Introduction to Astrology: Freedom! Uranus

If you were born in the Sixties and have Uranus in Virgo, the sign which rules the body, then you are free to independently look after your own health and fitness, rather than throwing your hands up in the air and running to the doctor.

Uranus in Virgo arrived with the Pill. A tiny tablet set women free to have pregnancy- free sex. Uranus is often a shock. The shockwaves last for years and it takes people a long time to catch up and cope.

Sixties people are Uranus in Virgo guinea pigs. Their relationships, one-night stands and marriages have put them in the front line for real-life research on what happens, when sex no longer means babies.

Uranus in your chart says, ‘This is where you make it up. This is where you invent it. There are no maps, guidebooks or rules. Nobody has ever been here before you.” But it’s freedom.

Different Music

When Uranus enters a new sign of the zodiac a new dance is invented, and we get new music. Uranus is associated with radio, so it’s not surprising. He was found in 1781 when Galvani made the discovery that would ultimately lead to the battery. Uranus was the father of sheet and forked lightning in mythology, the kind you see in electrical storms.

Uranus entered Scorpio as 1974 ended and 1975 began. Viv Albertine, electric guitarist with The Slits, remembers Patti Smith changing her life that year. Mick Jones from The Clash also buys a Patti Smith album, Horses and they meet at the Electric, on Portobello Road, to talk about bands. In 1975, Viv remembers, the Sex Pistols were at the Chelsea School of Art.

Scorpio rules sex and money. The Sex Pistols became notorious, shortly after this, for taking large cheques from record companies and then leaving shortly afterwards.

Scorpio also rules deadly serious money – the kind that involves lawyers. Sid Vicious, whom Viv Albertine also knew, is no longer with The Sex Pistols but his music and the royalties live on. Uranus in Scorpio hit business on all levels.

For Viv Albertine, author of the autobiography Clothes, Music, Boys, punk was the soundtrack to an epic revolution in her approach towards sex. For the Buzzcocks, punk made it possible for bands to radically change the way the music industry operated. Musicians could make the music, record the music, print the record sleeves, promote the music and sell it from a car boot.

This DIY principle extended to every aspect of business while Uranus was in Scorpio. If you were born with Uranus in Scorpio, you are in the DIY small business generation who have embraced the electrifying potential of the internet to break free of the old way of making money. You earn your keep your own way using free technology and PayPal.

As Uranus in Scorpio rolled on, from late 1974 through 1981, the music and the dancing reflected the excitement of this strange new world, where bands were doing their own thing and making their own money – symbolising what was happening with the new British PM Margaret Thatcher reinventing the economy. (Not that punks would thank you for making the comparison). In Australia, the Saints invented Indie. The independent label. Uranus was found when America won independence.

Uranus in Your Chart

Uranus by sign and house, shows where you invent and create, without necessarily knowing what the end product will be, or even particularly liking it. It’s a churning part of yourself and your life where nothing can ever be accepted, a great deal is rejected – and yet from this turmoil comes everything that is new, exciting and liberating.

Does that sound like your love life if you were born in 1970 through 1974? You have Uranus in Libra. You grew up with Women’s Liberation, gay rights, Ernie and Bert (the original metrosexuals) and everybody’s parents getting easy divorces – because the law had changed.

When you became adult, this churning, exciting, inventive part of yourself contributed to the wave of change, making equal partnership legal, worldwide. You or your generation are about internet love. Tinder. Libra rules love, sex and commitment. You were born to do it differently, although you are constantly experimenting and rejecting (ideas as well as each other).

Uranus in your horoscope shows where you produce everything that is new and original, both in your own life and the lives of others. It is that part of you which often gives birth to the new, the surprising and the confronting – but by default. Uranus by sign and house shows you at your most inventive, but you will often create the new elements in your own and other people’s lives unintentionally.

Nevertheless, history will always prove to you that what you generated in your Uranus horoscope house, will have created independence and precious freedom.

The Uranus Myth

Uranus (the sky) is associated with great productivity and inventiveness because with his wife, Gaea (the earth) he seeded a large number and variety of children.

They included the Titans Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses and the goddess of memory (Webster’s Dictionary). Another child, Hyperion, was the first to observe the movement of the sun, moon, stars and seasons (Library of History, Diodorus Siculus).

Uranus distanced himself from everything he created. He rejected all the Titans, including Saturn. His daughter Venus was the result of his own castration. The myth tells us that this planet describes the production process. Yet the nature of that process will be unpredictable and often painful.

Uranus is the symbol of astrology and astronomy, as he ruled the sky. But his son Hyperion was a stargazer too. J.K. Rowling used his name for her Harry Potter character Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy, with a nod to the zodiac sign Scorpio.

Uranus had a veritable production line according to Hesiod. In your natal horoscope he describes that part of you which seeds the most remarkable chain of new elements in your life. By transit he describes people, organisations or even global movements which create all that is unique and new.

