What Astrologers Are Saying About Uranus in Taurus
This is John Travolta riding a mechanical bull (geddit) in Urban Cowboy — a film that came out in 1980, when, yes, Uranus was in Taurus’s opposite sign, Scorpio. Blue-collar heroes in Wranglers and cowboy hats were quite the fashion…. Opposite signs can be mirrors…
Surely, this is one of the most exciting changes in the firmament that we have seen in years. Today, May 15, Uranus, the planet of change, moves into Taurus, the sign of stasis, where he has not been since 1942.
Think of this planet and this sign as two constellations of ideas that are about to meld. Of course, Uranus is a planet with an energy that is really quite contrary to the earthy, practical, extremely fixed sign of Taurus.
Uranus is the revolutionary, the rebel, scientist, genius, Prometheus who brings fire to humankind. He is the God of electricity, lightning bolts, the unexpected.
In contrast, Taurus, the second sign of the zodiac is stubborn, fixed, steadfast, loyal, persistent a doer more than a thinker. Taurus is a sensual, practical, the sign we associate with the five senses — perhaps touch more than any other sense.
What can we expect when these two opposing sets of ideas try to blend?
Think of this. At exactly the moment Uranus entered Aries, the Arab Spring broke out — a period of mass uprising across the Levant and North Africa. This set the tone for the following years. Two things here: leaders did not emerge and it was spread on Facebook. Both might be seen as symbols’s of Uranus in Aries. Aries rules the head. Uranus is of course the planet of the common person, the man or woman in the street, but it’s also associated with veiled and unveiled, masked and unmasked. Think of the masks of ISIS and Anonymous, the spread of the hijab. What followed the Arab Spring were the years of Occupy, the women’s marches, #blacklivesmatter. But what happened in the corridors of power was a tightening of the iron fist. So we saw eruptions of people power followed by suppression and the rise of “strong men”. Of course, in all this you have to include the square from dark Pluto in Capricorn. In some ways, this may have been more of a restraint than he was given credit for — Barack Obama was after all an avatar for Pluto in Capricorn.
Of course, the other big trend over the last seven years has been the rise and rise of “identity politics”. Do you have to call anyone they instead of he or she? Aries is, of course, all about identity. Who am I? asks the first sign of the Zodiac.
We are ending Uranus in Aries on a miserable note — as I write this the number of casualties on the West Bank and in Gaza rises. We can expect to see more on that story throughout this year as Uranus hovers around this section of the sky. (Israel’s Mars (its army) is at 29° Leo, the Lion of Judah; Palestinian Authority Chart has MC at 29° Aries).
On a personal level, Uranus helps each of us to spread our wings or liberate our minds depending on where he touches our charts. But in Aries he tends to be more youthful, more dynamic, more explosive, more shocking.
In Taurus, Uranus changes his form. He morphs into the mechanical bull… more on this in another post, but for now — to get you started —here are six themes to look for. But keep in mind this: Uranus is the biggest trickster of them all. He came in as a revolutionary with Aries and left as a dictator.
1. Revolution in how we pay — eg cash, plastic, electronic transfer. Could we go back to gold standard — or shoot forward to crypto world? Take a look right now at China which is re-establishing a sort of gold standard based on oil.
2. Radical simplicity, liberation through nature and being “natural”, liberation through working the land, equality of labour. All these ideas will become popular again. More preppers and back to the land movements than ever.
3. Innovative ways of cleaning the planet, innovative agricultural methods.
4. Ecological problems will accelerate. There may be more events like the American Dust Bowl of the Dirty Thirties, which came about during the last Uranus in Taurus.
5. Maybe also cybernetics will become more commonplace. Actual implants, microchips. Something about the human body being re-engineered.
6. On a personal level, potentially very exciting — liberation from fixed, old beliefs about the body, beauty… A new emphasis on radical self-sufficiency.
Here is what some other astrologers have written.
You may want to read Anne Whitaker first, because she writes an excellent post Uranus in Aries, Farewell … For Now…
Sally Kirkman has written several blog posts on this shift in astrological tempo — starting with this one which looks back at Uranus in Aries too.
