Saturn square Uranus.. what's the big deal?
When asked, what is the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century?" Russian President said: “Soviet Union's collapse”. He didn’t even consider the WWII as an answer…That is quite bizarre for a leader of the country that made a major contribution to defeating the Nazis.
These two global human-made-disasters though have one major astrological thread – they were seeded during Balsamic (closing) phase of Saturn to Uranus.
Saturn squares Uranus every ~ 22-23 years, while completing a whole cycle in 43 to 47 years. This cycle is not to be taken lightly, as when these planets meet, they discuss the new social world order, and as humanity became one global village since the onset of XX century, the Saturn-Uranus cycle affects the entire global community.
Studying history, we can observe that the world was redefined in major ways during the past two cycles.
The last Saturn-Uranus conjunction occurred in February 1988, wreaking a havoc and at the same time creating a wave of liberation around the globe, but mostly in Europe. The main ‘victim’ of this celestial influence became USSR ‘empire’, breaking apart to many independent Republics. Iron Curtain was disintegrated, together with Berlin wall - the symbol of the Cold War end. The Wind of Change whirled throughout whole of Eastern Europe and suddenly, without a warning (it seems), the world, so permanent, was restructured, without any apparent revolution on the ground.
A bit of groundwork
Saturn and Uranus share 5 letters out of 6, so their anagrams are quite revealing:
Saturn: RUN-AS-T (T for T intersection, turn either left or right, representing duality in consciousness and T-account in bookkeeping - Debit or Credit).
Uranus: RUN-AS-U (U for Unification on higher level, a principle that unifies both ends of a stick).
Saturn is the last visible planet of our Solar System, when Uranus is the first transpersonal planet, invisible to naked eye.
Saturn represents the structure of consciousness – everything we know and have some experience with. Uranus stands for Individuated Unconscious (as defined by Carl Jung), the original blueprint of each one of us. Saturn is responsible for our cultural conditioning, family and societal structure within any given tribe, nation or culture. Uranus, on the other hand, liberates us from existing life conditions (if these are outdated or detrimental for life).
Saturn conditions the expectations others project on us, when Uranus breaks us free from these conditioning. Saturn sets the overall sense of social identity, when Uranus deconditions from it, so that we could find our unique individuality.
Saturn correlates to all conditioning patterns we came into this life, while Uranus unleashes the urge to throw away the shackles of the past.
In Greek mythology Uranus is the father of Saturn (Cronos – God of time). As the story goes, Cronos kills Uranus (metaphorically) and by this locked the humanity to the restricted and cyclic time-space continuum, separated from the rest of the Uni-verse, depicting the detachment of a human from one’s original individuality and a blueprint.
Archetypically, Saturn and Uranus are neighbors, ruling two adjacent Signs – Capricorn and Aquarius, therefore could be referred as opposites by
Law of Two | Adjacent Views. If there are only two elements in a given system, they will be considered as opposites in contrast to each other (such as woman & man, although they are barely adjacent 😊).
One provides an order and structure, the other – liberty and individuality. According to the unification principle of the Law of Three, one cannot live without the other. As wisely said by Theodore Roosevelt:
” Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive”.
When their proportion is intact, the system works in harmony, but when one of the elements extremely prevailing, the system tends to volatility in attempt to balance itself out.
So the cycle of Saturn around Uranus represents the structural changes in any system, organization, group, society, nation or civilization. The seeds of the new order are sown prior to conjunction.
Now, there’s essential difference between waxing and waning squares in any cycle. The First quarter Square is the first major challenge to act upon the original intention – the lack of action can kill the cycle quarter-the-way after inception.
Last quarter Square, on the other hand, sees a totally different challenge by an endeavor completed ¾ of the way, and therefore accomplished – it has passed all inner struggles, vote of confidence, internal conflicts and doubts, external confrontations, powerful undercurrent battles and power struggles, and came victorious on the other side, to tell the world what is truthful in life and what to believe in. This personal truth and the belief system is then incorporated into ongoing way of life. The crisis stems out of the awareness of limitations, resulted in adopting this complete-in-itself lifestyle. The ensuing ever-growing crisis in consciousness, seeing itself go through the motions, like hamster on a wheel, summed up in a big question mark and a cry from within – “there must be more in life than that”.
Fast-forward 33 years after the seeding, this cycle came to the major junction – Last Quarter Square, when Saturn made ¾ of the whole circle around Uranus.
The crisis our collective consciousness experiences now, induces the manifestation of the dead-end in our awareness, if we continue business-as-usual. This crisis of consciousness occupied all spheres of our existence – from education to environment, to health, to economy, to banking, to governing.. the list is long, but you can hardly find any area of social life that isn’t infused in crisis in one way or another. It’s time for change, there must be more of civilized society than what we experience!