Apart from Mnemosyne (memory) and Hyperion (astrology and astronomy) Uranus produced ten other children. Collectively, they are the Titans; Oceanos, Coeus, Tethys, Crius, Thea, Themis, Phoebe, Rhea, and Lapetus. Cronus, the last-born, is better known to astrologers as Saturn. Saturn castrated Uranus, after his father hurled all his children back inside Gaea (the earth). He was rejected by him – and rejected him.

Perhaps Uranus rejects Saturn (shoving him back into his mother, Gaea, the earth) because he senses that his son will come to symbolise old age.

It’s Electrifying!

Italian doctor Luigi Galvani demonstrated the electrical basis of nerve impulses in 1781, when Uranus was discovered. He made the muscles of a frog twitch by using a spark from an electrostatic machine to trigger them into life (US National Library of Medicine).

Galvani lends his name to the word ‘galvanised’. When Uranus is also triggered by transits, you will characteristically feel galvanised. The house of your horoscope where we find Uranus shows where you will regularly be jerked into life.

The astrologer Debbi Kempton-Smith describes the planet as a rude awakener in her fabulous book, Secrets From a Stargazer’s Notebook.

“It must have been a rude awakening for Galvani to see his dead frog twitching. Feeling ‘wired’ is a classic manifestation of a wake-up call for your natal Uranus.”

This is why I think that music and dance so often come in ‘new waves’ associated with the arrival of Uranus in a new sign. Our bodies have to channel the electrifying wake-up call.

King George

King George III was the royal patron of the new planet Uranus in 1781 and was fascinated by its discovery. It was originally named for him, as the Georgian Star – before the name was rejected in favour of the Roman icon Uranus. Standard Uranian rejection chance.

He rejected his children and his own son rejected him. He also distanced himself from America (those damn colonials) and in turn, they responded by ultimately throwing him out and pulling his statue down in New York. Everything you need to know about Uranus in your chart, you learn from King George III.

He was mad, as everybody knows. King George III suffered from a hereditary disease called porphyria. The disease causes the interruption of nerve impulses to the brain that gives psychiatric symptoms.

George III had been suffering with the effects of the disease for ten years prior to the American’s Declaration for Independence. Of course, going mad liberated him from having to be the King. Uranus can be kind and cruel.

Oh My God, It’s All Over

When America beat Britain in 1781, the Prime Minister and the King were unmanned in one day. “Oh my god it’s all over,” the British Prime Minister wailed when the news of Yorktown arrived. It was. Though it took George III some time to realise it. Faced with a humiliating and inevitable loss of the rebellious American colonies which were the better half of his dominions, George III resolved to abdicate and drafted his abdication address. “ Monarchy, Dr. David Starkey, Channel Four, 2006.

In the end, George III never did abdicate. But his ‘unmanning’ continued with his mental illness and the eventual supremacy of George IV, his wayward son. Emasculation can mean liberation too, though. Imagine the bliss of not having to ponce around with a crown all day.

Fathers and Sons

Older fathers with teenage or twentysomething sons often see the Uranus-Saturn myth playing out with uncanny power. Just like King George III and his eccentric son.

“His relations with his father followed the usual Hanoverian pattern of mutual loathing and contempt. He thought his father mean and puritanical. His father thought his son a wanton and a wastrel.” David Starkey, Monarchy, Channel Four, 2006

One of the reasons Uranus in a new sign chimes with new music and new dance, is that it gives sons something their fathers will hate. If you want to spot one Uranus generation distinguishing itself from another, go to any wedding reception and look what happens when Generation Uranus in Virgo choose the music and Generation Uranus in Libra walk off the dance floor in disgust.

The World Turns Upside Down

Astrologer, academic and author Nick Campion made a prediction in the Daily Mail in 1988 that 1989 would be the year the Cold War ended, choosing the title ‘1989 – The Year the World will be Turned Upside Down.’

In an interview with Garry Phillipson in the Astrological Association Journal in May- June 1999, Campion said, “That was the title of a book by Christopher Hill about the English Revolution – which occurred around the time of the 1648 Uranus/Neptune conjunction. So, what I was anticipating was a repeat of that.” When Uranus arrives in a new house of your horoscope, your world (in relation to the life areas ruled by that house) will certainly flip. Saturn’s castration of his father literally threw the sky straight off the earth.”

The period immediately after the 2016 British vote for a Brexit was textbook. Within hours of the nation passing an historic line-up involving Uranus, the world turned upside down. Share markets plunged. The Prime Minister David Cameron resigned. Nigel Farage resigned from UKIP. The opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn’s job was in danger. Uranus at 23 Aries, Ceres at 23 Aries, Mars at 23 Scorpio. Boom.

Castration!

There is a particularly horrible illustration of Saturn cutting off the penis and testicles of his father Uranus, in a book I own. I have to hide it when male astrologers borrow books, so they don’t have to spend the whole afternoon crossing their legs on the chair.