This is a really positive and well-grounded pair of essays from Aquarius Papers, which should help you navigate the coming change in tempo.
Short and sweet from Tracey Rogers but she covers the essentials nicely.
I agree with Kat Mason — this is going to be an important decade for the environment and our relationship to it. Since we appear to be going into this period busily destroying our children’s birthright, let’s hope Uranus turns that on its head and we find new ways to live in harmony with our beautiful planet.
Many astrologers are pointing out that Taurus(money) + Uranus (electricity) = cryptocurrency. Kit Walker’s piece, written a few months ago, sums that up with a hymn to bitcoin. Remember that Uranus is a trickster though. We ride in trading cryptocurrency and we ride out bartering cowrie shells — perhaps.
Here is some nice advice from Jill Wintersteen.
Judith Ryan puts Uranus in Taurus in some historical context, as does Marjorie Orr, pithy as usual.
Ooh thank you for the links. 🙂
I was also thinking: a revolution in how we spend our leisure time. When rock ‘n’ roll began is up for debate, but it was roughly when uranus was in Taurus last time. https://www.newswise.com/articles/what-was-the-first-rock-n-roll-song Taurus – singing.
Maybe the revolution that’s already begun with television will pick up pace. We started off all sat down as a country watching the same show, today we’re spoilt for choice. Cinema has run out of ideas and just focusing on super-heroes, which we love, but that’s aries. What movies will we enjoy now? Or has cinema had it? Maybe musicals? Just googled the heyday, 1930s – 1950s.
Also last time: set up the welfare state, lots of house building, social housing. Maybe this time, we’ll restore what we started, and consider basic income.
Maybe cowrie shells isn’t so far off. Wages are so suppressed, maybe bartering will be a way forward.
And of course new boundaries, new lands created and named. Which links back to news today in the Middle East.
I always think of cybernetics in terms of how they help sick/disabled people. Sometimes, when something helps the most vulnerable, it helps everybody. eg I saw this today: new Xbox controller for accessibility https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/14/17352050/microsoft-xbox-one-accessibility-controller-leak-rumors
I agree about climate change. While uranus was in aries, we got through the decades of disinformation and found our way to the truth. Now we have zero tolerance for deniers.
I just remembered flat earthers. hahaha I got nothing. ?
Uranus will oppose my sun, then later, neptune/sun-moon midpoint, then mercury. Hope it doesn’t linger on mercury too long, it ruins my sleep. Look forward to future articles so I can learn more.
Will I be more active? That jupiter weight is really stubborn! Maybe a revolution in food and our relationship with our bodies? I saw somewhere that maybe curves will be in. Last time, food was rationed and people were growing fruit and vegetables wherever they could. Fabric was rationed too, clothing was scarce, people had to ‘make do and mend’. Practical, resourceful, that’s Taurus. Food and availability might be an issue, I’m certainly worried if we Brexit. I used to go shopping with my Mum when I was little, which would have been around when the UK was working out trade deals. We didn’t get abundance until the 1980s, which is when obesity became a problem, coincidentally. I’m not linking the two, the subject is complex, I know. I was going to say I remember noticing the difference, the before and after. I think people will be shocked at how much food will disappear if we Brexit, and the cost of what food we do have. No more ready meals and takeaways! People might have to learn to cook. Which is funny, there’s a new TV show about real home cooking, with Mary Berry as a judge. I haven’t watched it yet, but that’s where we might be heading. I can see enthusiasm for that growing.
I am hoping to move home again in the next few years. Uranus will trine my Capricorn 4th house, so it’ll probably help. Hopefully in a nice way. It’s going to trine my uranus/pluto conjunct in Virgo as well, except they’re in the 12th, no idea what those two are up to.
I remembered that you were wondering about Facebook and communication. I forwarded a link from Twitter about their new approach to online abuse. Also, Facebook deleted 600 million fake accounts, it was announced earlier today.
I wonder what uranus in Taurus means for authoritarian right wing governments? A revolution in social democracy, a new type of socialism for the 21st century, I can see that being worked out.
