Uranus in Taurus: 2018 - 2026

May 15, 2018

Uranus (aka the Sky God, Prometheus, the Great Awakener) will enter Taurus on May 15th. Because Uranus is a slow-moving outer planet, it takes him years to transit one sign. We have had Uranus in Aries continually for the past eight years or so. The changes that have transpired, so quickly, in such fiery ways, have been a big part of creating the new “normal” we find ourselves in now. With Uranus’ ingress into Taurus, we make a huge shift into the next phase of our awakening.

Prometheus gave humans the gift of fire. This gift can create warmth, cook food, and smelt tools for hunting more food, or destroy whole forests, burn down cities, and smelt weapons of war. Like all of the gifts of Uranus, Prometheus’ gift was revolutionary, but it was only a tool. No tool is inherently good or bad. It’s all in how we choose to use it.

Where Uranus makes an important transit in your chart, he awakens you. This does not usually feel like you’re getting a super awesome gift from the gods. A true awakening will feel like a breakdown. It will throw you into unpredictable circumstances and force you to adapt. I don’t believe that the volatile changes that Uranus transits coincide with are created with good or bad intentions. They just are, like a volcano, or a storm. This is what Uranus does. So some changes will lead you into a fantastic new world of freedom and some changes will suck. All I can say is that lightning will strike somewhere. It could split the tree in your front yard, or find the perfect conditions to turn sand into glass. The best way to handle this is to be agile. You’ve got to be out there with a kite like Ben Franklin, performing experiments with Uranus’ electricity.

Uranus in Aries: 2010 - 2019

Exact Dates

May 27 - August 13, 2010

March 11, 2011 - May 15, 2018

November 6, 2018 - March 6, 2019

Broadly, Uranus symbolizes innovation, genius, unpredictability, eccentricity, individuality, originality, change and the future. Aries symbolizes initiation, action, assertiveness, aggression and war, impatience, courage, independence, leadership, and pioneers. This particular transit of Uranus through Aries has been characterized by a challenging square to Pluto in Capricorn (most intense from 2012 - 2015), combined with an opposition to Jupiter in Libra in 2016. Saturn in Sagittarius also made a fiery trine to Uranus in 2017. Every planet’s transit through a sign is influenced by the rest of the sky. So this sky, with these aspects among others, coincided with fast, volatile developments in pioneering technology and entrepreneurship, as well as revolution, unrest, and warfare. This is just a brief overview of some events with a Uranus-in-Aries flavor:

During this Uranus transit, we’ve seen rapid changes in smartphones, social media, cloud computing, big data, and our relationships to these technologies. Smartphone ownership reached a tipping point in June 2011. Silicon Valley is now such a big part of our lives they made a show about it, and entrepreneurship hit a record high in 2013. Social media has played a key role in major events, including the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, the 2016 U.S. election, and subsequent protests. The technology of warfare and terrorism evolved too, from drone warfare to the semi-automatic guns used in the most memorable recent mass shootings, including Aurora,  Sandy Hook, and Parkland. Protests erupted in Ferguson after police shot and killed Michael Brown, and after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin, three radical organizers started the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013. There were major terrorist attacks, including the Boston Marathon bombing and the shooting at Charlie Hebdo, and we learned how ISIS uses social media to recruit individuals all over the world. NASA announced possible liquid water on Mars (Aries’ ruling planet) in August 2011, and entrepreneur/space technology pioneer Elon Musk received public attention for his plan to “make life multiplanetary” by putting humans on Mars via SpaceX. After an exhausting year of aggression and misogyny, 45 won in an election that most of the media didn’t predict, 2017 brought unrelenting instability...and here we are.

Vintage Uranus in Taurus: 1934 - 1942

Exact Dates

June 6 - October 9, 1934

March 27, 1935 - August 7, 1941

October 4, 1941 - May 15, 1942

The last time Uranus was in Taurus was 1934 - 1942. Broadly, Taurus symbolizes stability, perseverance, obstinance, prosperity, possessions, physicality, and sensuality. Uranus and Taurus are almost exact opposites. The planet of change doesn’t operate as well in the sign that doesn’t want to change anything.

There were other things happening during Uranus’ last transit through Taurus. Uranus was trine Neptune in Virgo for much of this time. Saturn in Pisces, Neptune in Virgo, and Chiron in Gemini made a tense t-square from April 1935 - February 1937. Jupiter in Sagittarius opposed Chiron in 1936, making this already tense aspect more tense. Jupiter in Capricorn and Neptune made a grand earth trine with Uranus in late 1937. Jupiter squared Uranus from Aquarius in 1938. Pluto moved into Leo in June 1939, and was squared by Saturn in Taurus. Jupiter also entered Taurus in May 1940, making a conjunction with Saturn. Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus made a triple conjunction in Taurus in 1941, and Saturn remained with Uranus when Jupiter moved into Gemini. All of this to say that eight years is a long time. World War II did start while Uranus was in Taurus, but the rest of the sky provides additional context for that particular time period.

Fascism spread from 1934 until World War II began in September 1939. The promethean fire of Uranus during this period took the form of chemicals and nuclear fission, which we used in warfare to create increasingly deadly poison gases and the atomic bomb. There is no sugarcoating the fact that Uranus in Taurus was one factor in the astrology of this time, representing unpredictable dictators and radical organizing against change for a dark version of the future instead of a progressive one. This was a dark time, but before we go too wild with dystopian versions of the next Uranus-Taurus cycle, remember that the Nazis didn’t win. This is a new cycle, with different aspects. We can hope that we’ve learned enough from our history not to repeat it.