Uranus in your chart by sign and house shows where you can ‘castrate’ people (especially men) and often, cut away their masculinity. When Uranus went into Virgo in the Sixties, along with the Pill, those two classic Virgo life departments (your body and your job) were revolutionised, as women skipped children and stayed at work.

In the Eighties, when these women were living the revolution and often competing directly with men for jobs, men responded with tremendous fear and anger, which became known as Ye Olde Sexism. Various jokes were made about ball-breakers.

Your Uranus sign and house shows where (even if you do not threaten the masculinity of older males) your contemporaries might.

This is from Hesiod’s Theogony and it describes the castration of Uranus by his son Saturn. Uranus was married to Earth at the time.

“And Heaven came, bringing on night and longing for love, and he lay about Earth spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched forth his left hand and, in his right, took the great long sickle with jagged teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father’s members and cast them away to fall behind him.”

If you were born with Uranus in Scorpio then your generation ‘castrates’ those old white, male, corporate structures in big business because you’ve got a laptop and you’re going to use it. If you were born with Uranus in Sagittarius then you ‘castrate’ members of the old religious establishments, in particular – Sagittarius rules religion and beliefs of all kinds. If you were born with Uranus in Capricorn, then we’re all very interested to know what you’ll be doing in 2020!

Uranus in Transit

When Uranus moves through a sign – Aries or Taurus – he transits one house of your chart and travels through at high speed, squeezing out sparks, sending shockwaves and radically changing that part of your life forever.

New things come. New people arrive. New organisations, ideas and systems are born. Uranus was the father of Venus. He gave birth to her unintentionally, because as Hesiod tells us, his penis and testicles were cast into the surging sea once Saturn had castrated him.

And so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden.” That was Aphrodite, later to be renamed Venus by the Romans.

Wonderful and Awful Uranus

Germaine Greer once wrote this in The Age newspaper:

“If you want to make wonderfulness you have to be unafraid of making awfulness.”

Over the course of your life, you will be happier if you can give yourself full credit for everything you create, in all its variety, wonder and awfulness. You may be creating consciously, or by default. But what you invent, in the house where you find Uranus, is the future. It’s your legacy. It may be Monty Python’s vision of All Things Bright and Beautiful, but it’s real.

Looking around me, I can see my friends with Uranus in Virgo, dealing with any number of wonderful and awful Uranus in Virgo inventions, or ‘new’ reinventions.

You have to think back to the 1950’s and earlier to realise just how radical these aspects of life might have been, before the Uranus in Virgo babies were born.

Cosmetic surgery. Diets. Vegetarianism. Organics. Bottled mineral water. Fashion Tracksuits. Streetwear Trainers. Gyms. Workouts. Yoga. Pilates. Vitamins. Laptops. Smart Phones.

Your Uranus sign may be the one just before, or after. The sign that Uranus is placed in, becomes intensely personal if you also have heavenly bodies or points in the same sign. If they are conjunct Uranus (by 0-1 degree) then you may well embody your generation in an obvious way. Without these factors, you will live out the message of Uranus in a particular sign at a broader level. For example, if you were born with Uranus in Virgo then your life may have been changed by the impact of the internet on the workplace, even if you have few other factors in Virgo in your horoscope.

When Generations Repeat

Do you know a Me Me Me Baby? They were born with Uranus in Aries. Some of them are being born as we design this book. Aries rules you, you, you. Uranus in Aries children are all about that.

The sign Aries is associated with personality projection, physical appearance – and most of all, the use of branding. Facebook newborns whose names and faces may be launched on the internet even before they can speak, are Uranus in Aries babies.

Some websites rising in popularity during this cycle encouraged parents to post images of their babies in the womb, so their faces, in embryo, can be seen by the world. If you were born with Uranus here (and are reading this on some strange new hologram computer far in the future) then there will be serial versions of yourself online, for all time, because of the cycle that was going down when you were born.

Unless they blow up that Facebook data farm, kid, your in-the-womb shot is forever. There is nothing new in astrology.

The generation born 1930 to 1934 also had Uranus in Aries. The first TV commercial in US history appeared in 1930, launching self-promotion and self-advertising.

The idea of linking one’s name to a product or brand came out of the 1950s-1970s when this generation were establishing their careers.

New technology, like the 1957 Kodak Starmatic camera (the first automatic Brownie) sold 10 million units in five years. Then in 1963 Kodak produced the Instamatic camera, another hit with this Uranus in Aries generation.

These Uranus in Aries people also embraced the ‘Me’ philosophy of 1970s therapy, and of course, astrology, which attracts narcissists! These senior citizens were also the cosmetic surgery obsessives.

New identity issues facing the Uranus in Aries babies growing up in the 21st century will revolve around government and social media gathering of personal information.

It’s safe to make the prediction that by the 2030’s today’s Uranus in Aries babies will be inventing new ways to manage these issues about their faces and names after being tracked from the womb onwards. Of course, this is the generation who can manufacture their identities online, too.

