So this is it, ladies and gentlemen. In just a couple of hours, Uranus will leave Pisces and enter Aries. You don’t even have to get predictive or specific to know that this is big. It’s the end of a cycle. Whatever has happened, it is at this point that there is absolutely no going back. Collectively, that feels kind of foreboding. Weird shit has been going on for everyone, but I think for astrologers, knowing that Uranus is entering Aries and gearing up for an explosive and potentially violent cardinal T-square feels a little bit like end times. All my astrologer friends on Facebook are posting countdowns in their status updates. Last night I got a bizarre text message from another astrologer that simply read, “Say goodbye.” This afternoon I lay down for what was supposed to be a couple of minutes and ended up sleeping like a dead person for about four hours. When I woke up, I suddenly said out loud, “I’m not going to be able to do this anymore,” and the thought kind of frightened me. I thought about people who prepare for an apocalypse not by storing canned food and buying things whose warranties expire after 2012, but by taking several dozen pills and just lying down and letting the end take them. To be kind of melodramatic, that’s sort of what my nap felt like. And even as I write this, a huge thunderstorm is starting up right outside my window. Uranus in Aries is bringing something else entirely. You can choose to sleep through it. But if you choose not to, you will never be able to sleep again.
My blog is not predictive, nor does it deal with mundane events. It deals with how astrology affects people- specifically one person, me. This is partly because I don’t feel I have the adequate abilities in mundane astrology, and partly because doing mundane astrology would turn me into a paranoid freak. And it’s also because I’m very much in favor of dealing with the things that are explicitly in your control, because certain events are for the most part out of our control, and it only fosters guilt, frustration and despondency to worry constantly about how we could be part of the problem because we’re not singlehandedly rushing in to stop it. Even without looking at World At Large events, I think a lot of people are going to find that Uranus’ entry into Aries will bring huge personal changes, significantly enough for enough people that we will see ripples of collective change. When I think about the typical associations of Uranus and of Aries, I immediately think of difference, of initiation, of independence, of high electricity. There is simply no context for what we were doing before, and as such, wherever Uranus affects our natal charts is going to be strikingly different from now on. Like I said- there’s no going back.
Uranus is no longer in my 10th House. It feels like such a relief to add “Uranus is no longer in my 10th House” to my catalogue of statements of relieved finality, like “I don’t have to take precalculus anymore,” or “I am no longer a virgin.” (Incidentally, transiting Uranus was on my natal Venus when I lost my virginity. Okay, okay, Dr. Freud, you win.) Because seriously, having a full 10th House natally is hard enough, but try having it constantly electro-shocked by Uranus for about nine years. Even though I’ve always been and will probably always be preoccupied with achievement, it was never just a pedestrian “get good grades, get into college, get job, rinse, repeat” kind of preoccupation. For me, more than just doing well, it’s always been imperative that I am DIFFERENT from everyone else. That I am NOTICED by teachers and professors and bosses and superiors. That I am EXCEPTIONAL because I am GOOD AT EVERYTHING. And Uranus transiting through my 10th House has over the years both accelerated and challenged that impulse. In many ways that’s been a good thing, such as clarifying for myself that while I’m good at making art and I enjoy consuming art, it’s not my whole identity, and that I don’t actually want to be a career artist, and that art-making serves a different, more private function for me now than I once thought it would, and that that realization doesn’t have to be the jarring soul annihilation that every other artist I know who cannot be friends with you if you are not also an artist seems to think it is. But on the other hand, it has at times been slightly disorienting to realize that over the years I’ve accumulated so much information and don’t always know what to do with it. The teetering between everyone publicly marveling at “ZOMG LUCY HOW ARE YOU LIKE SO SMART AND HAVE DONE ALL THIS STUFF” and me privately freaking out because “ZOMG I LIKE TOO MANY THINGS AND I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE A CAREER BECAUSE I CAN’T FOCUS I’M GOING TO GO LIVE IN THE WOODS” has been an incredible psychic drain. But now it’s over. Last July when Uranus went retrograde, I made the decision to go to grad school and take all the necessary prerequisites for the programs that interested me. It was a really impulsive way to start doing something that most people prepare for before they’re even halfway through college, but I just did it. I said fuck it.
And even though I’m doing well in all my prereqs, and discovering I have an affinity for disciplines I never even touched in college, and making really good connections, as the time to actually apply to graduate school looms closer, I am not gonna lie- I’m getting really nervous. Really, really nervous. I mean, of course I am, right? It’s a huge workload and commitment. But this is what I’ve become used to doing. I throw myself into something, only to wonder if maybe there is more and better in some other discipline. I agonize over whether becoming a psychologist will make me too “square,” and if I will still be able to maybe go to Burning Man one day or get an astrology book published or just wear my giant magenta feather earrings and still be taken seriously in the academic community. I worry that if I ever actually become famous, it won’t be for any one thing, that I’ll end up having to be a “personality,” like that lady with the giant glasses who was in all the Old Navy commercials for a while. (Who was that, anyway?)
Uranus loves anxiety and restlessness. I don’t, especially not in my high-achieving 10th House comfort zone. But it’s not there anymore. So I take this to mean that as I said above, there is no going back. I have made a decision, and if I stop and really think about it, I can be confident that it is the right decision. And not only is it the right decision, but the incredible anxiety I’ve felt regarding achievement can finally start melting away. I’ve also noticed that since it left my 10th House, Uranus has also taken on a different shade in my 11th House. Now that I’m more focused in a career path that requires commitment and collaboration, and going further with astrology, and possibly getting ready to relocate, I feel more prepared and open to being around people that are better-suited to me, and to let go of the ones that aren’t. And I’m doing better at attracting those kinds of people to me in recent months. That is very different for me. But this is how it is now, and I want to go forward with how it is going to be instead of clinging to what it once was- even though I didn’t really like that too much.
So even though I had a panic attack last night (although I’m sure part of it had to do with the fact that I had an exam this morning), and even though I acknowledge that my anxiety is totally valid and that I need not chastise myself for what I’m actually feeling, I’ve taken a deep breath and I’m ready to embrace Uranus in Aries. I’m ready to stop using my own curiosity to undercut what I’ve accomplished. I’m ready to do interesting, dynamic and beneficial work. I’m ready to stop depending on people who don’t actually serve me and introduce people into my life who stimulate me. I think I want to get a different haircut.
The transit and the weather may look like end times. But it’s really not end times after all. It’s a beginning.
