Given a choice what would you decide on… freedom and innovation, or security and comfort? In a nutshell, those are the choices we face this year. Neither way is ‘right or wrong’. For some of us adventurers it may be that we need to create more stability, for those who are more rooted, it may be time to take some risks. Challenging times encourage us to look deeper. For all of us, the fine line between where we find comfort and where we step up is calling for discernment.
It’s fairly obvious these energetic themes have been brewing for a while now. They strengthen all this year and into late 2022. The planets involved in this tension are Saturn the ruler-maker and Uranus the ruler-breaker.
Saturn is where we conform, often without really considering what we are doing. It is also where we develop maturity through learning to take responsibility for our individual choices. Uranus is where we innovate, experiment or rebel. Perhaps you can see how the tension of these two ways of being would interplay in adolescence. This year Saturn and Uranus are in square to each other 17 February, 14 June and 24 December (exact dates) yet remain in each other’s influence late January to late March, early May to early July, early December to mid-January 2022, then finally late August to mid-November 2022. They deliver a dynamic learning curve for us all.
The process of individuation requires us to experiment. We are called to walk a fine line between staying safe and taking risks. Yet ultimately individuation always means breaking the existing rules. I don’t necessarily mean the laws that govern our culture, I mean the internal rules that may keep us psychologically safe, yet that also restrict our development. Individuation means breaking the rules – our own, the family’s, the culture’s unwritten norms, the ‘old order’ – so that we discover our own values and from that, our individuality. All natural systems change, grow and evolve, or else they become extinct. We are no different, for we are nature. Growth is the process of life on Earth. This year more than ever, as what many have believed to be secure has been shattered, the calling is to evolve into new ways of being.
The planets Saturn and Uranus are both traversing fixed signs, Aquarius and Taurus. The aspect between them is one of friction rather than conflict. The rub therefore is between fixed air (Aquarius) – rigid ideals, fixed opinions or heartless concepts that don’t actually serve what’s needed in our humanness – and fixed earth (Taurus) – holding on to security and comfort, stubbornly resisting change. Human beings naturally want to hold on to ‘what is’ if it’s comfortable. It brings a feeling of security. Yet currently the Great Mother is humbling us, as one of the smallest life forms on the planet is decimating our norms. Here we encounter Saturn square Uranus: unpredictability and insecurity, yet behind it all lies the requirement to change and evolve, along with the promise of growing innovation.
It’s intelligent to realise that what we thought was progress is actually destruction. Riding the high-speed train of materialism, many human beings knew we were heading in the wrong direction yet felt powerless to change, or simply didn’t care. Those who are more awake have been playing their part in evolution, yet clearly it has taken life, in the form of a virus, to shatter of our collective sense of privilege. Now, potentially, many human beings are discovering new values, a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude for the simplest blessings, each other, nature and life itself. We’ve gone beyond the possibility of fixing the old way of being. Now we have the potential opportunity to make true progress, in a way that is grounded in deeper values. We are letting go of the old comforts and learning to relate to being uncomfortable, on the edge of change. Difficult as it may be (remember the process of adolescence) we have no other option that to meet the challenge of change in the most courageous way possible, whilst also taking care of our very basic human needs.
As this process works in us and through us more consciously, we are awakening to what has always been true. Change is the only certainly. That is Life! The living field of intelligence that we truly are is constantly moving and changing. Here on Earth that lands as evolution within the process of what seems to be the birth, life, growth and death of an individual. We seem to have a certain physical stability within that and certainly we desire it – that’s the Taurean aspect of this process. Yet life demands that we leave the old forms behind – the Aquarian calling to change and renewal.
Uranus, the planet that rules Aquarius, represents what is utterly new, what we have not seen before. Uranus in Taurus reveals that is happening within the most basic structures of our security consciousness. We are making a leap into consciously being the living alchemy of the universe here on Earth. To ride the edge of change that requires we both take care of our humanness well and that we engage fully the risk of individuating, with all its uncertainty.
The support for this Taurus/Aquarius process arrives in the simplest forms:
- connection to breath – breathe deeply and fully
- connection to body – good food, nature and nurture, deep wellbeing
- reflection – what are my deep values now; where is the inspiration to engage life in a new way?
- connection – in ways that honour individuality, the right to make our own choices
- contribution – engaging a new way of being and involvement in this changing world
- simplicity – deep gratitude for the gift of life
As the tension of Saturn square Uranus opens up and develops, there is another aspect involved, ongoing since 2008 and completing this year. This is Uranus sextile Chiron in Aries. Chiron is known as the Wounded Healer and the Rainbow Bridge. In Aries he is the herald of a new sense of self. Chiron reveals: the wound is the gift; it is the rainbow bridge of living alchemy. Given that we cannot go back, how might a new sense of self look in you in your life? With these aspects we are being offered the opportunity to embody higher frequencies of consciousness in a deeply practical living way.
As the old paradigm dissolves, the top-down model of governance is being replaced by grassroots movements. This is our future. The challenge is to individuate, and paradoxically in that, to act as a catalyst within the collective. It’s ‘both-and’. Your evolution is utterly unique, a facet of the one humanity. Without you, and your unique contribution, humanity is incomplete. Our collective future will not look like the past. That’s either exciting or scary – to you. Nonetheless it’s a given. In these unparalleled times (at least in our conscious memory) it’s down to each one of us to be the change, to be living alchemy in a human body. I find that empowering. How about you? Events and circumstances, inspiration, motivations and even fears that are catching your awareness at this time, indicate the potential for a new way of being – one that is life-enhancing for us all, for nature and the Earth. There are finer frequencies calling you, calling us all to be the change.
