Welcome Uranus to Taurus!

For the past eight years, the planet Uranus has been moving through Aries. We begin the month with Uranus hovering at the last degree of Aries, but soon to leave for Taurus. When any planet transitions between one sign to another, instability increases. Planets in the last degree of any sign are at an extreme, but Aries’ tendency to act first and ask questions later increases its unpredictability, and Uranus’ reputation for shocks and innovations pushes it yet further. You get the picture: expect the unexpected this month.

Mid-month, Mars will also leave Capricorn for Aquarius, so it too will be unstable. Mars is said to govern our drive and will, but also instinctual behaviors such as aggression and anger, so accidents, wars, violence all fall under his dominion. Those of you born between the 18^th-21^st in January, April, July and October will feel the effects of both ingresses (the transition of a planet from one sign to the next) the most strongly and need to proceed with caution, but, that said, all of us will be feeling the crackle of electricity.

So mark your calendars and plan tension-releasing activities into your month. May 12^th-16^th, in particular, can be tricky days and perhaps quite dramatic. Uranus moves into Taurus on May 15^th at 11:13am EDT, beginning an 8-year journey through this sign for the first time in 83 years. On the same day, we have a new moon, the herald of a new monthly cycle, at 24 degrees Taurus (7:47am EDT). And in the wee hours of May 16^th (55 minutes after midnight, EDT), Mars enters Aquarius to make the first of three squares to Uranus.

We need to proceed mindfully and cautiously rather than getting swept away in everyone’s impatience, tetchiness and frustrations. Don’t get caught up in the tense energies. Have strategies in place to blow off steam. (Sports, movement, and exercise can be good releases, as long as you’re careful not to push too hard and injure yourself.)

Uranus is shifting from fire to earth, moving from rebellions and forest fires to plate tectonics and earthquakes, from yang to yin. Taurus is a fixed earth sign, meaning it is stable, consistent, practical and resistant to change. Uranus is the great awakener who refuses to stand still. It brings innovation and reform and will use the element of surprise and disruption to shock us out of complacency. So we are entering a period when an unstoppable force (Uranus: the wildcard planet of radical shift and change) meets an immoveable object (Taurus: the sign of contentment, consistency and containment). The more resistant we are to change, the more explosive and difficult it will be.

To prepare yourself and align with the energies, consciously look at your life and ask, “Where am I a creature of habit? Where am I complacent? Am I in a rut and how might I shake things up? Where do I opt for comfort and familiarity and avoid risks that might bring about a greater sense of aliveness, freshness, and authenticity?”

Taurus likes the tried and true and is naturally conservative. Uranus will ask us to examine where our routines stifle us, where conservation becomes hoarding, where rigidity creeps in, where we play it safe rather than individuating. If you insist on the status quo, Uranus may pull the rug out from underneath you and take away the things you try to protect or conserve so you have no reason to remain risk-adverse and can discover who you really are.

An easy way to honor Uranus is make small changes and take small risks. Change your routines, change your style, change the route you take to work. Take the ballroom dancing class—pole dancing, archery, whatever!—that you talked yourself out of. Rearrange your furniture. Go through your house and get rid of the stuff you hold onto but isn’t a reflection of you. What is in your space because it’s always been there but doesn’t lift your spirits or call to your soul? By consciously shaking things up a bit, you work with Uranus and align with the celestial weather. The more you are a creature of habit, the more important this exercise is.

General significations of Taurus: earth/land/natural resources, touch/sensuality, the status quo, building/construction, conservation, food/restaurants/farming, luxury goods, property, money/wealth, possessions/things of material and monetary value, art, investments, comfort/luxury industries, natural world, music, livestock, throat/ears, commodities (gold, corn, materials connected to the supply chain – disruptions to the supply chain), security and stability, the growing cycle

 Shadow significations: greed, complacency, over-attachment to security/comfort, possessiveness, hoarding, stubbornness/resistance to change, being stuck in a rut, materialism

General Significations of Uranus: innovations, risks/gambles, the reforming spirit, individuation/authenticity, radical shifts, surprises, disruptions, epiphanies, technology, revolution/rebellion, electricity/fire, awakenings, subcultures, eccentrics, futurists, change, wild cards, downloads, breakdowns and breakthroughs, freedom/liberation, discoveries, science, excitement, radical discontinuity

Shadow significations: Rebelliousness, stubbornness, the contrarian, selfishness, change for changes’ sake, shocks, upsets, alienation, disconnection, eccentricity, doing things for shock value, instability/unpredictability, separations

To see how this eight-year shift might affect you specifically, schedule an astrological session. Or, for more general themes which might arise, see the horoscopes below. If you know your rising sign (the ascendant), read it as well as your sun/birthdate sign. (For instructions on how to find your rising sign, go to the bottom of this article.)

