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Astroc0des are hand-drawn visual works based on astrology, geometry, and embodied listening.
I began them as a personal practice yet they slowly revealed themselves as a way of translating the language of nature into form — not to explain, predict, or define, but to help people feel their own centre more clearly.
This page shares the story and philosophy behind the work.
ASTROC0DES
I’ve been creating Astroc0des since 2019. They emerged naturally from my earlier frequency_c0des — drawings that began as a personal, meditative practice in the spaces between making music. I would sit with a pen and simply let it move, sometimes creating pieces for friends and family without much thought of outcome or meaning beyond what was felt in the moment.
At some point, a friend asked if I could create a bespoke piece based on someone’s astrology chart, as a birthday gift. Something shifted then. I realised I knew far more than I’d ever consciously acknowledged — through years of conversations with my Dad, who studied astrology with Liz Greene in the 1960s, and through a long (and at times slightly obsessive) absorption of esoteric books, systems, and astrologers over time.
Astrology is one of the most misunderstood and misused languages we have. At its core, it isn’t fortune telling or prediction. It’s the language of nature itself — a kind of mechanical manual for understanding the how and why underneath reality. I’ve never found anything else that helps make sense of inner and collective patterns, cycles, and contradictions in quite the same way.
As Howard Sasportas once said,
“Anything you hide in the basement has a way of burrowing under the house and showing up on the front lawn.”
Astrology helps illuminate what’s in the basement.
It’s mathematics, geometry, psychology, cyclical time, art, symbolism — a living system that reflects how energy moves through form.
What an Astroc0de is.
Astroc0des grew from this understanding. Most people look at an astrology chart and have no idea what they’re looking at or how to relate to it. The geometry and symbolism within an Astroc0de allow someone to feel into themselves on a visceral level, without needing to mentally understand what everything means.
Geometry helps the nervous system feel safe. And it’s from that place of bodily safety that everything else can begin to find its centre. That is the ultimate purpose of an Astroc0de — to act as a visual companion, something a person can return to again and again as a centring device.
In that sense, Astroc0des go beyond the astrology chart itself. The chart provides structure, but it isn’t what makes someone alive. Essence doesn’t live in placements or symbols. An Astroc0de points toward the key into that matrix — and, just as importantly, the way out.
The process.
I kept the free-flowing, intuitive quality of the frequency_c0des, but began combining it with a more methodical process — studying a chart, then translating its structure into geometry and symbol. Each piece is both listened for and constructed.
Before I begin an Astroc0de, I spend time tuning into the person or moment it’s based on — quite literally singing, sensing, noticing what arises in the body. Often, just before pencil meets paper, I’ll have a sudden internal image that can only really be described as cymatics — vibrational geometry, like the patterns formed when sound moves through matter.
That image gives me an initial direction. Does this code call for sharper, more direct forces? Or softer, more rounded ones? The answer continues to evolve as the drawing unfolds.
What emerges is always a surprise to me. I often can’t fully take in a finished Astroc0de until weeks later. While there is skill involved — something refined over time — the essence of the work feels largely out of my hands. My role is to listen, not interfere, and trust what’s asking to come through.
This is very different from how I make music. When writing lyrics, I can spend weeks revisiting a single line. Drawing places me in an entirely different frequency — one where questioning dissolves. The practice of making Astroc0des has been deeply healing in this way, and has gradually reshaped how I create across all mediums. At its core, it has taught me trust.
On evolution and colour.
Astroc0des were originally created exclusively in black and gold. That palette arrived very clearly when I first began drawing in this style — it felt precise, contained, and complete. For a long time, I didn’t question it. If anything, I held onto it quite tightly. I can be stubborn like that.
In 2024, more and more people began asking for their Astroc0des in colour. At first, I resisted. The black and gold felt integral, almost protective. But as I softened internally — as I eased some of the rigidity I carried toward myself — something shifted. I realised the work was asking to open too.
Once I allowed colour in, everything changed. Now, almost everyone orders their Astroc0de in full colour, and witnessing that evolution has been profoundly moving. Each piece feels more alive, more embodied, more willing to meet the person it’s made for exactly where they are. Letting the work evolve in this way has mirrored my own process — a deepening trust in change, and in what wants to emerge next.
Scale and meaning.
Astroc0des also gave me a place to exist creatively at a time when the music industry fractured my relationship to making music. In the end, it’s all frequency — simply expressed through different forms.
I’ve now had the honour of creating over 1,000 Astroc0des. It’s taken years to backwards-engineer what an Astroc0de actually is, and how it assists people. That understanding only truly landed when I created my own Astroc0de and felt, viscerally, what others had been trying to describe to me for years.
What makes this work extraordinary is that any moment in time can be translated into an Astroc0de. Astrology reflects the isness of everything. Every person, event, relationship, decision — every second that passes at a specific coordinate — carries a unique signature. A kind of barcode of coming into being.
An astrology chart is simply a snapshot of the geometric configuration of the celestial field at a given moment. An Astroc0de captures that configuration and translates it into form. It can be created for a person, an event, two people, a family — anything that has a beginning.
Astrology is the only system I know that weaves together science, mathematics, psychology, cyclical time, art, poetry, elemental forces, alchemy, and philosophy. Astroc0des are my way of listening to that language — and giving it a body.
"astrology is the relation of everything to everything else".
© 2026 by ALYSS