At the waning square the present tension between innovative Uranus and conservative Saturn poses a conflict of interests between established ways of doing business & the governing status-quo, vs. the egalitarian and progressive views of going forward. At this juncture virtually any authoritarian and conservative views represent the reactionary forces that resist change at all costs, out of a fear of uncertainty and unknown. The reform-based and future-oriented elements of our global society represent the forces of progress that press ahead with the whole spectrum of necessary innovations, societal and technological advancements.
Saturn represents the frontiers of known reality, and normally is highly cautious to go into unknown. Uranus, conversely, knocks on Saturn’s back door, trying to whisper the messages from the individuated unconscious, which Saturn
ping-pongs back. Since Saturn is in Aquarius in the present cycle and ruled by Uranus itself, the back door is widely open and we might ‘expect’ rather smooth transition to the ‘unknown’.
As an example, the Texas corporation will willingly switch to renewable solar energy source, dumping the reliance on Utility company, using oil and gas for energy production, just because it’s economically viable.
What’s going on now and what to expect?
Those of us, paging through scientific journals and curious about new discoveries and technological breakthroughs, know that the huge avalanche of disruptive technology awaits in line to be unleashed on our poor world. It’s even dubbed ‘Industry 4.0’, due to its resembling nature of 18th Century Industrial Revolution, a sort of fourth version of it. The list of upcoming changes is simply gigantic and mind blowing, coming to an entire industrial spectrum of our civilization to disrupt, change and overhaul. I’ll mention just a few that I personally came across:
IoT – Internet of Things, or embedded sensors, software etc. , connecting and exchanging data with other devices and systems over the web
Blockchain – or cryptographic, publicly distributed ledger of transactions, managed by a peer-to-peer network. The transactional data is visible for all, at the same time anonymous , unalterable and super-secure. All cryptocurrencies of today are based on one of the Blockchain protocols. This cryptographic tech will alter the financial world forever. It will enlighten us to see money and exchange of value in a totally different perspective during Uranus passage over Taurus
Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation and robotics – will replace humans on most mundane, hard-labored, routine-based and tedious jobs that poison our lives. Despite the gloomy prospect of this tech sending many of us home, it has huge implication for the future of humanity and the upgrade of civilization (read on to find out more on that)
So, the changes and a whole tsunami of technological, political, economic and social reforms is slowly (or not very slowly) approaching our set-in-stone-lifestyles. The battle for a new tomorrow is raging on as these lines come out. In Israel for example, the political landscape got shaken to its core a few hours ago: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/02/middleeast/israel-coalition-deal-intl/index.html
Many know that Aquarius ruled by Uranus, and partially by Saturn, but what is the meaning of that? You might think Saturnian rulership was established by medieval astrologers, oblivious to existence of transpersonal planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. True, the historic reason has its place in this, however there’s a deeper reason for dual rulership. If we carefully examine the nature of Saturn, we can see the progressive thread in its positive qualities too: responsible, organized, order seeking, purposeful and disciplined. Any truly progressive reformist must portray these characteristics as well, to come across as a serious player to be reckoned with. So where’s the line between Saturnian rule and Uranian rule?
In order to answer this question, we need to look at the evolutionary phases of the Zodiac. Without bogging you down with technical details, the last evolutionary ‘Balsamic’ phase starts half-way through Aquarius, at 315 degrees. The esoteric meaning of this line is hard to overestimate, as it marks a point-of-no-return, when the ‘old paradigm’ must go, but in order for the new one to begin, the cycle of letting go of all outdated and obsolete, while receiving a new energetic seeds from Universe, must be completed. That is the point where Yang active outgoing energy shifts to Yin receptive energy and the fresh cosmic intake takes place. Not that Uranus rulership of Aquarius originates here, but at this point there’s no entry to anything old, known and experienced, represented by Saturn, hence point-of-no-return to the old order. Therefore at the new coil of the spiral, the old order downgrades to a rank of tradition and cultural heritage, while new order takes hold. The yesterday's cool gadgets are today’s junk yard antiques.
One historic example can provide us a great analogy to this specific point in the cycle – the crossing of Rubicon by Julius Caesar at the end of his official term as province governor, turning his army on Rome. Julius won the war that he initiated to remain in power, and the republic turned empire and dictatorship in essence. It’s interesting that in our age and time some other political leaders dare to re-establish their rule this old-fashioned way…
If all described so far makes you nervous of what's to come - fasten your seat belts, as the next Saturn-Uranus conjunction is a way grander in scale than all its predecessors, as the size of our Sun compared to a red-giant star.
What am I talking about? The Age of Aquarius of course!
