Aug 2022
Call of the Wild
Uranus has a star turn this month, giving us a chance to consider how much we value freedom. Not just our own; other people’s, too. This is the planet of revolution. It’s about how whole societies handle, and resist, the need to change.
There’s no better time to ponder the layers of meaning of a planet than when it’s hovering, apparently motionless, overhead. When Uranus stations retrograde on Aug 24th, ask yourself how gracefully you tolerate change.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.– Albert Camus
Acts of rebellion
You may already know what part of your chart Uranus is passing through. What house is it in now? That’s the part of
your life where you’ve been champing at the bit. If you have planets around 20 of any of the fixed signs, Uranus is squaring, opposing or conjoining them. Here is where the trumpets of liberation have been sounding.
This has been happening for a while, but on the days surrounding the station you may feel it acutely. Freedom is no longer just a concept, but a visceral urge.
Life-altering
When the slow-moving outer planets make their way around our charts, they give us plenty of time to learn what they want us to learn. Their lessons are life-altering, and take longer to impart.
Uranus takes seven years to move through a house, dropping hints along the way about how to avoid compromising our sense of self. Its transits try to get us to feel more truly alive.
Every once in a while, during a long, slow transit like this, we get a pop quiz. Something like a Mars transit or a Full Moon or a planetary station will come along to pull our attention back to what the background transit is about.
This is what happens around Aug 24th, exact at 6:55 am PDT. On that day the veils that separate our realm from those of Uranus are the thinnest they ever get.
Use the occasion to look deeply into your heart and ask how dedicated you are to breaking the chains of family & social conditioning, of relationships that keep you down, of routines that do nothing for your spirit.
While you have Uranus’ ear, declare your intention to champion life-affirming change in the collective, too; as if your own authenticity, and the survival of Earth, depended on it.
Quit or keep at it
Of course, we need stability, too. Individuals need structures and routines; groups need laws and traditions. That’s why the Goddess invented Saturn.
Juggling both Uranus and Saturn at once is a tricky exercise in the best of times, and this month they are in a geometrical stand-off. Uranus’ craving to break free is facing off against our need to conserve resources and make our lives solid.
It’s not really a contest, of course. Neither of them is right and neither is wrong. It’s a question of getting them into balance.
Something’s got to give
Saturn, under stress, manifests as fear. In societies, it can take the form of reactionary political forces retrenching against progress. In individuals, it can show up as a person shutting down out of fear of loss. Uranus, meanwhile, makes us want to jump fences and race towards the future. In fixed signs, neither gives an inch.
The tension between these two will be bristling during the first week of August, when Mars and Uranus conjoin in Taurus, squaring Saturn. A few days later the Sun joins the fray (8/11-14), creating a T-square.
At the Full Moon on August 11th (6:37 pm PDT), whatever has been building will come to a head. Two weeks later, Venus will be where the Sun was mid-month, echoing the fixed T-square (8/26-28).
To each its due
Identify the parts of your life where Saturn is right now. This is where your soul wants to you to grow up. Look again at the house Uranus is in. This is where you feel like you’ll suffocate if you don’t change.
It isn’t easy to satisfy both these forces at once. But it’s not supposed to be easy. These transits force us to do it anyway, inspiring unlikely and creative solutions.
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being: responsibility. – Eleanor Roosevelt