Uranus in Aries and Me, Me, Me

Andy Warhol said in 1968:

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

He was talking at a time when the Uranus in Aries adults, all grown up since they were born in the early 1930’s, were embracing the new freedom of Super 8 film cameras, as well as the television Vox Pop (instant fame for at least 30 seconds) and the print media explosion.

Warhol was brilliantly accurate about the internet, though he passed over before the arrival of Twitter, which he would have adored. Social Me Me Me Media exploded as soon as Uranus went into Aries in 2011.

Yoko Ono, born with Uranus in Aries, is a good example of the generation – not only embracing Twitter herself, but also turning herself into her own works of art.

Andy Warhol also had Uranus in Aries and his diaries (another way to break free, with ‘Me’) serve as his partial legacy.

Is it narcissism, all this? Put it this way. Uranus is about freedom, independence and the pursuit of liberty and in Aries and the First House the best way to generate that is by experimenting with me.

Uranus in Taurus

Uranus in Taurus from 2018 will bring a global banking revolution. My prediction (although I had not yet had my coffee) is that we will see the end of banks as we know them.

I know many astrologers and astrology beginners who see the same thing. We look around us and see Bitcoin, PayPal and Stripe. More importantly, though, we see that a very old cycle is about to repeat.

Uranus in Taurus people were born from 1935 until 1942. Pre-war and war babies. They know what rationing is like. They also knew what debt was. They came into the world not long after the Wall Street crash. Many suffered greatly from the effects of the Depression.

The alternative lifestyle movement which boomed in the 1970’s when this generation grew up (grow your own vegetables, buy a block of land, build your own home, keep chickens in the back garden) did so, partly as a result of their childhood in a world that knew wartime poverty and austerity.

In Britain, this was the ‘Dig! Dig! Dig! to victory’ generation who had grown up with urban allotments off Piccadilly during the Second World War. This generation invented entirely new ways to pay and shop – like the credit card.

The modern credit card was first used in the 1920s, in the United States, specifically to sell fuel to car owners. In 1938 several companies started to accept each other’s cards.

In September 1958, when the Uranus in Taurus children were old enough to be super-consumers, the Bank of America launched the first proper piece of fantastic plastic. This generation, in adulthood, were not only early adopters of the credit card, decimal currency, time-share, the Euro and mortgages, but they also became the environmentalists and conservationists of the 1970s and 1980s. This is why we associate Taurus with both extreme shopaholics and consumers, and radical Greens. Taurus knows both ends.

When Uranus entered into Taurus in 2018, we also hit extremes with money.

During the war in Britain, when the Uranus in Taurus children were growing up, government slogans included ‘Hit back with National Savings’ and ‘Lend, Don’t Spend.’ The women of Britain to donate their aluminum pots and pans to be turned into Spitfires and Hurricanes, Blenheims and Wellingtons.

It was the era when one envelope could make fifty cartridge shells and wastepaper was vital. All these long-lost skills returned for a different reason when the Uranus in Taurus children faced the reality of an overcrowded, polluted, planet in their middle years, and in their senior years, this generation is a powerful green lobby group.

This older generation, retired (but with internet access) have made formidable campaigners.

Bingo!

When Uranus entered into Taurus from 2018, we saw a gambling revolution. We also saw a global revolution against old-school gambling, like casinos.

Bingo is just one of the trademark pastimes of the Uranus in Taurus generation. A Bingo rule book appeared in 1933 after the game had been copyrighted. Other typically Uranian inventions connected to money, possessions and property include the Premium Bond, a lottery bond issued by Britain’s government National Savings and Investment scheme.

The bonds were introduced by Harold Macmillan in his 1956 budget and the Uranus in Taurus generation, all grown up and ready to spend, fell over each other in their eagerness to embrace this inventive way of sanctioned gambling. Other inventions which have intrigued this generation include scratch lottery cards, and of course, that Las Vegas favourite – the computerised poker machine.

Your Life After 2018

If you have Taurus and Scorpio factors in your chart, or are involved with people who do, then your life after 2018 will turn upside-down in relation to banking.

Uranus was found in 1781 when the American rebels won their final battle against England at the Battle of Yorktown.

Some historians claim the defeated British army were even playing a folk song called The World Turned Upside Down during the surrender, and that their muskets, too, were upside-down.

This inverted world of 1781 precisely mirrors the inverted world of ancient Roman myth when poor Uranus was thrown off his wife Earth (Gaea) before he’d even had time to light a cigarette.

Before Uranus was discovered, there were only six planets in the Solar System. When William Herschel found the seventh, this also turned the known world upside-down. It certainly turned astrology upside-down! From 2018 when Uranus is in Taurus, you simply will not bank the way you did in 2017 and earlier.

Dealing With Uranus

In the new world, when everything radically changes, and people must co-operate to invent a new way to bank – we turn to astrology and history to show us a few home truths.

Turn to America in 1781 if you want to learn how to deal with what is coming. Year zero for the planet Uranus and year zero for independence.