Age of Aquarius
Many astrologers believe, and I’m one of them, that the Great Conjunction of Jupiter to Saturn, which occurred on winter Solstice last year, is the commencement of the new astrological age, initiated by the Precession of Equinoxes (I’ll write about it in another article), a part of ~ 26,000 years cycle. Due to the outstretched enduring periods of time each astrological Age lasts (~ 2100 years), the transition from one Age to another takes years to complete. According to this belief and the evidence on the ground, we’re deep into such transition, which started to wrap up the Age of Pisces with the end of Mayan calendar at winter Solstice 2012 (12.21.2012).
Now, on a side note, many people associate the rise of hi-tech, robotics and AI to the Aquarian archetype. In my mind it couldn’t be further away from truth. The archetype of Aquarius has to do with original individuality, the blue-print of how things supposed to be, bound to the Universal and timeless, connecting a person or system to the grand scheme of things and the original plan of Creation (remember the myth of Cronos?). Here it’s useful to look at the word ‘original’, as in our contemporary culture it means something new and extraordinary, when it can also mean something as close to the Origin as possible, bringing us to the point where things originated (and from chronological perspective - the earliest). (The Big Bang moment, if you like, as distinct from Big Bank, the end of the way :).
The latest trend of the rise of computers, electronics and software is closely connected to the Virgo sub-Age, where efficiency, Business Intelligence (BI) and predictive analytics is the name of the game. Any data scientist (‘the sexiest job of the century’) will tell you - the Data is the King, and who owns the data wins this game(OWN = WON). And it makes sense, watching technological giants such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft getting insanely rich, while collecting and crunching clients’ data.
The only reason this hi-tech trend is associated with Aquarius in our minds, as at this juncture of human civilization these new technologies considered innovative and advanced in comparison to older tech, bringing progress to the world. AI and robots will liberate humans from tedious and uninteresting work, literally ending the Genesis chapter of our collective existence, conditioning humanity to :
Genesis 3:19 "By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
The software engineers, programmers and data analysts are considered top-notch professions, reaping 5-10 times more than other jobs, since their pieces of code make our life easier, but once AI gets to program new automatic routines through Machine Learning algorithms etc., the sunset of man-the-programmer-era will be visible above the horizon. After all, programming is not natural to our brain, as it’s wired differently than computer.
Age of Aquarius will bring the dawn of the new civilization, based on totally different principles and human nature, than what we have now.
Since robots will do all work, everybody will be eligible for Basic Income, just because you’re human, period. It doesn’t mean you can’t earn more than that, the sky is the limit in regards to how much money you’d like to accumulate and ready to strive for it. It’s just that money possession will lose its glamour and old-days-billionaires will come across in a new Age as psychologically disturbed people, as they hoard way beyond their ability to consume or contribute to the whole.
Once humans become liberated to do what they like, the Aquarian polarity kicks in. The Leonean creative principle of self-fulfillment will mark your life by success or failure. Not so much what you earn, how much do you have in bank account, what is the size of your house and how cool is your car. It’s about how much you enjoy your life, do you actualize the gifts you have. Do you find creativity in your everyday existence. It’s the Shakespearian ‘to be or not to be!’ , not so much what profession is more in demand.
- What should my child learn in university: Law, Accounting, Software Development or Statistics? I don’t know.. what does she enjoy doing and feel creative about? Sculpting, knitting, pottery or poetry, art, writing? The whole notion of competition will disappear in the Age of Individuality, as how can you compare (Virgo) apples to oranges? Who’s better – giraffe or zebra? Well, they are fundamentally different…
The creativity and personal ingenuity will become the name of the game. And you won’t to be worried about selling your stuff – you do it for your enjoyment, and ready to share it with whoever needs it more, the Leo generosity knows no bounds!
The transition to the Age of Aquarius, according to some astrologers, and I’m one of them, will be finalized with Pluto setting in Aquarius in March 2023 (03.23.2023).
And next Saturn-Uranus Conjunction will take place in June 2032 in the new Age already.
So, we’re in for a totally new reality, not just the new world order! The uncertainty rules the show already (if you didn’t notice yet, think of 2020), things might become unexpected and unpredictable as never before, so we need to be psychologically prepared for that. However, when you mentally tune in to positive outcomes – they will start to manifest in your life! On the other hand, if you’re engrossed in worries and anxieties of what might crop up - of your health insurance for example, and what it covers in various scenarios – guess what might crop up? The mechanism of self-fulfilled prophecy works by the very biblical statement ‘in the image of God’. As you think - you co-create, and the Age of Aquarius will magnify this reality-creating-ability to the max!
Be ready for the Age of Individuality & Progress!
