The astrology of the collective

Revolutionary initiatives: the Arab Spring

Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn

By Carolina Sawney, August 2013, Buenos Aires

The impulse for radical change, reform and revolution associated with Uranus intensified as it aligned astronomically in exact aspect to Pluto in 2012; and having entered Aries in April 2011, the sign that marks the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere and is symbolised by the warrior, the planet becomes associated to awakenings, asserting the will in the present, struggles and crusades.


World transits are like a wind that inform the zeitgeist that like a quantum wave pattern, inform the choices each citizen makes that add up to the collective, and are evident in synchronistic events, like the revolutions that swept the Middle East, from Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrein to Lybia and Syria.

The archetypal meaning of Uranus is described by the myth of Prometheus, the Titan who rebelled against the gods, helped Zeus to overthrow the tyrannical Kronos, tricked the new sovereign and stole fire from the heavens to liberate humanity.

Astrologically, Uranus is associated with the the defiance of authority, the passion for freedom, the initiation of radical change, the act of rebellion against a structure to free humanity from bondage, the unexpected breakup of structures and the urge to transcend limitation.

As Uranus transits in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, Uranus becomes associated with youth, the body and actions that express one’s potency in a direct way to achieve goals that are seen as possible. Aries also means a hero. And in politics, citizens demand an authentic leader, but there hasn’t been one for a long time.

Who would have imagined that an immolation in fire of an young unemployed tunician from Sidi Bouzid, on December 17th 2010, would unleash the sequence that lead in January 2011 to the fall of dictator Zine El Abideine Ben Ali, then Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and later Muamar Gadafi in Lybia?.

The previous transit of Uranus in Aries, that started in April 1927 and lasted until March 1935 marked the golden age of dictators: Mussolini, Ataturk, Stalin and Hitler were all in power. They all have strong Uranus in their natal birth charts.

The motivation to feel potent when Uranus is in Aries is so strong that if people can’t express their will,  they will project it in a leader that is fiery and magnetic, who would do that for them and is followed fanatically. The leader then expresses a vision based on an ideology, that is so clear, so absolute, that it becomes an autocrat and disconnected from the limitations of the material world.

Action in the present is related to the long chain of actions that one has decided in the past. The documentary ‘A Nation in the Waiting’ recorded by Al Jazeera shows that the in the case of Egypt for example, the conditions for the revolution had been gestating for a very long time.

The Egyptian born historian Eric Hobsbawm said in London: “It reminds me of 1848 - another self-propelled revolution which started in one country then spread all over the continent in a short time”. He added that “two years after 1848, it looked as if it had all failed. In the long run, it hadn't failed. A good deal of liberal advances had been made. So it was an immediate failure but a longer term partial success - though no longer in the form of a revolution."

Astrology can be a useful interpretation tool to understand the meaning of the transits so one is more aware of how each one of us, in each of our choices and actions contribute to manifest the collective historical event. What will happen next depends on this.

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