Writing in The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell noted how impressive it was that thirteen different colonies could act in their mutual interest, without losing sight of the individual priorities of any one of them.

It was not only the colonies that had to co-exist in the name of freedom in 1781. America’s different religious and belief-led groups also had to live, side by side. Jews, Quakers and Freemasons all had to respect each other’s independence.

Whenever Uranus enters a new sign, there are people who resist the revolution and are left behind. History tells us that the radicals should also include them, as much as possible. If it’s not possible, at least change should happen compassionately. There should be a spirit of understanding even if the entire planet is being turned on its head. You can have a revolution or a bloody revolution.

Feminism, together with other social freedom campaigns (like the Civil Rights movement) is a hallmark of Uranus. Once Uranus moves into Taurus, we are going to see a new movement which targets banks, taxation and currency.

There will be new music, too. We don’t know what yet. The dance of rejection will drum up a storm from 2018.

Uranus is such a powerful symbol of rejection that as a hastily named planet, he was also rejected – repeatedly. William Herschel, who found Uranus, wanted the King to fund him (let’s face it) and named the new 1781 planet Georgium Sidus.

The planet was still called George, effectively, in the British Nautical Almanac until 1850. Page 355, Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

Imagine! A planet called George. Rejected! “Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were not named for any monarch, nor any country. Moreover, the name Georgium Sidus ‘gave offence’ according to some astronomers.” E.G. Hogg, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1936.

The name Herschel, cheekily suggested by the French astronomer Joseph-Jerome Lalande as a better option, was also rejected. Then, “The German astronomer, Georg Lichtenberg, argued for the name Astrea, after the Greek goddess of justice. The Swedish astronomer, Erik Prosperin, recommended the name Neptune, honoring the brother of Jupiter and son of Saturn. Other suggestions were Cybele (wife of Saturn), Hypercronius (being above Saturn), Minerva (Roman goddess of wisdom), Oceanus (a mythical river said to surround the Earth), even Neptune of George III and Neptune of Great Britain. Aesthetic Reference, David Boersema, Pacific University, 2010.

In the end, the influential German astronomer Johann Bode won the argument over nomenclature, and yet – “It took a full sixty years of arguing over the name before astronomers agreed to call the seventh planet Uranus.” Uranus, Josepha Sherman, Marshall Cavendish, New York 2010.

From the very beginning, the new planet came to symbolise serial rebuffs. In 2018, banks will reject us, and we will reject banks. But why?

Uranus and Prometheus

Even now, Uranus is still being rejected as a suitable mythological symbol for the planet – but this time by astrologers. You have to love this planet, for constantly reminding us of its essential meaning.

Richard T. Tarnas has argued that the mythological meaning of Uranus contradicts the astrological meaning, and Prometheus is a better symbol for the revolution normally associated with Uranus.

Liz Greene, in her book, The Art of Stealing Fire, also supported Tarnas’s view – that the role of Uranus in myth is not to initiate rebellion and change, but to resist it.

Greene and Tarnas both believe that Prometheus, who gave the universe cosmic fire, is a more potent symbol. (Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology, Summer 2009.)

The problem Richard Tarnas has with the astrological Uranus is very clear. The myth tells us he was the tyrant who kept his children down, not the revolutionary who tried to break free.

Is this a good enough reason to use Prometheus as an alternative archetype, though? One of the great problems for astrology in accepting this, is that Prometheus is actually an asteroid.

The problem disappears when you realise Uranus is radically different in transit. Natally he describes that part of you which rejects what you create and invent.

A good example of this is food intolerance – particularly wheat, dairy or gluten intolerance. The Uranus in Virgo generation, now in their fifties, were actually born with bodies that rejected the supermarket food their other Uranus in Virgo contemporaries were inventing!

The Uranus in Libra generation reject homophobia but are in turn rejected in their pursuit of equal marriage.

All you Uranus in Scorpio people are going to change Communism and Capitalism when transiting Uranus in Taurus opposes you, in the famous Uranus Opposition cycle.

Transits by Uranus bring you the revolution from the outside. Others deliver the new inventions – the new world. By sign and house, you will experience Uranus from others, as a process of radical change that sets people free and is resisted by those who cling to the past.

Uranus in Aries has delivered the Selfie. It is such a phenomenon of the age that Presidents participate. The internet has made everyone ‘Free to be me.’

Natally, Uranus does show how you reject what you produce (or whatever your contemporaries, born with the same Uranus sign, produce). By transit it just reveals the rejection dance, and you can either join the revolutionary disco or stay off the dance floor.

The Dance of Rejection

I always get excited on behalf of my readers when they have been rejected in their careers or rejected in love. It means they are about to become independent human beings and finally discover what it truly feels like to be free.

Uranus by sign and house in your chart reveals the dance of rejection. This planet describes who (or what) you push away.

It’s a deliberate distancing which, typically, can feel very hurtful or even offensive to those who are ‘exiled’ in this way. Not surprisingly, anyone who is rejected by you, will in turn reject you.

