“I feel the Earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down
I feel my heart start to tremble
Whenever Uranus comes around.”
—Paraphrased from Carole King
On August 28th, 2023, Uranus stands still at 23° Taurus 04′ and joins Mercury, Venus, Chiron, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, Eris, and asteroid Hygeia retrograde in the sky from an earthbound geocentric perspective.
The outer planets, Saturn through Eris, only retrograde once a year, and it is common for several of them to be retrograde simultaneously. But having eight in retrograde condition is a rare occurrence.
At the station retrograde, Pluto in Capricorn retrograde and Pallas Athene in Virgo form an Earth Grand Trine with Uranus. The higher mind is activated. Ceres conjoins the Lunar South Node in Libra and casts a challenging partile gibbous inconjunct at Uranus. What has been lost is counted and measured.
Contrary to some astrological forecasting, retrograde does not mean a lessening or diminution of the planetary energies. It is an intensification, as the planet stands still, focused over a single zodiacal point, drilling down like the Sun through a magnifying glass until what is at the focal point bursts into flames. This planetary behavior is what creates erratic, sometimes difficult circumstances.
Uranus is often a rogue personality to begin with. It is the ruler of Aquarius, the sign that follows Capricorn in the zodiacal wheel. Capricorn is the generative cardinal Earth sign. It creates form and structure. It correlates to consensus authority and maturity, or growing old. There is crystallization and resistance to change. Things get stuck. A law of physics states that two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Aquarius comes along and shakes up the crystallized forms, shatters them so that something else, usually more progressive, can take their place.
This is why Aquarius and Uranus correlate to rebellion and revolution. Uranus was discovered at the time of the American Revolution, the founding of the United States, and the drafting and ratification of the US Constitution. The Founding Fathers stated their intention to be the first republic of government by the governed since Ancient Greece. It has not necessarily unfolded that way, but that is another story. It is also true that the US did not become united until after the American Civil War. Up until that time, it was a loose confederation of individual states. It has become apparent in recent history that the union is still incomplete. Six nations of Iroquois Indians formed a functioning democracy, the Iroquois Confederacy, “People Building a Long House,” sometime between 1000 and 1450 AD. Benjamin Franklin hoped to use that model to structure the emerging American nation.
Astrologers are now becoming aware of the astrological coincidences of both the American Revolution and the Civil War through the current transits of Neptune and Pluto to the charts cast for the founding of the United States. The upcoming twenty-year transit of Pluto through the sign of Aquarius will echo these frequencies throughout history for decades to come.,
The base note of all of these retrogrades is Pluto. Pluto correlates directly to the Soul. It is the lexicon of our karmic responsibilities in this lifetime, as individuals and as a collective. Any retrograde archetype is a revisitation of what is unresolved. As the balance of 2023 unfolds, we will have ample opportunities to revisit the unfinished work on ourselves and the world in general. The crises and stresses that have been visited upon us are the pressure points meant to leverage action, new priorities, and new choices. There is a non-negotiable extinction horizon that we are approaching from climate change, nuclear war, pandemics, and food and water shortages, to name a few. Any one of these can potentially eliminate much of our planet’s life. The Earth itself will survive. We will experience a mass awakening of consciousness that predicates the New Earth we have been promised. My vision is that the Capricorn and Aquarius generations now coming onto the planet will provide the impetus, methodologies, and solutions for what we have wrought over too many centuries, albeit millennia.
Uranus will station direct again on January 27, 2024 at 19° Taurus 05′.
It’s going to be okay in the end. If it isn’t OK, it is because it is not the end.
And anyway, the Masters tell us that we don’t die.
Namaste.
