Uranus in Pisces: Liberating the Imagination

Saturday November 6th 2010
Prometheus, the revolutionary fire-stealing Titan
whom historian Richard Tarnas argues should
be associated with the planet Uranus. I agree with him

Uranus has navigated the Piscean ocean with panache over the pat seven years, making waves in all kinds of directions. At the same time, Pisces’ ruler Neptune has been washing slowly through Uranus’ own sign Aquarius. So the two outer planets have been reinforcing each others’ energy.

That’s all about to change next year. But while we have these two heavy-hitters still working along similar lines for the next few months, it’s worth thinking a bit about what this energy means. These outer planets influence the collective. In other words, fashion, politics, the general spirit of the times; the dreams that we share.

Uranus and Aquarius – planet and associated sign – represent, among many other things, rebellion, revolution and innovation. Neptune and Pisces represent, again among many things, the unconscious and imagination. So how does Uranus in Pisces revolutionise our collective imagination?

Last time Uranus was in Pisces was in the 1920s, a time of enormous artistic innovation, a phrase which neatly summarizes one aspect of Uranus in Pisces. It was in the late degrees of Pisces – where it is now –from 1925 to 1927.

The Jazz Singer, the first talking
picture was released in 1927.
Film =  Pisces;  Uranus =  breakthrough.

Fiction, music, film, theatre – these are all products of the imagination. But let’s look at just one – the novel. Here are just a few published in those years. I’ve left out many so this is just a sample. They are not all “great” literature, but how important and groundbreaking were they? Were they revolutionary? Were they innovative?

I think it’s remarkable that these books were published in the space of three short years. They created a benchmark by which modern literature is still measured.

And what does fiction writing do for us? It shows us the world afresh, gives us a new angle on life, allows us to inhabit a different skin. So Uranus in Pisces opens up the collective imagination to new ways of expressing itself.

1925

This captain of the unconscious,
Sigmund Freud, published a
book called The Future [Uranus]
of Illusion [Pisces] in 1927.

The Great Gatsby – Scott Fitzgerald.
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Countefeiters – André Gide
Carry On, Jeeves – P G Wodehouse

1926
Winnie-the-Pooh – AA Milne
Mary – Vladimir Nabokov’s first novel
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie

1927
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf.
Steppenwolf – Hermann Hesse.
Remembrance of Things Past (final instalment) – Marcel Proust
The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thornton Wilder

The house journal of the group
La Revolution [Uranus] Surrealiste [Pisces]

I’ll leave you with this thought from the poet Andre Breton who started a revolutionary artistic movement in 1924 with the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto.

“Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low,  cease to be perceived as contradictions. “

And I ask this question: has there been similar radicalism in the arts this time around? 3D Movies maybe?

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  1. Em says:

    I wonder if it has to do with Neptune being in Leo back then.

    I’d have to think about an radicalism in the arts now. 3D movies are certainly Aquarian, but I’m not sure that would be equal to the books you list.

  2. Christina says:

    Hmm yes.

    A lot of those books were about exploring the self – Woolf, Kafka – which is very Neptune in Leo. I also think the Neptune in Leo is jazz (fun [Leo] music [Neptune]), but that’s a whole new post.

    I wondered if 3D movies were equivalent to sound in movies, which was in 1927.

    I was talking about this at breakfast – and we all wondered this: if we’d been around in 1927 would we even have been aware of some of this stuff going on.

    Hindsight does make things so much easier.

  3. Christina says:

    BTW Em, I like your picture.

  4. Em says:

    Well, I can tell you, as I was just listening to a podcast about it last night, that The Great Gatsby was considered fluff and a book for a season, not a lifetime, when it was published.

    I went back to look at the dates the planets moved. Neptune went into Aquarius in January of 1998 and Uranus into Pisces in March of 2003. Thinking literature, I think of J.K. Rowling,(400 million copies sold) whose books ushered in a new wave of appreciation for Young Adult literature and was certainly an ensemble sort of book. She also created a return to books that the entire family could read together and introduced the fantasy genre to many. (And she created a generation of readers and,some might say, saved reading when some worried it was done for.)

    This was followed up by the Twilight series by Stephanie Myers. (100 million) Also, let’s not forget the Left Behind series in Christian publishing. Certainly a sort of fantasy as well. (I confess to not have read them, but they certainly have been popular – 63 million copies.)

    There was also Oprah (an Aquarian) and her book club, where huge groups of people were reading the same book at once.

    As well, we see in this time period the rise of blogs and literally everyone capable of self-publishing, if they desire to do so. (And the dismantling of the music industry. So musicians often self-produce and release.)

    Sorry to go on and on. I hadn’t thought of this at all, so you gave me lots of food for thought.

  5. Christina says:

    Thank you very much for all these ideas!

    What I like about all you say is that it’s really positive. I love the fact that so many people are reading. Mass readership = Uranus/Aquarius.

    Fantasy and magic and Christianity! That’s so Pisces/Neptune. (I haven’t read the Left Behind books either)

    Book publishing is going the same way as the music biz, for sure. I used to work in illustrated books – even back then the writing was on the wall. There’s also the i-Pad/Kindle thing – soon we’ll be able to get hold of almost any book that was ever written and read it on the bus.

    When Uranus goes into Aries, I suspect we’ll see many new web-based art works emerging that combine, in various configurations, pictures, movies, words, music and interaction. I say this because Aries is about putting yourself out there and Uranus is new tech.