Aries Sun, Moon, or Rising: The next eight years you’ll be examining how you make a living, your personal worth and your personal values. Your personal resources include finances, but also emotional, intellectual, and spiritual gifts. Whether you are valued by those around you can play a role in these evaluations. It’s a great time to go through your things and ensure they bring you joy and reflect who you are, otherwise it’s just, well, stuff. Values can change as new information is integrated and understood. If you feel encumbered by your material possessions, you could find yourself with less but feeling more free. If you need more resources to grow, Uranus can bring them. If how earn your living is deadening or your contributions aren’t valued (or adequately recompensed), you may change jobs.

Taurus Sun, Moon, or Rising: Your health/vitality, image and self-definition are due for an overhaul. Occasionally, this transit can indicate health issues, so if you’ve not been attending to your health, be conscious. More often it’s a time to drop weight, adopt new health habits or update your look. Along with your appearance (clothing/makeup, piercings/tattoos), your attitude or approach may change. Review your personal “branding.” Facebook, for instance. Does your cover page and photo show who you really are or do they kowtow to others’ approval? No time like the present now to own who you are: your power, your charisma, your confidence. Or, if false bravado has been covering insecurity, you may find yourself softening and true courage arising. Authenticity becomes a focus: let your freak flag fly.

Gemini Sun, Moon, or Rising: What secrets, emotional/mental wounds or patterns of self-sabotage need to be cleared out? If you are willing to take an honest assessment, you can liberate yourself from the ghosts of the past and transform them into wisdom. Make your focus the conditioning, anxieties, fears, guilt, worries, and shame that make your life smaller than it needs to be. Ask yourself where avoidance, escapism or a refusal to look at the places that scare you continue to undermine you. With a little work, epiphanies and insights will begin to illuminate previously hidden material and seed your ability to live more fully and happily. Resisting engagement means these patterns can rear their heads at inopportune moments and force you to deal with them.

Cancer Sun, Moon, or Rising: For you, this period can point to the entrance of new friends, subcultures, or groups of likeminded others that awaken you to new possibilities (or, perhaps, upset your old notions). Also up for discussion: your plans and dreams for the future. Have you reviewed them in awhile or are you still working from old assumptions? If you’ve latched onto one lens to view your life, don’t be surprised if new possibilities present themselves. The questions “Why?” and “Why not?” may become steadfast companions. Radical new goals may arrive seemingly from nowhere or you may discover that old dreams have become stale and need to be reinvented—re-invisioned—to reignite your excitement and encompass the person you are today. In short, sometimes what we think we want changes.

Leo Sun, Moon or Rising: It’s time to shake things up in your career. Has it become routine? What innovations are you yearning to bring in? Or is it time to take actual first steps toward the second career you’ve been pondering? Over next few years, you will reinvent who you are in some visible way. This may be in your career or it could be your reputation, but we play many public roles: father/mother, single person/partnered person, career person/unemployed person, volunteer, etc. Now is not the time for the status quo. If you like the shape of your life and your career, embrace new technologies, learn new skills, develop different approaches, and try on new hats. If you’re in a job or role that feels confining or doesn’t bring joy, don’t be complacent. Make a change and reinvigorate your life.

Virgo Sun, Moon, Rising: It’s time to review points of reference, frameworks of understanding and beliefs. Are you holding onto “truths” that have become rigid, limiting, or perhaps swallowed whole without real questioning? Now will be the period for questioning. Do your beliefs encourage healthy connection to others? Do they allow you to be effective in the world? Do they provide solace when things are difficult? If your beliefs or frameworks for understanding the world imprison you in some way, expect shocks and surprises that crack things open and let in the light. For the next eight years, your task is to be as open-minded, curious, and experimental as you can imagine being—and then push yourself to explore even further. If institutes of higher education and/or foreign travel figure into your life, be an explorer. Embrace innovation and invention (rather than clinging to the status quo).

Libra Sun, Moon, or Rising: On a mundane level, it’s a good time to examine your debt, loans, and joint money and investments. Do you need new habits in this area? Do you need to pay down debt? If so, talk to a reputable credit specialist. Change it up! Review insurance coverage, power of attorney, wills, inheritances, living wills to ensure the information is up to date, has the right beneficiaries, etc. Or, if you don’t have this paperwork in place, now’s a fabulous time to get it rolling. On a personal level, sudden insight into your psychology, your secrets, or inner suffering can lead to renewal. So if you’ve been struggling with, say, anxiety or old emotional pain, counseling can be particularly effective, as you’re more likely to break free of old material. Lastly, the next eight years can be a period of closings, endings, and deaths of all kinds. What needs to be brought to a close? What needs to be released? Sometimes people and situations leave our life suddenly: our best friend gets a job and moves away, someone close to us dies. As painful as these events can be, everything must pass and often that which ends creates space for something new to come into being.