One good way to think about the rejection dance that Uranus brings, is to remember the way Great Britain used the geographical space between herself and America in 1781 to distance herself from the Colonies in other ways, too. Being forgotten or ignored is very Uranian.

The Name Game

Perhaps the most famous example of the Uranian rejection dance is this – if you go to any astrology conference, from Melbourne to Cirencester, you will find astrologers all giving lectures on Uranus – all rejecting the pronunciation of it heard in the preceding lecture.

The Name Game, as astrologer Bill Tierney calls it, has this result: “Some people pronounce the planet Ur-RAH-nus, Tierney writes, “as if to give it an air of sophistication – although that sounds a bit affected to some ears…”

Tierney continues – “But there’s even another option that instantly conveys to listeners that you probably have a scholastic background (or that maybe you’ve got a superiority complex) and that’s when you call this planet “OOR-ron-noose” – supposedly just like the ancient Greeks did.”

Alive and Well with Uranus by Bill Tierney nails it, doesn’t it? And so, does this.

The symbol for Uranus, the letter H on top of a globe, is itself the very picture of rejection. “The globe represents the Divinite Uranus, the classic god of the heavens (nothing to do with the disc of a planet as seen in a good telescope)…the little line above the ‘globe’ is nothing more than the link that associates Uranus with H, thus combining the name chosen by the German astronomer, Bode, with that preferred by the French astronomer, Lalande. The Observatory, Volume 40, Francisca Herschel, 1917.

Francisca knew all about the H for Herschel problem, of course.

Don’t Feel Rejected!

The great thing about being an astrologer is that you can tell in advance when you are going to be rejected. As soon as I saw Uranus go into my solar Ninth House of publishing and education, back in 2011, I knew I was in for a few years of NO.

(Uranus rules No. And don’t say no to me.)

If you’re a Leo, you’ve had this very public cycle too! Sun Sign astrology uses the solar chart, and Leo has been suffering from Uranus and his big rejection dance taking place in Aries, in their collective Ninth House of books, websites, study and academia.

The first kind of rejection that occurs with Uranus is distancing. Putting as much space as possible between oneself and something (or someone) else.

It’s what Uranus did to Saturn and his other children. He sent them miles away from his presence – to the infernal regions of Tartarus. By sign and house in your horoscope, Uranus shows where you will seek to distance yourself from whatever (or whomever) you have produced in your life. Sometimes you will do this geographically, by moving away (or having something or someone moved!)

The other common form of Uranian distancing is contempt. Tilting your head with your nose aloft is one way of trying to put as much space as possible between your face and theirs.

“The novelist Iris Murdoch, in her novel A Fairly Honourable Defeat, suggests that the opposite emotion to love is not so much hate as contempt, and surely this is a key Uranian emotion.” The Contemporary Astrologer’s Handbook, Sue Tompkins, Flare Publications, London 2006.

The idea of contemptuous distancing is very clear in the example of America and Britain in 1781. It is also clear in pre-revolutionary France in 1781, when Uranus was discovered.

The royal court at Versailles was seen as contemptuous of the lower orders. Above them. Apart from them. Almost as if the peasants had been exiled to Tartarus.

Uranus always brings a revolution after such distancing. It’s part of the cycle. The peasants want to be free!

Men, Separation and Divorce

We have already gone into the slightly ouchy subject of Uranus and the way his own son Saturn castrated his father. If a Uranus transit involves a man and his love life, then he may be ‘unmanned’, rendered impotent or symbolically castrated in some way.

Emasculation of one kind or another is typical. Sexual humiliation or rejection is one way that the Uranian revolution can occur. Perhaps today there are elements of that myth echoing in families where teenage sons rebel and Viagra is in the bedside cabinet. However, it manifests, Uranus is often about painful emasculation.

Freedom comes when the man walks, or his lover does. I know it is hard to understand when you are in the middle of some dreadful separation or divorce, but the great gift Uranus can give you, if you are willing to see it for what it is, the lightning bolt, the shock and the pain will subside, to be replaced by the mad excitement of realizing you’re free. Free free free free free.

Elizabeth Freeman

Elizabeth Freeman (note the name) was a black girl who was only six months old when she and her sister were purchased by Colonel John Ashley of Sheffield, Massachusetts.

In 1781, the year they found Uranus, the mistress of the house tried to hit Elizabeth’s sister with a hot kitchen shovel, she took the blow for her. Then she quit. When Ashley appealed to the law to come after her, Freeman (also known as Mum Bett) asked an anti-slavery lawyer, Theodore Sedgewick, to help her. He did. The rest is history. Without her, nothing. That’s what a Uranus transit can do.

Uranus in your horoscope by sign and house is a powerful symbol of anything and everything that wants to break free in your life, even if it goes against what is established. Uranian revolutions are also those which history proves to have been correct.

