Annabel Gat: The Astrologer Who Doesn't Believe in Astrology
She spent a decade building VICE's horoscopes and now writes for British Vogue — and says openly she doesn't believe in astrology, she trusts it. Who Annabel Gat is and what the record shows.
"Do I 'believe' in astrology? No." That is an unusual sentence from the woman who spent a decade building VICE's horoscope section and now writes the weekly horoscope for British Vogue. The second half matters just as much: "I do not believe in astrology, but I do trust it." Annabel Gat is one of the quieter architects of the astrology boom in digital media — less of a household name than some of her peers, but the person behind horoscopes millions of people scrolled past every week. Here is what is on the public record, and how to read it.
Contents
Annabel Gat is an American astrologer and author. By her own account she was VICE's senior astrologer from 2014 to 2024 and built its horoscope section; since January 2026 she has written the weekly horoscopes for British Vogue. Chronicle Books published The Astrology of Love & Sex (2019) and The Moon Sign Guide (2022). She is ISAR-certified, gives consultations and teaches. She is known for saying she does not believe in astrology but trusts it, and for writing horoscopes from the ephemeris rather than intuition. There is no scientific evidence that astrology predicts personality, relationships or events.
Annabel Gat has written the weekly horoscopes for British Vogue since January 2026.
Source/tradition: vogue.co.uk horoscope page (author Annabel Gat, as of Sept. 27, 2026); her Substack post of Jan. 25, 2026
Chronicle Books published The Astrology of Love & Sex (July 2019) and The Moon Sign Guide (May 3, 2022).
Source/tradition: Google Books and Apple Books title data; Bitch Media 2019
She wrote horoscopes for VICE's Broadly and appeared as VICE Senior Astrologer.
Source/tradition: VICE profile, Aug. 3, 2018; VICE contributor page; Ways We Work
In February 2024 VICE Media announced several hundred layoffs and an end to publishing on vice.com.
Source/tradition: Variety and Axios, Feb. 22-23, 2024
She passed the ISAR certification exam in first place, one of five out of 25 candidates, after about ten years of study with teachers including Anne Ortelee.
Source/tradition: Self-reported in the 2018 VICE profile and on annabelgat.com — not independently confirmed
She developed VICE's entire horoscope offering between 2014 and 2024.
Source/tradition: Self-description, annabelgat.com/about
Horoscope columns are written from the ephemeris, the table of planetary positions, adapted for each of the twelve signs.
Source/tradition: Common practice in the genre; Gat's account to Ways We Work
Sun signs determine whether a relationship works.
Source/tradition: No supporting evidence; Gat herself says there is no bad match
Astrologers can read personality from a natal chart better than chance.
Source/tradition: Carlson, Nature 318 (1985), pp. 419-425
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
What this article covers
- The short answer
- From a kid's zodiac book to the exam room
- A decade at VICE: horoscopes as a craft
- "I don't believe in it, but I trust it"
- Two books: love and the Moon
- British Vogue, Substack and teaching
- What "certified astrologer" actually means
- What is documented, and what isn't
- Frequently asked questions
The short answer
Annabel Gat is an American astrologer and author. By her own account she was VICE's senior astrologer from 2014 to 2024 and developed the publication's entire horoscope offering; since January 2026 she has written the weekly horoscopes for British Vogue. Chronicle Books published her two books, The Astrology of Love & Sex (2019) and The Moon Sign Guide (2022). She holds certification from the International Society for Astrological Research (ISAR), gives private consultations and teaches.
What sets her apart is less her reach than her stance. She describes horoscope writing as methodical work from the ephemeris, explicitly without intuition, and she says openly that she does not "believe" in astrology. There is no scientific evidence that astrology predicts character or events — and, to her credit, she doesn't claim it does.
From a kid's zodiac book to the exam room
The early biography comes from her own telling and should be read that way. In a 2018 VICE profile she recalled getting her first astrology book "the summer before fifth grade, the weekend that Princess Diana died." A few years of obsession followed, then teenage skepticism. She came back to it at 19, after going to a meetup of people interested in the paranormal.
The turning point came at 21, when she met the New York astrologers Anne Ortelee and Mark Wolz — people for whom astrology was an actual job. She describes around ten years of study with several teachers before sitting a six-hour certification exam she deliberately didn't cram for. By her account, five of the 25 people who took it passed, and she placed first. Before VICE she wrote astrology pieces for MTV News and read natal charts for private clients, a career she built inside Brooklyn's occult community.