Scorpio Sun, Moon or Rising: Over the next eight years, how you relate to others is due to be revolutionized, so relationships, audiences, frenemies—the people in your life—become wild cards. Expect other people to be a little less reliable or predictable. Maybe they bring in new energy and life, shaking up things with new ideas and a bit of excitement. Or maybe you just don’t know what to expect from a certain someone and find yourself in an on-again/off-again relationship, which is terribly exciting but not very stable. Often what happens is we attract what we really want/need, though we don’t see it that way. For instance, because we need space, freedom, and excitement, we attract people who give us exactly that. Be aware that you need to do your own thing right now and that means having a bit more autonomy and control without answering to others.

Sagittarius Sun, Moon or Rising: What routines in your life have begun to feel oppressive, especially those connected to health habits, work environment, or the daily grind? The challenge is to adopt new approaches that liberate you. Get conscious about what you are required to do (pay bills, eat) and what you have taken on out of a misguided sense of duty. Innovate! Are there technologies that would help you simplify your daily schedule? Do you have health habits that need to change? What you don’t want to do is ignore daily tensions that are building which then could wreck havoc on your body. Instead revolutionize your work, your attitude toward duty, or your daily practices. If your work environment is toxic, change departments or start looking for a new job. More positively, it can point to innovative coworkers who breathe new life into the department. You could even be that person!

Capricorn Sun, Moon or Rising: If you have children, the next eight years can speak to a time when they need greater independence, become a bit rebellious, or a source of surprise or the unexpected. It can point to a period where you strive for greater self-expression and a need for more play. For those involved in creative pursuits, it can point to breakthroughs and innovations. Friendships and romances can bring in excitement and help breakdown old patterns of interaction, though these relationships may not always be lasting. (The excitement and breaking down of codified ways of relating could be the primary reason they are in your life.) This period is about redefining yourself, your self-expression and your approach to life. What boxes have you put yourself?

Aquarius Sun, Moon or Rising: Uranus, for you, points to changes to home, family and the foundations of life. Most of us want the most personal and intimate areas of our life to be reliable and unchanging, so find these sorts of deviations to be upsetting and destabilizing. For those of us with aging parents, crises and surprises can arrive via them. Home repairs, moves, and relocations are possibilities. Family tensions surface and must be addressed; difficult relationship can fall apart. The most personal and intimate aspects of life must be revitalized. Ultimately these changes lead to a release from the past and a new sense of freedom, a fresh start. Individually, this period can be a psychic house cleaning, as outer changes reflect inner needs. If you’re not “at home” within yourself—your most private, deep self—be willing to rebel: uproot the past and reclaim your true nature.

Pisces Sun, Moon, or Rising: Everyday encounters with neighbors, relatives, siblings, and friends can be a source of change, inspiration and excitement—or a place of shock and surprise. Ideally, these interactions will force you to see the world anew and reassess your ideas and unexamined (or codified) assumptions. Intellectual pursuits and independent learning can be a pathway to renewal and opening, so let curiosity be your master. Information seems to be coming at you from all directions and, as a result, the pace of life seems to quicken. (Sometimes we need a deluge so our normal defenses can’t hold.) Your mind and how you process information is being rewired: habitual or limiting thinking is due for a complete overhaul. Lean into it. Remaining open and adaptable—good Piscean qualities—will be helpful.

 

TO FIND YOUR RISING SIGN (the Ascendant):

You’ll need the following information: date of birth, place of birth, and, most importantly, time of birth.  Go to the following webpage and select “Extended Chart Selection” at the bottom right section of the page.

• Select the bar which says “Click here to show the chart,” which is to the right and above the “Options” area of the page.
• You should find yourself at another page. Select “Click here to go directly to data entry page.”
• You’ll be taken to the data entry page. Enter your birth data and click on “Continue.”
• Your natal chart with the positions will appear.  At the upper left, look for the information in red text. Your rising sign appears after the word “Ascendant.”
• You can print the chart if you like, too.

As always, a broad analysis such as this is no substitute for a personal astrological consultation based your full birth data.  If you are interested in setting up an appointment, please email me or see my scheduling calendar!