I have been saying that a lot as British readers have poured onto my website feeling excited and also terrified by the fact that they have broken free of the European Union and nobody actually had a plan.

I believe in Uranus transits. On the same Uranus-Ceres pattern that brought in Brexit, the people of East Timor voted for independence. Barack Obama began his first steps towards the presidential nomination. Uranus is never wrong.

Mum Bett served rich white men as a slave, while they talked about the Bill of Rights and the new state constitution, and she decided that if all people were born free and equal, then the laws must apply to her, too. Another slave, a man called Brom joined her in the fight against Ashley.

“Brom & Bett v. Ashley was argued before a county court. The jury ruled in favor of Bett and Brom, making them the first enslaved African Americans to be freed under the Massachusetts constitution of 1780, and ordered Ashley to pay them thirty shillings and costs.” Source: Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Colonel John Ashley claimed to be on the side of liberty. He had even lent his name to the Sheffield Declaration, which protested British treatment of its American subjects dedicated itself to ‘mankind’ being equal, free and independent. Clearly, for Ashley, mankind didn’t include black women slaves. She won her freedom and a couple of centuries later on an exact Uranus-Ceres conjunction, Obama began his run for the very white – White House.

The Future, Now!

A true Uranian event feels like time-travelling; one is shunted into the future, as it was meant to be – but there is no gradual evolution, just a sudden revolution. The past is cut away, and the future is born in mere moments when Uranus is at work.

This can happen to you with exact transits to natal Uranus in your chart, by other heavenly bodies, or you can experience it when you have transits to natal Uranus. I call it Concertina Future. Tomorrow jams into today.

It tends to happen very quickly, as people carry a lot of nervous tension, they may be unable to sleep soundly and sometimes there is real lighting in the sky – storms.

I predicted electrical storms and lightning at the same time as the vote for a Brexit, four months before it happened, because I believe so strongly in the omens of astrology. It would not have been unusual, because Britain often has stormy early summers, but I called it on the day of the referendum, four months before it happened, because I know in my own life that Uranus transits are often accompanied by lighting. I was dumped in New York on one. It set me free, though it hurt at the time. Men can castrate women too!

Uranus and Aquarius

“Create your our world” – Graffiti, Ballarat, Australia 2012.

Aquarius is ruled by Uranus. If you have heavenly bodies in Aquarius, then your understanding of their function in your horoscope is helped by knowing Uranus better.

Tribalism and community are linked with Aquarius – the familiar ‘friends and groups’ of astrology books. The motley tribe of Titans, and other assorted offspring of Uranus, like Venus (their half-sister) is a potent symbol of Aquarius too. Thus, the reference to a brotherhood or sisterhood – a world family. Aquarius is associated with light, breezy, unemotional relating. Networking. The Titans and their siblings were not intimately connected. They co-created a world with plenty of space.

The new Americans of 1781 were a mixed bag. Often, on a Uranus transit, you wake up and realise that you are in a new world which is full of people like you, all wanting room to be themselves and do their own thing, but also very much not like you.

Aquarius the water bearer is about this community of different souls, all looking for their own place. An Aquarius in Rome was the water-bearer who fed the communal baths. All classes, ages and genders gathered there and had to make it work. Aquarius and Uranus are both associated with the challenge of being part of a community, all wanting the same thing – at the same time that you feel apart from it. What works? Tolerance. Space. Time. Humour. All these ingredients are good to bring to a post-Uranus situation in your life.

Twitter is a good example. Uranus in Aries came in, Twitter numbers went through the roof. Everyone was excited about ‘Free to be me’ and suddenly your timeline was populated with every kind of person in the world. Plus a few cartoons pretending to be people. And photographs of small cats.

Trolling weeded out the people who did not belong in the new Uranian ‘free to be me/image revolution’ pool of life. You have to give space as much as you ask for space when Uranus goes into a new sign. This is also the highest expression of Aquarius in your chart if you have it. Groups of people joining together for the same thing, which can only ever be achieved in a group – cutting each other slack.

Enlightenment!

In France, 1781 (when they found Uranus) was the year that the first steps were taken towards what would become the French Revolution.

The King’s finance minister Jacques Necker published his Compte Rendu au Roi a report on the state of France’s finances. According to Bauman Rare Books (who sold a copy recently for $4500) the Compte Rendu au Roi is a work whose publication triggered ‘the effect of a sudden light in the midst of darkness’ (Rabaut Saint-Etienne) and was blamed, by king and court, for sparking the French Revolution.

The symbolism of light and enlightenment is appropriate for Uranus. He was the father of sheet and forked lightning, in myth. In 1781 when Uranus was discovered, the world also experienced The Enlightenment.

The Critique of Pure Reason was published by Emmanuel Kant in 1781, the year that Uranus was discovered. It was a high point of The Enlightenment, the movement that writers believed would help overcome ignorance in the world (with their ideas, naturally) and work against the problems they saw in religion and hereditary aristocracy.

What Kant did with his book was make religious belief a matter of ‘practical reason’ – rather than faith.

