Uranus in Aries
When Giants Wrestle, the Earth Trembles...
Leading astrologer and historian Neil Giles examines the new and potentially shattering developments for the world in view of the transit of Uranus into Aries in 2010/2011. Uranus is the planet of upheaval, catastrophe, and of genius, while Aries is forthright and passionate, a warrior and a fighter, committed to justice or inclined to belligerence, ill-temper or impatience. This important change of sign from mystic Pisces to aggressive Aries declares a major shift in our awareness and the events of our lives. Now, read on...
We teeter on the brink of a new era as the solar system heavyweights, Saturn and Pluto, wrestle through another round of their high impact encounter, one that colours the modern era. Now and in the years ahead, the Lord of the Underworld, Pluto has purchase on the sign of the Goat, Capricorn, putting defining pressure and imposed transformation on the agenda for governance and governors, social order, administration, business and the structures of politics and leadership. The old guard will fall and tumble while a new one will rise from the ruins, drawn by a lust for power or by the compulsion of necessity. Kingdoms and nations will crack at the foundations to be overrun by marauders, swamped by ill conditions or blasted to ashes and scattered by the winds. Conversely, realms under pressure will set themselves to overcome the forces of destruction, rising again from the rack and ruin of collapse and forging themselves anew in the furnace of fire and fate.
Such history will be writ as Pluto finds himself beset further by the grapples of Saturn. After a foray into Libra from Oct 29, 2009 till Apr 7, 2010 Saturn, the measurer of effort, returns there for the long haul on Jul 21, 2010, invoking the power of new alliances and disposing of the remnants of the old. The juice of people working together will change the world, but it may also be that a stab in the back or an assassin's bullet will dispose of a public figure or a political, religious or military icon. What will we pay to obtain the cooperation we need? Who will be the allies and who enemies? With whom do we align? Such pressures and tensions will reset the Scales, personally and globally, so that we can establish a new balance.
A Cosmic New Order
In this forging of a cosmic New Order, what will be the cost in resources? As Saturn and Pluto come through their square for a third time on Aug 21, 2010, the dark lord's chariot of change storms the fortress of resistance while defenders on the walls fire on the invader. By tradition, Saturn in Libra is the General's position, the brilliant commander who, standing back from the troops and the battle lines, directs a conflict, bearing with inevitable losses to bring about victory or stave off defeat. What or who must be sacrificed to gain the desired outcome? It is here that ruthless transformation takes place, testing the durability and supply of what we need to sustain us, testing perhaps the very fabric of who we think we are. In this manner, these two ancient gods will put us under the cosmic pump, as key supplies run out or fall to grasping hands, as new alliances come with their promises of change while old ones fall apart. In the required pragmatism of Saturn's clash with Pluto, what price will we put on a search for beauty, fairness and harmony? What will be the strategies to find justice when it is necessity that turns the wheel? Responsibilities and burdens will gather at the ford for us to bear across the river, taking whatever we can carry and discarding what we cannot. Who will be the General that will ride in to lead us or marshal his forces against us to make a battle at the riverhead?
On May 27, 2010, the grinning mask of Uranus, rebel planet and joker, arose from the press, shaking up the dramatis personae in these mythical theatrics and turning the plot on its head. While the special FX bring a traffic light display of eclipses, solar, lunar and total, we roll through the Solstice and beyond, a turn in the cosmic dodgem cars that takes us to more shenanigans. It's prestidigitation where the question 'who knows what the future holds?' spirals like a stream of juggling balls between the hand of practical demands and the hand of inspired or crazy chaos.
So what does the future hold when Uranus sets his stamp upon proceedings?
Rebel Planet
In the solar system, Uranus is the revolutionary planet because of a tilting and erratic orbital plane where he literally lies on his side and rotates around the Sun across his own equator, placing one polar region in darkness and the other in the light for long periods of the eighty-four year journey of 'Annus Uranus'. On earth, under his influence, we find a mirror of these paradoxical oppositions where deep divisions are cut into the human community, setting one arm at odds with another in a sudden rift or separation. Once divided by this shift of consciousness, the rift is hard to repair. Uranus has a swag of moons (he comes with a crowd), two of which lead the pack and seem poised to fly out of their orbital pattern as they hurtle towards the Sun, only to be pulled back at a last impossible moment by the inescapable gravity of their lordly planet. Uranus is erratic but, in the end, strong-willed, holding onto his own.