Anyway, just wanted to get these ideas down and say thanks for your article and links. 🙂
This is an interesting thread – about breaking up the tech sector https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/996735678775021570.html
Well that came true quick. 🙂 10,000 new council homes (social housing) in London over the next 4 years. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/sadiq-khan-council-homes-london-mayor-social-rent-right-to-buy-a8353391.html
Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester, said something interesting recently – about housing being a human right. It was in the last week or two, I’m sure there’ll be reams and reams written on it soon.
New blockchain phone. Cryptocurrency https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/15/17357108/htc-blockchain-powered-phone
@ Iris ‘The first comprehensive study of CEO-to-worker pay reveals an extraordinary disparity – with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/16/ceo-worker-pay-ratio-america-first-study?CMP=share_btn_tw
Yes Taurus = I have. Radical ultra-materialism? Possibly won’t disrupt the rise of the super-wealthy.
Thanks. Hmmm…. interesting. So loyalty, commitment, settling down, deeper connections. But like social media, one more ‘follower’, one more friend, possessions. ‘I have x million followers’.
I asked because I was just reading this https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/style/who-are-my-real-friends.html
Re: Taurus and relationships … still a bit me, me, me.
If you make me happy, look good on my arm, feed, home and clothe me then I’ll want to make things longterm. None of the Aries thrill of the chase and then move on.
If you’re that good I don’t want to risk losing you. Shadow side is that I might think of you as just another possession. Think trophy wives/husbands.
Yes to all that.
If Aries is ‘me me me’, what’s Taurus when it comes to relationships? ie friendships, family, community, society. What changes/revolution can we look for there, if any?
This evening, shortly after the Moon moved into Gemini, I went to the first rehearsal of a nostalgia radio show. How fitting for the Uranus in Taurus ingress: voice acting, once transmitted over the radio, now delivered electronically. And the show we are reviving originally aired in June of 1940, during the last Uranus in Taurus era.
‘He came in as a revolutionary with Aries and left as a dictator.’ Sadly, ‘he’ (it almost always is a he) usually does.
Thanks so much for all those links. It’s a bit can’t see the wood for the trees for me at the moment as I have several chart factors at 0 degrees, but I did spend a weekend with old friends, and the main topic of conversation was, will Brexit mean the restoration of our lost orchards and market gardens, which used to be such a feature of our childhood landscapes but were all lost in the flood of cheaper, un-seasonal food from the (then) Common Market. Reading your post today, it suddenly seemed pertinent.
have not yet read all the articles you mention.
Uranus in Taurus could work out in may different ways.
How about the changing of borders because of war ??? I don’t like Mars squaring Uranus today one bit.
A number of astrologers put the emphasis on the moneyside of Venus/Taurus (maybe because THEY would like to see a change ??). I don’t think the people in power will be willing to change the current system so easily and I don’t think that in the end it will.
Uranus in Aries meant a spaceship to Mars to learn more about this planet. Maybe Uranus in Taurus means exploring the Universe and finally discovering a planet belonging to the sign of Taurus (I can’t accept that Venus rules both Taurus and Libra – don’t know which sign she really belongs to).
mimi
p.s.: I like Ed Tamplin a lot, he teaches in a very clear way, you should read his weekly and monthly columns at edtamplin.com
Ok I’ll go and have a look.
I was thinking about the money thing yesterday as I used my contactless debit card to pay for everything. I think Britain is ahead with this, but essentially here, you do not need cash any more. Everything can be paid for by contactless card — from market stalls to busses to parking meters — as long as it’s under £30. This means that if someone stole my wallet they would have access to my whole bank account in little chunks. Presumably this will go global.
I agree with you about cryptocurrencies. There’s something tricky going on there.
Contactless was something I first saw introduced in the States back in about 2001 !! The original selling point was that you didn’t have to let someone in a shop touch your card. That, of course, is a much bigger issue in the States than Britain.