Thomas Jefferson, author of The Declaration of Independence was a man of the Enlightenment, for whom the only God that mattered was reason. After 1781 America became a place where God had created minds to be free. There was no single state religion. The lights were on.

Uranus is about new invention. Why? The Industrial Revolution in Britain in 1781 lurched forward when engineer James Watt discovered how to convert the motion of his steam engine into a rotary system which could turn a shaft.

On January 26, 1781 (shortly before Uranus was discovered in their back garden, by the Herschels) an Italian named Luigi Galvani discovered what he called animal electricity.

Static and Storms

You will feel static, hum, noise and buzz when Uranus comes around in your chart. The planet Uranus itself generated static when Voyager 2 came to visit.

“Voyager 2 recorded static interference similar to what we can hear when listening to a radio during an electrical storm,” writes Jennifer Viegas in her 2004 book, Uranus.

Furthermore, “Astronomers believe the lightning on Uranus is much more powerful than what we get on Earth.”

Frankenstein owes a lot to Uranus. It was partly inspired by Galvani in 1781 and his dancing, dead frog. Sometimes a Uranian experience will make you feel as if someone just plugged you into the mains and brought you alive.

Galvani had a nephew called Giovanni Aldini, who toured Europe with his uncle’s strange discovery. His demonstrations involved jolting corpses with electricity.

Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, knew all about Galvani thanks to her father – who was friends with electrical researchers Humphy Davy and William Nicholson.

The Jumping Frog Effect

It happened when he was dissecting a frog in his laboratory near a static electricity machine, touched it with a scalpel, and saw the muscles in the frog’s leg twitch. This is exactly what a Uranus transit to your birth chart feels like, or a transit to your natal Uranus.

In biology today, galvanism is the contraction of a muscle stimulated by an electric current. In physics and chemistry, it is the electrical current which results from a chemical reaction. Uranus in astrology means, you’re galvanised to act.

What Galvani found in 1781 led another Italian scientist, Alessandro Volta, to eventually invent the battery. Anything ever powered by a battery sets each generation free. Think about it. Buzzzzzz.

Uranian Colours

Uranus also has very specific colours. They are the colours of electricity, as seen in neon signs and fluorescent lights. Neon means ‘new one’ in Greek and it provides an appropriate palette for Uranus, the planet which always brings the shock of the new. Thus, (electric) shocking pink, popularised by Elsa Schiaparelli, or the luminous green of Acid House rebels last century.

The bright reddish-orange light of neon signs is a valid Uranian shade. Ultraviolet is another Uranian colour. Ultraviolet can be seen in Neon signs which use an argon/ mercury mixture. Uranus is anything but beige. Did you know that Los Angeles is Uranian? They gave birth to L.A. in 1781 when they found Uranus. That might explain why nobody ever wears brown. Los Angeles is exciting, fast, obsessed with the future, neon hot and also about…rejection. The whole town is full of rejected actors, screenwriters, producers and directors. The dance goes on.

Going Electric

If you have a direct Uranus hit on your chart you must go electric even if it involves the rejection dance. If you don’t, you get stranded in time. You also miss out on the freedom. Maybe forever. Don’t be like a New Yorker in 1781, vainly protesting against the new-fangled independence from Britain, while they yank down a statue of King George III in the street outside your house.

In Bob Dylan’s life, the famous ‘Dylan goes electric’ controversy (when he abandoned the harmonica and acoustic guitar for electric guitar) resulted in him being booed at the 25th July 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Rhode Island.

When he went electric, the transits were as follows – Uranus at 12 Virgo, the North Node at 12 Gemini and the South Node at 12 Sagittarius. In true Uranian style back in 1965, Dylan was having the future brought to him now. The rest of his career was resolutely unplugged, with a few exceptions.

Uranus and Football

The classic Uranus upset is a set-up but also a game-changer. It changes any game, including football. When you need to think about how a Uranus transit will play out for you, think of Arsenal versus Chelsea. Australia versus Greece. Football can be a very cathartic game.

In the world game, there is a neat piece of Uranus-Saturn castration symbolism called a Free Kick. My friend, Bethea and I, have watched many a Free Kick in the pub (she is a football astrologer).

Not only do players place their hands in front of their shorts to protect their genitals from the line of fire when a kick is taken, the results can upset a match result in seconds. The defensive wall of two to five players are acting out Uranus if you like.

Don’t castrate me!

Life is a game of football with many free kicks. So is history. Take the free kick. If we ignored the moment then we might have missed out completely on The Magna Carta, The Reformation, The Boston Tea Party, The Declaration of Independence, The Storming of the Bastille, The Emancipation Proclamation, The Communist Manifesto, The Russian Revolution and no doubt, some woman in your family actually getting the vote, for a change.

Edited extract from 2020 Astrology: Your Five-Year Horoscope Guide by Jessica Adams.

All Images Courtesy of Unplash.com and Pinterest unless noted.