 The Rebel Planet The leading moons are Titania and Oberon, the King and Queen of the faerie realm, and the erratic lunar orbit is known as their dance. Centre stage in this theatre of myth, Uranus thus becomes the clown and trickster Puck or Robin Goodfellow, a blithe spirit, a lithe daemon whose music stirs the passions of all that hear it, whose cunning and deceits spin us from our conventional focus and whose inspiration opens up doors we didn't know were there. To pass through them is to awaken the self in triumph or to lose it, riding an endless switchback.
As this cosmic drama unfolds, Uranus brings a time of upheaval through wild music and revelry, leading the dance, the erratic gyrations of passionate change where sometimes we have to fall down to move ahead. Uranus plays the Fool, the clown in the universal comedy who shows the grinning mask of insolence and revelry that sits in opposition to the masks of severity and sobriety of Saturn, his mythological son. The surge towards the future (Uranus) meets the reliance on the past (Saturn) in a testing grapple. As he dances his disobedient dance, there will be powerful and momentary refusals or rejections. There will be a loud and clear 'no' and the abrasive 'who says' ringing in the air. Flags will fly and weapons will be raised, weapons of steel or of new thinking and sharp words. In this way, armies will march and walls will fall, as the fiery rebel and redhead steps into the frey or makes one himself. Saturn brings structure, form, authority and the regulated passage of time while Uranus brings upheaval and liberation, the quickening of society for the birth of the new and a shift of consciousness.
Accidental Discovery
The discovery of Uranus was accidental and unexpected, an event rife with the chaos and confusion that characterize the planet's astrological operations. In fact, the eccentric planet frequently caught the astronomer's eye before a keen observer actually identified his nature and place in the solar system. The earliest recorded sighting was in 1690, when John Flamsteed severally marked the planet but did not recognize him for what he was. The French were next in the crush as Pierre Lemonnier spotted the rebel planet a dozen times from 1750 until 1769 but didn't have the circuits to make the Uranian connection. Finally, Sir William Herschel in Britain spied this distant orb on 13 March 1781, though he also recorded the rogue heavenly body wobbling behind Saturn as a nebulous star or a comet, calling it George's Star in honour of his patron, King George the Third. Later, this new planet was named eponymously, being called 'Herschel'. Interestingly, Uranus was the first planet to be sighted by telescope, making a name for himself through the technological development that is part of his domain. In time, his planetary nature became an acknowledged fact and he was christened by the name he carries today.
Uranus is the revolutionary planet. He governs change, disruption, reversals of direction or situation, radical shifts, the elevation of thinking or consciousness, brilliance, acceleration, eccentricity, the unique individual and the community with its disparate and unusual elements. Uranus rules rapid understanding, blinding insight and sudden or unexpected change or developments. Uranus also brings accelerated or unforeseen departures from the expected path or the accepted way, a force for excitement and disturbance. He is not a creature of the comfort zone. He can bring enlightened growth or bloody-minded rebellion. His domain is the mind and he is a trigger for the inspiration of genius and the tortuous paths of madness. Uranus will run the gamut from the enlightened scholar, the fanatic, the wanderer on a lonely path and the rambunctious disputant. For some, Uranus breeds the nature that will take no order, accept no confinement and will not be set down the list or last to table, that's if he even attends the dinner. Some in modern astrology give the rulership of Aquarius to Uranus but, traditionally, he is known as a transpersonal planet and Saturn is accorded the joint rulership of Capricorn and Aquarius, the conservative and the rebel.
A Nod to the Greeks
In a nod to the Greeks, we owe the roots of our knowledge of this mythology to the writings of Hesiod, a gloomy farmer who pulled a plough in a time of hardship and privation, meditating upon the ancient tales and trying to preserve them for the modern era. He wrote of the Sky Father, Ouranus (Uranus), whose cruelty to his wife and children caused Cronos (one of his children) to strike him, slaying him then castrating him, spilling his blood to fertilize the land. Cronos is the Greek equivalent of the Roman Saturn.
The cycle repeats from there as Cronos fathered Zeus (the Roman Jupiter) but also mistreated his family until Zeus rose up to slay him, castrate him and usurp his position. Here we have simple harvest imagery where the changing of the guard is marked as one generation gives way to the next while the blood of the old enriches the land for the new, at a most notable cost when the old seed perishes with a cut. There must always be a death and the unseating of an old ruler as any battle between these two will bring a defining outcome for one force or the other.
 Read part two of Uranus in Aries, where Neil notes that the study of history reveals a period of instability accompanying the ingress of Uranus into Aries, accompanied by waves of military or political conflict and geophysical disruption, including civil war, tsunamis, earthquakes, storms and occasional phenomena.
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