One thread from those years runs straight into another profile on this blog: the astrologer Aliza Kelly says she began studying seriously in 2013 under Annabel Gat and Anne Ortelee. American media astrology is a smaller world than its audience suggests. People know each other, and they often share teachers.
A decade at VICE: horoscopes as a craft
Gat's own site sums up her VICE years, 2014 to 2024, this way: she "developed the publication's entire horoscope offering, overseeing content strategy, visual identity, digital products, and experiential programming." Readers first met her as the staff astrologer of Broadly, VICE's channel for women and gender, and later as "VICE Senior Astrologer," the title she carried on other astrologers' podcasts and video panels.
Her description of the job to the interview series Ways We Work sounds more like a newsroom routine than a calling. Horoscopes get written early in the day, consultations around midday and after work. The raw material is the ephemeris, the table of planetary positions. "My intuition does not play into writing horoscopes at all," she said; the hard part is explaining the same sky twelve different ways without repeating herself.
She draws the same line in consultations: she isn't intuitively "reading" anything, she says, but relaying what people have said these configurations mean for hundreds of years. Her own definition, from the VICE profile: "Horoscopes should be a guide about what's going on in the cosmos tailored to a sign."
The end of that chapter coincided with VICE's own contraction. In February 2024 VICE Media announced several hundred layoffs and said it would stop publishing on vice.com, as Variety and Axios reported. Gat has not publicly tied her departure to those events, so neither do we.
Her first book was about Venus territory
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See the incense"I don't believe in it, but I trust it"
The line that defines her came in a 2019 interview with Bitch Media about her first book: "Do I 'believe' in astrology? No, I do not 'believe' in astrology." And then: "I do not believe in astrology, but I do trust it." Astrology, she said, is "this amazing tool for self-exploration, but it's not all going to happen in the chart. It's going to happen in real life."
She applies the same logic to the genre's favorite argument, sign compatibility. "There's no such thing as a 'bad match,'" she told Refinery29 in August 2019, adding that if you have a crush on someone, you don't care what sign they are. To Bitch Media she put it more bluntly: people can be compatible with anyone; it is about the right person, not the right sign. For someone who wrote a whole book on compatibility, that is a strikingly modest reading of her own subject.
Our assessment: the stance is more honest than much of what the genre sells, and it is also shrewd — if you predict nothing, you can't be wrong. For readers it is still the healthier invitation: astrology as a vocabulary for self-observation, not a verdict on a relationship.
Two books: love and the Moon
The Astrology of Love & Sex came out from Chronicle Books in San Francisco in July 2019. It walks through the sun signs as lovers and plays out the pairings — in Gat's words to Refinery29, taking "these two archetypes" and playing "an imaginary game about how they might get along." She stresses that any serious answer would need both people's full charts.
The Moon Sign Guide followed on May 3, 2022, also from Chronicle: 205 pages, gilded edges, illustrations by Vesna Asanovic. The Moon stands for "your inner world, your emotional landscape," with a chapter for each sign. It also gives space to something most beginner books skip, the progressed Moon, which by the book's description changes sign about every two and a half years. If you don't know your own Moon sign yet, start with our guide to what your Moon sign means.
British Vogue, Substack and teaching
In January 2026 Gat announced on her newsletter that she was writing weekly horoscopes for British Vogue; the horoscope page on vogue.co.uk credits her as author, most recently for the week of September 28 to October 4, 2026. She described the Vogue voice as "way more tongue-in-cheek" than her usual earnest one, zeroing in each week on the single transit that matters most. This autumn that is hard to miss: Venus turns retrograde on October 3.
Alongside the column she runs a Substack with paid live meetups, and she teaches. In March 2026 she gave a three-session intermediate class on aspects, horoscopes and chart delineation, pitched explicitly at astrology content creators and consulting astrologers. It is a logical next step: the person who built a horoscope desk is now training the people who write them.
