Astrologer Chani Nicholas on Business, the State of the Democratic Party, and the Stars

Chani Nicholas is ready for the revolution, and not just one around the sun.

The 49-year-old astrologer has made a name for herself with an eponymous app and website, both run with her wife, nonprofit founder Sonya Passi, and a staunchly liberatory ideology. Nicholas told Vanity Fair back in December 2020 that the end of that year would feature a Jupiter-and-Saturn conjunction, an event linked with a “reset.”

She went on to share her predictions for 2021 and beyond, foreseeing major systemic changes and a growing push for liberation on a global scale. “We’re beginning a new 200-year cycle, so it’s up to us to begin it in a way that feels like, Okay, maybe there’s hope and possibility,” Nicholas said.

Footage from the war in Gaza is now ever present on social media, where users can see, in real time, the grisly aftermath of bombings and drone strikes. Domestically, young voters are disillusioned with their prospects for the upcoming election, and more US employees are demanding more humane working conditions from their employers.

It is, in short, a remarkably volatile time. Sitting on her living room floor, eyes framed by large, rectangular clear acetate glasses, Nicholas tells Vanity Fair that she’s committed to treating her own employees well—remarkably so.

“Anybody who isn’t paying people a living wage—that should be absolutely illegal,” Nicholas says. The self-funded Chani app, with daily horoscopes and guided meditations, also boasts readings recorded weekly by Nicholas herself. In contrast, the popular astrology app Co–Star openly describes itself as being “powered by AI” on its site.

“We are beholden to ourselves. We don’t have to worry about appeasing any VC funders, and we don’t have to worry about being told to use AI in a way that we feel is gross,” Nicholas says. “We don’t have to interact with any people or any paradigm that’s dehumanizing in any kind of way.”

This self-funded model, Nicholas explains, is inspired by Passi’s nonprofit work, which aims to help victims of sexual or intimate-partner violence become financially stable. Prior to her work at the nonprofit FreeFrom, Passi worked as an investment banker. To grow Chani Nicholas Inc., it meant saving and reinvesting profits from Nicholas’s early astrology readings back into the business, until they were able to provide the kind of benefits they felt good about.

“We saved money, we grew the business; we saved money, we grew the business,” Nicholas explains. “Usually, every time we post our jobs, they go viral,” Nicholas says. “We always have a lot of tech bros that are very upset with us.” A salary floor of $80,000, a four-day workweek, unlimited PTO and menstrual leave, various stipends, and a six-month paid parental leave will do that.

“You don’t know how to run a business if you don’t know how to pay people what they need to survive. That’s not a business, that’s extortion,” Nicholas says.

In a TikTok video from late May that’s been played more than 100,000 times, Nicholas, who is Jewish, grows upset while discussing the bombing of Rafah.

“They bombed children, families, folks like you and I, living in tents because they had already lost everything,” Nicholas says through tears. ”And if you have yet to say anything, to risk anything, to be a voice of dissent to this absolute horror…it’s not too late.” She ends the video with a call for donations to relief organizations. In a video posted to Instagram earlier in May, she interprets the full moon and Venus-Jupiter conjunction as being a mark of mutual aid, urging her followers to again consider donating to Gazan-focused charities.

“Our entire work—my wife’s entire life’s work—is to interrupt violence. It is patriarchal, colonial, white supremacist, settler colonial violence. It is the same violence that happens in families and intimate-partner relationships there. It’s just scale.”

Referencing activist Angela Davis—who herself was citing the late poet June Jordan—Nicholas asserts that Palestine is “the moral litmus test for the world.”

She sees her role in dismantling global oppression in no uncertain terms. “Astrology is a tool, so it can be used however the person who picks it up wants to use it,” Nicholas says. The same divination goes for the other side of the political spectrum, though, as Nicholas points out Ronald Reagan’s star-informed agenda: “Well, Nancy Reagan had an astrologer, and she advised him.”

In August, Jupiter and Saturn form a square rife with astrological turmoil while Mercury is in retrograde. This astrological event is rare, per Nicholas, and made all the more extraordinary due to the fact that the Democratic National Convention occurs at the same time.

“The DNC will be very difficult, and it should be, because the Democratic Party is not listening to its constituents, and it is not listening to the youngest of its voters,” Nicholas says. “I would not host a conference during that kind of astrology, but if I want the conference to reckon with something or to have to deal with the conflict that it’s a part of—maybe that’s it.”

Though Nicholas’s commitment to liberation is evident, her delightful brand of mysticism still manages to peek through. And of astrology, Nicholas says, “I want it to be a tool for our awakening, for our ability to feel witnessed and seen and therefore maybe even cherished, maybe even adored or loved by the universe.”