rebel

The Rebel of the Solar System

Uranus is the planet that works with the principles of freedom and authenticity. It calls us to wake up and if we aren’t paying attention, it has been known to do it with sudden shocks and changes.

One of my favorite astrology teachers likes to say astrology is only interesting if you use it for something. Esoteric astrology moves us away from predictive magazine-astrology towards an approach that makes us more active participants in our lives. It propels us to ask how we can consciously work with the energies around us to be a cause in our lives, rather than victims of circumstance.

Time for a Self-Check

Uranus is the rebel of the solar system (literally – it rotates on its side). It has a particularly strong influence on all of us in our early forties as the instigator of the classic mid-life crisis. This is the time when Uranus reaches the half way point of its 84-year orbit and needles us with questions about whether we are freely expressing ourselves with true authenticity. Or as master astrologer Caroline Casey says in her book Making the Gods Work for You, “What’s really going on here is that the wild, Uranusauthentic part of us has completed half of its orbit and is checking in with itself.” It is asking how truly we are ‘living our own unique wildness’.

 

In fact, it is always concerned with questions of freedom, authenticity and liberation. Uranus demands that we wake up in whichever area (house) it is sitting in our charts.

The good news is, life doesn’t need a fully-fledged revolution to shake ourselves out of patterns that have become automatic and may be contributing to a sense of being asleep at the wheel of our own lives.

Practice Rebellion Daily!

Here are seven tiny rebellions that honor the Uranus urge towards freedom.

  1. Brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Try it for a week and see what happens.
  2. Ditch the hair tie. This week I did an entire yoga class without tying my hair back. It was weirdly and simply liberating.
  3. Say no to something. People pleasing is an easy pattern to fall into, and the source of many an automatic yes, but Uranus implores us not to do anything just because others expect us to.
  4. Take a different route. If you drive to work, map out an alternative path. If you take public transport, get off a few steps earlier and walk the rest of the way. Change your literal pathways and you might just change some metaphoric ones too.
  5. Do something without asking permission first. I’m not suggesting you forget your manners but Uranus wouldn’t ask, “Should we hit the dance floor?” It would be the first one out there (the one that gives others permission to kick up their heels too).
  6. Talk to a stranger. Whether it is paying a compliment to the person in line with you at the coffee shop or starting a conversation with a co-worker you’ve never really spoken to, invoke Uranus’ knowledge that we all have a unique perspective and a unique story that matters to the whole. So get curious and get chatting.
  7. And imagine you already know the answer. Uranus rules invention. Where can you bring a little of that to your life today? It could be as simple as trying a new recipe. Or creating something from what’s already in the pantry without using a recipe at all.

Dene Mason