Two recordings give a sense of how she talks. Both come from the hosts' official channels and load directly from YouTube:
What "certified astrologer" actually means
Gat lists her ISAR certification prominently, so it is worth knowing what is behind it. According to ISAR, the credential has three parts: ethics training with an exam on its code of ethics, consultation skills training, and a competency exam on technique, interpretation and synthesis. Those who pass carry the CAP designation, for Certified Astrological Professional. When the New York Times looked at the exam in 2018, it described an essay section plus about 600 multiple-choice, true-false and short-answer questions ranging from chart calculation to astronomy.
That is a real test of a real body of knowledge. But be clear about what it certifies: that someone knows the techniques and has been trained to consult responsibly. It says nothing about whether astrology is true, and the credential comes from a private association, not from any state licensing board. If you book a reading with anyone, it is fair to ask about their training, their credentials and the ethics code they follow — the things Gat puts on the table herself.
What is documented, and what isn't
Her professional record is well documented: the books through publisher and catalog data, the Vogue column through the page itself and British Vogue's own social channel, the VICE years through her contributor page and the 2018 profile. The early biography — the first book, the teachers, the exam ranking — comes from her own accounts and is not independently confirmed.
On the substance: no mechanism is known by which planetary positions shape personality or relationships. In the best-known controlled test, published in Nature in 1985 by physicist Shawn Carlson, astrologers did no better than chance at matching personality profiles to the right natal charts. Gat doesn't argue with that; she frames astrology explicitly as a tool for reflection. For how other astrologers handle the same tension, see our profiles of Susan Miller and Chani Nicholas.
We don't claim that horoscopes come true, that sun signs decide whether a relationship works, or that the Moon has a measurable effect on your mood. We report what Annabel Gat has said publicly about her work and check it against independent sources. We don't cover her private life. Nothing here promises healing, success or any other effect.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Annabel Gat?
An American astrologer and author. By her own account she was VICE's senior astrologer from 2014 to 2024; since January 2026 she has written the weekly horoscopes for British Vogue. She is ISAR-certified and has published two books with Chronicle Books.
What books has Annabel Gat written?
The Astrology of Love & Sex (Chronicle Books, 2019), about the sun signs in relationships, and The Moon Sign Guide (Chronicle Books, 2022), about the twelve Moon signs and the progressed Moon.
Does Annabel Gat believe in astrology?
By her own account, no. In a 2019 interview with Bitch Media she said: "I do not believe in astrology, but I do trust it." She describes astrology as a tool for self-exploration rather than prediction.
Where can I read her horoscopes now?
Weekly at British Vogue on vogue.co.uk, and in her Substack newsletter. The VICE horoscope section she built from 2014 was, by her own account, her job until 2024.
What does ISAR certification mean?
The International Society for Astrological Research awards the CAP designation after an ethics exam, consultation skills training and a competency exam. It attests to training and professional ethics, not to astrology being true. The credential comes from a private association, not a state licensing board.
Is zodiac compatibility scientifically proven?
No. There is no evidence that sun signs determine whether a relationship works. Gat herself says there is no such thing as a "bad match" — it is about the person, not the sign.
Sources: Annabel Gat, annabelgat.com/about (self-description, accessed Sept. 29, 2026) · Leila Ettachfini, "Get to Know the Astrology Genius Behind All Your Broadly Horoscopes," VICE, Aug. 3, 2018 · Katherine Speller, interview on "The Astrology of Love & Sex," Bitch Media, 2019 · Erika W. Smith, interview with Annabel Gat, Refinery29, Aug. 12, 2019 · "Annabel Gat, Astrologer & Horoscope Writer for Broadly," Ways We Work (undated) · British Vogue, weekly horoscope, vogue.co.uk (by Annabel Gat, as of Sept. 27, 2026) · Annabel Gat, "My Weekly Horoscopes are Back," Substack, Jan. 25, 2026 · Chronicle Books / Google Books, The Moon Sign Guide (May 3, 2022, 205 pp.) · Apple Books, The Astrology of Love & Sex (July 30, 2019) · ISAR, "CAPISAR Certification" · Callie Beusman, "Astrology Is Hard, Even if It's Fake," The New York Times, October 2018 · Variety and Axios, Feb. 22–23, 2024, on VICE Media · Shawn Carlson, "A double-blind test of astrology," Nature 318 (1985), pp. 419–425.
Keep reading: Aliza Kelly · Jessica Lanyadoo · Your Venus sign · Your Moon sign