Kate Petty is a practicing astrologer, visual artist, and therapist-in-training in Seattle. For nearly 20 years, she has explored the intersections of arts, spirituality, social justice, and meaning-making with clients, students, and incarcerated women. Her approach to astrology and social justice work is integrative, experimental, and client-centered. Currently a graduate student in Seattle University’s Couples and Family Therapy program, Kate is excited to weave ancient symbology and myth with art-making into a holistic and [eco]systemic approach to therapy. 

Born in the 70’s on the unceded ancestral lands of Duwamish and Coast Salish people, Kate landed here in the punk rock era and has tried to abided by its ethos. Non-conformity: being different and not following the status quo. Anti-authoritarianism: against injurious authority and institutions. Anti-consumerism: against corporate greed and the values of mass culture . DIY: create your own music, art, fashion without waiting for permission. Direct action: punk is about taking action to disrupt harmful norms in the present and build an alternative future.

Kate first encountered astrology as a child via some of her mother’s books. As a kid she would spend considerable time in the local library sifting through the astrology books she could find there. “I felt magnetically drawn to the mysteries within them. When I think back, I imagine the young me sought to make meaning and find solace — and escape family chaos. I needed guides. We all do.”

Years later after a first astrology reading as a teenager, handwritten for her on lined paper, she decided to study astrology in earnest. Coinciding with pursuits in art and social services, she sought out teachers and mentors to guide her. Kate has devoted decades of study to this divine science—to astrological research, studying its varied histories, and testing and applying its many techniques. 

“I approach this language, an art and science of light and time, with reverence and awe as well as skepticism.” In client work Kate prioritizes curiosity, having a nonjudgemental spirit, sensitivity, and presence (seeing and hearing the person in front of her). Astrology offers a lot, especially paired with context. With it one is able to guide a client in contemplating calling, destiny, dharma, personal philosophy, and choice—and through it a person’s path, history, and story comes alive as the astrologer can validate events and life happenings with exact timing. Showing that the quality of time matters.

Kate has many years experience tending to people navigating grief and loss, and time and time again finds astrology a powerfully affirming tool—as well as a deep and personal way to commune with and explore one’s spirit / psyche / soul / self.

She offers consultations and mentoring online and in person in Seattle. Periodically she writes and teaches through her website and other publications, and will be teaching in 2025 for Kepler College. She taught her first ever course on antiscia in 2022. She’s had the great honor to speak at a few conferences in the United States and abroad, including the United Astrology Conference (UAC) in New Orleans in 2012, NORWAC, and Astrology Restored in Cape Town, South Africa in 2016.

From 2009 to 2012 she served as co-president and vice president of the Washington State Astrological Association. WSAA is located in Seattle, and is the oldest independent astrology organization in the United States. She’s a member of the Uranian Society and AFAN.

Kate holds a Bachelor of Liberal Arts degree (2003) from The Evergreen State College with an emphasis in Transpersonal and Depth Psychology and Expressive Arts. Her senior thesis Investigating the Vessel was an exploration and synthesis of work with concentrations in trauma and recovery, Jungian and post-Jungian studies, expressive art therapies, sculpture, dance, dream analysis, and a movement meditation/inquiry practice called Authentic Movement. She is currently a graduate student at Seattle University studying systems therapy.

As a visual artist she has exhibited work in and around Seattle as well as online. An expressionistic oil painter, she sometimes work in other mediums: encaustics (beeswax), jewelry, metal or ceramic sculpture. Dance and music are also important and often find their way into her work as she paints.

For more than twenty-five years she’s worked or volunteered in various capacities within the social and human services realm of mental health, physical/recreational therapies, rehabilitation, addiction recovery, and hospice (via Providence and Bailey-Boushay House), and she’s a trained End-of-Life Doula.

A volunteer in the state women’s prison since 2007 through the organization Shanti, Kate has provided one-to-one confidential emotional and listening support to incarcerated women for 17 years. She’s created and facilitated groups there to support and tend to people and their processes of grief and loss, like Good Grief, and in 2024 created Painting Inside Out. This work has been another of her treasured callings. If you have ideas or want to invest in its expansion, please be in touch!

* Shanti began in the early 1980s to support people in the community diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and other life limiting illnesses—those facing much stigmatization and isolation. In the 1990s Shanti expanded, entering state prisons and jails to provide support. Though Shanti lost its funding in 2013, a handful of us volunteers have carried on. I imagine a future where we recruit new volunteers once again and impact (support and care for) our most vulnerable members of society. Being trauma-informed is at the heart of this work.