One accidental side effect of World War II was the unprecedented number of opportunities for American women to work jobs that were previously held exclusively by men, which changed gender roles in the labor force from then on. When Uranus makes positive innovations in Taurus, they are often real and lasting. Roosevelt implemented the second stage of the New Deal in 1935, and though other economic programs ended during World War II, social security remains effective. Napoleon Hill’s perennial self-help book Think and Grow Rich was first published in 1937, focusing on the Taurean theme of wealth, and based on a very Taurean two decades of research.

Uranus in Taurus Now: 2018 - 2026

Exact Dates

May 15 - November 6, 2018

March 6, 2019 - July 7, 2025

November 7, 2025 - April 25, 2026

It’s been 76 years since the last time Uranus was in Taurus. We’re leaving the era of a martial approach to innovation: disrupt, interrupt, hack, win (even failing is really winning), startup,  ramp up, bootstrap, self-fund, pioneer, be a rockstar. We’ve reinvented our identities, innovated beyond the false binary of masculine/feminine, and reached a tipping point where men are being held accountable for sexist and abusive behavior towards women. We’re ready for an era of radical growth, a sustainable future where we invent new concepts of wealth, prioritize pleasure, and add some venusian sensuality to our lives. Here are some of the themes I’m envisioning for this next cycle.

Rewilding

The rewilding movement is a thing already, and I think greater numbers of people are about to catch on. Putting aside philosophical debates about what “wildness” even is, we have been killing the plants and other animals around us at a rapid rate, and it’s essential for our own survival that we figure out a way to keep the earth alive. Uranus being the unpredictable genius of the zodiac, I am seeing more wilderness growing around us, even in urban areas, more awareness of how we’re connected to the earth. Uranus in Aries already had us developing ultra-efficient solar power and other green technologies. Books like The Hidden Life of Trees, The Biophilia Effect, and The Wild Places will continue to inspire people to see how we are a part of nature. Independent thinkers like environmental activist Dr. Vandana Shiva (Jupiter in Taurus opposite her sun in Scorpio) will lead us to develop sustainable change. People will continue to replace pharmaceutical regimes with plant medicines like cannabis, ayahuasca, and psilocybin mushrooms. As we rewild the world, we’ll rewild ourselves.

Virtual Cyborg or Back to the Lander?

You choose. Uranus in Taurus could be living in Virtual Realities and sequencing your DNA and eating a Jetson-style meal pill recommended by the chip in your arm that monitors your health 24-7, or going back to the land to farm, joining the slow movement, and making some weird music with your futuristic eco band. And/And any combination of the above. VR is about to tip into everyday technology just like your smartphone did in 2011. Taurus rules reality, but then again, the material world is made up of a bunch of moving molecules and everything is actually a vibration or waveform or something so what even is real? The alternate reality of post-2016 could get even more subjective with awakener Uranus in Taurus and Jupiter in questioning Scorpio - people living in the game. Stem cell technology and cloning, faster DNA sequencing, and the ethics of prenatal DNA sequencing will be at the forefront of debate. The internet of DNA has our bodies mapped to the screen. Eating and growing real food with sustainable farming practices (see: rewilding) will be an even more central political issue, as agricultural drones and plant gene editing technology could reach epic levels of innovation. Hipsters take foraging to new levels, forming small groups of hunter-gatherers. Rapid developments in biotechnology change everything in unforeseen ways. The old ways become the newest surprise.

Venus’ Turn: Women, Bodies, and Sex

We are finally listening to women speak about sexual harassment and abuse by men, and Chiron in Aries is going to help us heal the wound of toxic masculinity. After such a martial period, we now enter a Venusian era of relationship, love, real women’s bodies, sensuality, and female pleasure. Pro-woman everything. Pro-woman sex, feminist revolutions in the porn industry, sovereignty and pleasure in bodies of all sizes and races and orientations, self-love and self-care for those bodies, coming up with more eco-friendly, better ideas for menstrual cycles than tampons, innovations in birth control, respecting women’s reproductive choices. Also, people and bodies that don’t fit traditional ideas of gender, trans rights, LGBTQ rights, polyamorous relationships, gay sex, unlabeled sex, asexuals, sex toys, robot sex. Conservative backlash against change means that fascists want to control, abuse, and kill people in bodies that aren’t white/male/hetero, so Uranus must inspire us to choose freedom for humans in all bodies. The pleasure revolution begins.

$$$

Taurus also rules money, so the first thing that comes to mind is closing the wage gap, and not just for white women. We need to do it especially for women of color, and also for men of color. Our whole relationship to money could change via Uranus in Taurus. Currency becomes digital, technology lets us pay for everything with our phones and our faces, cybersecurity is a real threat for everyone. Unions push for higher wages and better working conditions; maybe we even rethink capitalism together. Universal Basic Income could be the social security reform of our generation. Food, water, and shelter are treated as human rights, not as rewards for work. Everyone gets a decent home. We redefine our concept of wealth and what is valuable by calculating the costs of environmental destruction, and the unmined earth becomes more valuable than the metals underneath. We slow down at work, and consider the value of our time. Society becomes more humane when people are no longer treated like human capital. It could happen. It’s really up to us how we use the Promethean gifts.

A Short Guide to working with Uranus in Taurus

• Prioritize pleasure. Especially if you are marginalized in any way, your pleasure matters. Take radical care of yourself and expect others to take care of you, in life and in bed.
• Connect with the earth. You are a part of everything. Rewild.
• Take care with the food you put in your body. Find unconventional ways in this hyperspeed society to slow down, cook, eat well, and enjoy.
• Redefine wealth. Investigate your own money story for some lightning-bolt insights about your relationship to the material world.