Uranus into Pisces, Change into our Lives

3.10.03


Welcome to the Uranus-in-Pisces era!

As I've hailed over the past few months, Uranus the revolutionary is finally leaving its ruling sign Aquarius after a good eight-year run. The slow-moving transits of the three outer planets (Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) through the zodiac signs are good astrological indicators of generational attitudes. As each of these planets trudges along through a sign, it acts out its archetypal role in those areas of our lives governed by the particular sign, with broad transpersonal effects.

Since January 1998, all three outer planets have been orbiting through active (i.e., fire and air) signs—Pluto in Sagittarius (1995-2008) and Neptune in Aquarius (1998-2011), along with Uranus. With Uranus entering the watery realm of Pisces, to stay until 2010, we should soon be able to feel a shift away from the recent full-speed-ahead forward-moving-and-thinking energy pattern. Instead, we can expect to feel reconnected with the invisible vibrational landscape that unites everyone and everyone, and more in touch with those quietly profound emotions we experience as a result of all our actions.

While I cannot overemphasize the astrological significance of Uranus moving into Pisces on Monday, we should not expect this transition to happen all at once, like a racing car crosses the finish line and, in that moment, wins and ends the race. Rather, it requires that we live through a substantial chunk of time in a new era before we can draw basic conclusions about its tone.

For instance, in popular culture, we tend to look at history through the lens of decade distinctions. I remember how eager I was back in 1990 to start seeing immediate signs of what the '90s would bring. But it took a while before I became conscious that irony and disaffection, and corresponding trends like grunge and heroin chic, would become part of the decade's legacy. In fact, looking back from the future, it's astonishing how "eighties" so much of early-'90s culture seems, from hair to fashion to Top 40 music. It just goes to show how murkily transitional and interpenetrating the border periods between eras can be. Still, astrologers and cultural critics of all sorts are always already on the hunt for those first clues as to how a new generation will end up being remembered.

The time during which Uranus traveled through Aquarius coincided with an enormous boom (and bust) associated with computers and the technology industry. This is not surprising, as Aquarius and its ruler Uranus are traditionally associated with science and all intellectual leaps that radically alter forms of knowledge. As such, Aquarius also rules astrology, another radical way of knowing that witnessed a rise in popularity during this recent Uranus phase. And Aquarius also represents the social ties that bind large groups of people together into communities; with Uranus traveling through, we witnessed the increasing global confederation of our world's population, with the unification of Europe, the expansion of multinational capitalism and the development of the Internet "linking" us together with the click of a mouse.

Now, with its entrance into Pisces, we would expect Uranus to work its status-quo-busting magic in parts of life associated with the sign of the fishes. Pisces is the most notable, though most utterly diffuse, symbol we have for the unseen and mysterious forces which tie us all together. To that extent, the presence of Uranus should result in increased awareness of the interconnectedness of all living creatures, so that sadness or turmoil in one area of the world might be more easily received by people living somewhere else. As I wrote before, this could also increase the general awareness of psychic bonds between people.

Pisces also represents all forms of escapism—our spirits' desires to run from our fractured egos into a heavenly undifferentiated whole—including drugs, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see a new awareness of the ways we use substances to this end in our society. We could, for instance, see crazy times in the pharmaceutical industry during Uranus in Pisces, just as we saw the computer craze during Uranus in Aquarius. And with Pisces representing boundlessness in the water element, we might well see the consequences of past actions as the earth warms, the ice melts, and the oceans rise and flood low-lying coastal areas. These, of course, are merely a few examples of how we can combine traditional meanings of Uranus and of Pisces into conjecture about our imminent future.

In the meantime, we are very much in the height of the cusp period now (with Uranus making this point clear by retrograding back into Aquarius from Sept. 14 to Dec. 30), so we have a way to go before we can speak with confidence about how this transit of Uranus through Pisces will play out. Just so we don't forget where we recently came from, this week's transiting Sun and Mercury (also in Pisces) make squares to the axis of the Saturn-Pluto opposition. We may be finally ready to leave the dark Saturn-Pluto energy behind us, but not before some last final ramifications make themselves known.

This week also marks the romantic conjunction of Venus and Neptune in Aquarius, a wonderfully inspiring aspect to mark the beginning of Uranus in Pisces (Neptune's ruling sign). We should all be able to find some real beauty in our week, whether or not it is a result of true affections or a dose of the ol' rose-colored glasses. Either way, there is a softness and idealism inherent in Venus-Neptune which can come in handy, so long as we don't abandon the course of our reality to follow fancies that might dissolve in a couple weeks. With such exciting change in the air, there's no need to grasp at fleeting lures now—I promise there'll be plenty more where these came from…