50 different vendors and organizations represented. UAC was co-sponsored by six different astrology organizations: the American College of Vedic Astrology (ACVA), the American Federation of Astrologers (AFA), the Association for Young Astrologers (AYA), the International Society of Astrological Research (ISAR), the National Council for Geocosmic Research (NCGR), and the Organization for Professional Astrology (OPA). In other words, this conference was a massive undertaking, and I am immensely grateful for all of the organizers, sponsoring organizations, presenters, volunteers, and hotel staff who made UAC possible. And I was honored to be among the first-time presenters at this conference.

This was my first UAC, but not my first conference—not even my first astrology conference. Since I started grad school in 2008, I have attended or presented at more conferences than I remember to add to my CV, many of them academic conferences in dance studies, performance studies, queer studies, ecosexuality, transgender healthcare, as well as, increasingly, astrology conferences. Over these nearly 20 years of conferences, I have learned some things: if I try to go to a session during every time slot, I will be over-saturated and burnt out by the second day, so building in breaks is necessary. Events like this can be nourishing in many different ways, but rest is rarely one of them. The time for meaningful conversations between sessions can be just as meaningful—and sometimes even more so—than the presentations that comprise the official schedule.

UAC was so many different things throughout the week. Most of all, for me it was a concentrated experience of holding complexity, which I have come to understand as one of the functions of such gatherings. Whenever we bring so many people together—even for some measure of a common purpose or shared practice like astrology—it seems inevitable that we will move through varying degrees of partial alignment and relative dissensus, sometimes successively, sometimes in ways that are overlapping, and sometimes all at once.

After six days together in the same hotel this week, here is a list of some of the many different experiences I found myself moving through:

-So much gratitude for so many people—in the past and in the present—who have sustained, developed, and transmitted this ancient tradition into our world today

-Admiration and awe at the wisdom, skill, compassion, and devotion of so many of the presenters I witnessed over the course of six days

-An expansive love, appreciation, and sometimes even devotion when I had the opportunity to be with my teachers in person—this week, including Demetra George, Kelly Surtees, and Chani Nicholas

-An increasing awareness that while we might all have “astrology” in common, “astrology” means very different things to different people, in terms of our lineages and practices, in terms of how it is part of our lives, in terms of how we understand its capacities and functions, and so on

-An increasing awareness that we were not all there for the same reasons: many were professional astrologers here to share their work and participate in ongoing professional development; many were professionals in the field of astrology here to promote their businesses and increase revenue; many were here to volunteer, supporting the development of either a field or a community—which are not always the same thing; many were students of astrology who were here to learn; most were here to meet and connect with others who share their interests in astrology; some were leaders of organizations here to perform their responsibilities to those they represent; some were here to accept awards; some were here to inspire or instigate new directions for the field, and other were here to maintain the field’s existing patterns and tendencies. Most of these reasons can easily co-exist. And it is still relevant to name that these reasons are different.

-So many people worked together to make this conference possible, not in spite of our differences but maybe even because of them, which feels like cause for celebration when there are strong political forces throughout the larger world oriented toward the elimination of difference.

-Some presentations directly addressed experiences of racialization, disability, gender, sexuality, and/or age, and some discussed astrology as more of an abstraction, with little or no discussion of the social conditions within which we live and practice.

-I only once heard someone with a microphone acknowledge the current federal administration in the U.S.—which eventually felt like a remarkable omission. [I was someone who presented at this conference and did not necessarily directly address the current federal administration of the country in which this conference took place because it didn’t seem relevant to my topic—Venus and love—and now I’m questioning how so many of us could apparently feel that addressing the current administration was not relevant to our topics.]

-Who is using AI and who is not using AI was sometimes explicit and sometimes felt loudly, terrifying unacknowledged.

-While at UAC, Rob Brezsny—arguably one of my first introductions to astrology--posted on Instagram and reminded me: “It’s not possible to say everything every time you say anything.” That was a good reminder.

-Some astrologers and/or students of astrology take some kind of satisfaction from telling you who you are or who you must be based on your Sun/Moon/Rising signs, rather than spending the time to get to know who you are and allowing that to inform their understanding of astrology.

-Every day, I walked into multiple magical, spontaneous connections with people, each encounter unfolding in ways I could have never predicted or orchestrated—in hallways, in elevators, in the hotel bar, on sidewalks, at the back of the room as we all transitioned from one part of the schedule into another. I feel these kinds of connections are so often missing the more time we spend online and the less time we spend in shared space together.

-Every day, I had multiple one-on-one conversations with colleagues, friends, and loved ones who shared stories about their lives, their desires, their passions, their heartbreaks, the beauty that they have found, the struggles they are facing, each one reminding me over and over again how much we just don’t know about each other until we make the time and space to slow down, get curious, ask questions, and listen with an open heart. And even still: there remains so much we still don’t know about each other.

-Not everyone has the same levels of comfort, but in certain situations, holding eye contact and/or meaningful consensual touch—a hug, a kiss, a hand on a shoulder, a walk holding hands, etc.—can help cultivate a more immediate and multi-dimensional sense of connection, beyond the primacy of more and more words in these kinds of settings. Every opportunity to remember that we are bodies was a gift.

-I was humbled day after day by how many people I did not know or had not met before approached me to tell me that they appreciate my work. Because the majority of my work is done one-on-one or in the form of asynchronous teaching or writing—which can feel particularly solitary—I often feel that the reach of my work is fairly intimate or small. I am very grateful to all the people who offered me a different sense of the scale of what I do.

-I was misgendered multiple times a day every day that I was at UAC, even though my pronouns were on the nametag around my neck.

-I never found a gender-neutral restroom as part of the public facilities in the hotel.

-I got to sit in rooms with people with whom I have had conflict—as well as people who have acknowledged that they have hurt me without doing the work of repair—and in those ways, I had the opportunity to deepen my capacity to stay with that discomfort.

-There were so many times when there were multiple presentations happening at the same time, and I had to choose which direction I would go. It was an embarrassment of riches to have so many people I wanted to see and offerings with which I wanted to engage. It was difficult to know that I was not always supporting the people I wanted to support and contributing my attention to the work that they were sharing, while also knowing that I was able to support others in the work that they were sharing.

-By the last two days, every single person I asked, “How are you doing?” responded first with either: tired or exhausted. Many had more to add, but by the end, this was something that it seemed as if everyone had in common: we were all tired or exhausted.

-It seems to me that being a late-night person or an early morning person has little or nothing to do with whether you are a day chart—born during the daytime—or a night chart—born during the nighttime.

-This astrology conference was so much more meaningful because I had the opportunity to connect with loved ones who live in Chicago and are not part of this field, slipping away beyond the conference bubble and the endless conversations about astrology in order to return, enlivened by life beyond this tradition and practice.

-Labor is still part of a class system, with some jobs valued more than other jobs, with so much effort and energy and even struggle concealed in order to make things seem seamless.

-Throughout the week, many people shared different frustrations, conflicts, or even instances of harm that they were experiencing. And repeatedly, people on microphones reiterated that this was the UNITED Astrology Conference. I found myself wondering how many people understand that unity without a capacity for conflict or repair is a unity that cannot acknowledge—let alone celebrate—difference. Difference within unity, or no unity at all.

There are no doubt many more threads and currents that came together to shape my experience of UAC, and I imagine that while some of what I’ve described may be shared with other people who participated in the conference, no doubt other people had very different experiences as well. I suspect that I will continue to contemplate all that I received from this week for many years to come, and I can already feel myself orienting more fully toward curiosity, to see what will happen next in the field of astrology and to discover how the seeds that were planted and nurtured this past week will grow and develop in the years ahead.