Astrologer KT Fitz calls her podcast Miss Guided, but she’s not out to steer anybody wrong. She just thinks astrology can be funny.
Over the course of an hour, Fitz moves through the week, laying out what each day has in store for us. “We’re prone to getting carried away with ourselves when Venus opposes Neptune,” was her advice for last Friday. “The delulu train is all revved up and ready to go.” Here she inserts an audio clip: “All aboard! Welcome to the hot mess express. Choo choo!”
Fitz might be the first “shock jock” chart reader. Mixed with her astrological readings are sound effects, audio clips, and bites of pop culture. The goal, she says, is to produce an enjoyable listen, something you’ll gravitate toward “whether or not you’re an astrology person.”
Fitz has been recording the show from her home studio in Provincetown since 2020. That year, she moved to Provincetown from Los Angeles. She had recently found herself out of a celebrity assistant gig. “Maybe I quit, maybe I was fired, maybe it was both,” she says. “It was all very Hollywood.”
The break made her realize she wanted to spend as much time on her own creative projects as she had on someone else’s.
Before delving into astrology, Fitz had been studying to become a physical therapist. Then, her mother died suddenly from an aneurysm. “Nothing reminds you life is short quite like that,” she says. But when she dropped out of school and started doing stand-up, she says, “My dad wasn’t thrilled.”
Fitz grew up in Lynn, the daughter of a “spiritual woo-woo lady” and an Irish Catholic cop. “My dad was a hard-core religious skeptic and my mother read tarot cards over tea with her friends,” she recalls.
Her astrology practice, she says, has turned out to be an unexpected tribute to her parents. “Even though I am an astrologer, I’m still skeptical,” Fitz says. “No mortal person could possibly have true answers for what is going on in the world.”
Paying attention to astrology, she says, is a way to “reflect on life and ourselves.” She wants to help her listeners do that without getting bogged down in self-criticism.
Astrology “isn’t a science, though it used to be considered one,” Fitz says. The search for meaning in the sky dates back thousands of years, and the development of astrology accompanied that of astronomy until the 17th century. Now, Fitz says, “it’s a tradition and a tool for introspection and for remembering that we’re all part of the same reality.”
Most astrologers look at people’s sun signs, which are associated with their birthdays. Fitz takes a different tack when charting horoscopes. Her horoscopes are based on rising signs, or the zodiacal constellation on the horizon at a person’s time of birth.
“Rising sign horoscopes offer a more nuanced look at the transits and how they will affect you,” she says. Transits are about the movement of planets in relation to the constellations of the zodiac.
“Horoscopes are all about transits,” Fitz says, and Miss Guided breaks down a full transit chart for every sign every week. (That’s no small task, I can attest. I, too, am an astrologer and co-hosted some of the early episodes of Fitz’s podcast.)
She spends hours preparing her weekly podcasts, first combing through her ephemeris — a table of values that charts the trajectory of celestial bodies. Then, she says, she gathers her transits, collects her thoughts, and writes notes to create a loose script she knows she can record in one sitting. It’s more work than some would think, Fitz says.
Some people believe that astrology can be used to predict future events, and Fitz is one of them. Her girlfriend, comedian Kristen Becker, was preparing for a fundraising party for her Summer of Sass program in July 2022 with a Mercury Cazimi ahead. A Cazimi is when a planet appears to be directly in the center of the sun. Placements like this are said to be auspicious occasions for all kinds of things, including business dealings.
“I knew it was coming,” she says, “and I told Kristen, ‘You’re going to come away with everything that you’re asking for in this fundraiser.’ ”
Summer of Sass brings young LGBTQ people who are living in oppressive areas in the U.S. to Provincetown for good summer jobs and a season of acceptance. That fundraiser brought in support that enabled Becker to buy what had been the eight-bedroom Stowaway guest house. It’s now a home base for Summer of Sass.
“It was one of those astrology golden moments,” Fitz says.
Fitz and Becker are now working together on Starcrossed, an astrology dating game show that debuted at the Crown & Anchor during Women’s Week. They matched contestants based on their charts, then had them meet for the first time on stage.
Mostly, though, the work of an astrologer is not so dramatic, says Fitz. It’s about offering a little advice to those seeking it. In paying attention to astrology, she says, “We are reflecting on ourselves and how we want to pursue the life we want to live.”