To me chip&pin was more than adequate but again our Aries need to do everything quickly has prompted the promotion of contactless. Standing at a checkout for an extra 10-15 seconds really doesn’t bother me. The knock-on effect of contactless is that you don’t necessarily know how much you’re spending any more which perhaps is what the banks really want.
My Taurus ascendant is refusing to use contactless. I’m self-righteously intolerant of my bank having sent me a contactless card without me requesting it!! Did anyone mention Taurus is against innovation?!? 😀
I won’t be surprised if online banking has become the default by the end of Uranus in Taurus. The banks are continuing to push that on people through more branch closures.
On the other hand, I do think there’ll be some pushback when Pluto in Aquarius arrives as we perhaps start to group with likemindeds. So maybe we’ll see the rebirth of co-operatives, building societies, Christmas clubs and other small scale community banks.
I agree, in the Netherlands we can pay contactless anywhere we want too, but that does not mean everybody likes it.
I don’t like it either and my Ascendant is Leo – we (in my town) even have to use our bankcard to park our car. I don’t like this at all, we used to have a special parking card we could get at our town hall, but they changed all that last year. People don’t want to use their bankcard for that sort of business. I want to use it strictly for my bankaccount and paying bills in the shops and not for all other kind of things.
mimi
Live in a smallish country and online banking has been how things are mainly done for over a decade. It actually costs to go into the bank and branches are becoming few. In a smaller country where population is spread out in some places, online makes sense. Credit or debit cards for parking etc helps councils prevent loss from theft of cash at meters or costs of a human collecting it, for instance, but the downside is the increased risk to the punter of ID theft and skimming. Which is a bit of a wildcard area. Risk is on us. What assurances do we get of data protection? Generally not much and recent events have shown we’d be unwise to assume it. Yet convenience, convenience. Taurus likes to slow things down – I wonder how that will play out.
Thanks for this, and the heads-up, Christina. I am going to be reading all day now. And – have you seen the latest Mountain Astrologer with Chet Zdrowski’s article on Saturn – and Pluto – through Capricorn? It’s excellent…
The job of Taurus is to filter through all the Aries experiences and see which ones we value and which we don’t. I’m not expecting there to be too much new invention or innovation only a decision of what we keep from the past seven years.
Yesterday I was thinking about my life in 2010 and how different it was to what we have today. I first saw a smartphone in late 2011, now they’re common place. Websites were so much more basic. All the social media and apps – will we keep Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat? Will we keep Uber? Will we keep Tindr? Alexa/AmazonEcho? etc, etc. Some of that’s so obviously frivolous and short-term, they’ll die out quickly now we’re in Taurus territory.
I agree. I wonder about Facebook & Instagram. It’s interesting that they’ve started turfing out the fake accounts — about @££$& time!! That is back to basics, but I think it might be too late for that platform.
One thing I’ll be happy to see the back of is how the Aries era has been marked out by people instantly calling out anything that triggers their sensibilities. While at times this has been a good thing it’s also got very tedious seeing people jump on Twitter and criticise politicians, schools, companies, celebs for anything they disagree with. Taking no time to understand the other’s position, no effort to tolerate or just laugh it off. Everything has been taken so personally!
Taurus tends to be more willing to ignore stuff that doesn’t affect it directly. So I hope we’ll see less of this but also know that Taurus can be just as intolerant and unwilling to consider the other’s perspective. If resources become scarce we could easily start to see the stubborn protectionist side of Taurus fighting its own corner and defending its territory.
Quite — boring identity politics. Often important and useful but so self-righteous and intolerant in many directions.
Just read this excellent piece by Faye Blake — also the illustrations are a hoot.
http://www.fayeblake.nl/taurus/lightning-strikes-the-bull/
Thanks Christina!
Ooh, this was a good one! As I read her section on Enlightenment, I was reminded of the Buddha “calling the earth to witness” and his eventual enlightenment as he meditated beneath the bodhi tree. May all spiritual seekers find their version of the bodhi tree under this transit!
thanks for this, enjoyed reading it.
She is right: Uranus in Taurus can mean a lot of things, so why not finally discovering a diet that actually works ?? For everyone !!
mimi
I tried to post a reply yesterday on currency, specifically paying by SMS, but it didn’t submit for some reason. Anyway, that’s a thing in some countries, especially where there aren’t any banks. I hear Facebook and some other companies are interested in getting involved too. Might be a pivot for Facebook if their social side tanks.
Don’t know about anyone else, but I’m not sleeping, uranus has got me wired, then I fall asleep at odd times. I looked at my chart, and it’s so funny, transiting uranus is sextile my natal jupiter, and also the other way round, transiting jupiter is sextile my natal uranus. Talk about restless!
But I also wanted to say something positive. (mercury is opposite my sun right now! :D) After years and years of uranus/pluto losses, the turnaround and tiny gains is starting to pick up. Whilst I haven’t actually seen any of my family yet, there are promises of visits. :):):) And after reading that article I linked above, about friends, I don’t feel so bad about those who are now history, you need the time and space to nurture new friends. I can feel my focus shifting, from looking back and feeling sad, to looking ahead. I’ve never worried about making friends, I worry about finding good friends, so I look forward to doing that. 🙂 As for the bigger picture and how our government affect me, I’m not out of the woods yet, but they’re starting to look toothless. Is that the right word? Utterly powerless? Tories are a laughing stock. I don’t know if that will accelerate their downfall, but at least we can all laugh at them while they crumble. I only noticed it start yesterday, so if no one’s seen it yet, you will.
I’m going to read your May stars again, Christina. I feel like a different person. Or feels like I’m becoming a different person? Something anyway. And whilst the enforced solitude has at times been excruciatingly horrible, I know I needed it and I’m grateful for it, if that makes sense. I needed a break and the universe got it for me. Now, let’s see if this posts…
Thanks so much for the fine article and lovely collection of links! Pele making her presence known was a notable prelude and transition. Fire bringing new earth to the surface.
Lots of interesting speculation, but I think I liked best the quote from Liz Greene: “If you think you can predict Uranus, it’s not Uranus you are looking at.”
Wondering if Uranus in Taurus is the final nail in the coffin for high street shopping (Taurus) and the move to online (Uranus)?
Listening to the news of how Marks & Sparks is closing another 100 stores to stay competitive. One analyst wrote that “Having a huge store estate is no longer the powerful retail force that it once was.”
Last week NewLook said they’d be closing something like 90 of the 130 stores.
Talking to the assistant in Sainsbury’s yesterday and they’re being asked to do more and more work for less, and of course as a company they’re looking to merge with Asda.
Store closures are nothing new – it’s been a feature of Pluto in Cap but I wonder what our buying habits look like by 2024. If everything moves online then we have little-to-no choice but to embrace online banking, currency etc, etc.
I think you’re right.
Just to highlight the “CO2 crisis” that is threatening supplies of food (Taurus) and carbonated drinks. Being caused by the temporary (Uranus) shutdown for summer maintenance of ammonia plants that process fertiliser (agriculture = Taurus). If shortages kick in, we’re almost certain to see either rationing or price hikes or both.
I had no idea that CO2 was a bi-product of fertiliser manufacturing. Not so keen on those fizzy drinks now.
I came back to this post to see if changes in eating habits would be on the list. I am really noticing a trend in how people are changing/having to change they way they eat. Intermittent fasting and back-to-basic diets e.g. Keto and Paelo have gained popularity in recent months for those who can already afford food. But on the other end of the spectrum is the recent unfortunate increase in food banks, with the hundreds of thousands now forced to access them in the UK alone.
It feels like the age of plenty is coming to an end for a lot of people. I have been wondering if it just the work of Uranus in Taurus or the combined impact of Uranus Saturn trine – if by sign only. But it does chime with the 1930s experience of Depression and food shortages – last time Uranus was in Taurus.
I completely agree with you on this one. For example, we’re now a meat-free household ‘cos global warming.
Hope you don’t mind my adding my tuppence worth that I wrote in 2018. https://fayeblake.nl/taurus/lightning-strikes-the-bull/
Thanks Christina for the summary.
It’s a pleasure, Faye.