Last time I shared my notes on how the Moon Nodes are used in Evolutionary Astrology and how they relate to the Pluto placement in the Evolutionary Axis. Pluto represents the evolutionary intention of the soul as it incarnates and manifests its purpose through the Moon Nodes. In this post, we’ll explore how Uranus influences this process with notes from Healing the Soul by Mark Jones and elsewhere.

In Evolutionary Astrology, Uranus represents the need to individuate and free yourself from old patterns of conditioning. As the higher octave of Mercury it also represents the long-term memories of your soul, perhaps from previous lives or even the bardo states in between lives, as well as information about your potential future development. Those memories and potentials can return in a flash, causing shock and trauma but also liberation.

Uranus is the higher mind or Universal Mind which takes a cosmic view of reality and connects you to a vast non-linear field of knowledge. Most of the time you’re not aware of this information because it’s blocked from your consciousness by Saturn. This isn’t a bad thing because it stops you from being overwhelmed and protects you from potentially traumatising memories and feelings – just imagine how many times your soul has died.

Saturn stands at the threshold of your unconscious, the boundary of who you think you are, and represents the conditioning of society and the family, as well as previous lives. It’s Uranus’ job to disrupt and liberate you from that conditioning. Most of us tend to resist Uranian awakenings because they push you into becoming a unique individual and that creates social anxiety and insecurity.

To become an individual you must individuate which means evolving beyond the ego. Contrary to what most people think, it’s not the ego that makes you unique. The ego is all about conformity and the desire to fit in and belong. The truth is that most people are NOT individuals. The majority are conformists and we’ll look at this when we cover the four evolutionary conditions in the next post.

Uranus encourages you to liberate yourself from all ego attachments and desires so you can grow beyond it and embody more of your true Self (or Buddha Nature or Christ Consciousness or whatever you want to call it). More on the Evolution of Consciousness in this series here.

The placement of Uranus in your chart shows where you can break free of collective thinking and karma by becoming more detached and objective and seeing through old patterns of conditioning. You may have a lot of fear around the themes of your Uranus placement which comes from resistance caused by ancient traumas that are buried in your unconscious.

Trauma can be physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, and these different levels can also impact each other. The trauma may be obvious and/or hidden because it often has a delayed effect which builds over time. Uranus correlates with mental trauma, while Pluto is emotional, Saturn is physical, and Neptune is emotional and spiritual. For more read: Trauma and the Outer Planets by Jeff Green (pdf).

So how does this work in the birth chart? Here’s my chart as an example:

Using the wider orbs recommended by Mark Jones, this is my Uranian signature:

• Uranus in Libra in the 8th house
• Uranus conjunct Mercury (ruler of the south node)
• Uranus conjunct Pluto
• Uranus opposite Chiron in Aries
• Uranus sextile Leo Moon, trine Ascendant, and sextile Midheaven
• Aquarius Ascendant opposite Leo Moon

Trauma is more likely with stressful aspects to Uranus – conjunctions, squares and oppositions, as well as stressful aspects to planets in Aquarius or the 11th house. It’s also emphasised if Uranus aspects the Evolutionary Axis, i.e. Pluto or the Moon Nodes or their rulers. If Uranus is well placed and not under stress, it indicates a healthy detachment and objectivity which isn’t traumatising.

So my chart has both stressful and non-stressful aspects to Uranus and the planet is strengthened because it’s conjunct the Evolutionary Axis as well as being the chart ruler (along with Saturn). This creates mixed results with positive experiences of liberating insights and helpful bolts from the blue that bounced me onto new paths. But also social rejection and isolation, as well as traumatising insights and wounds to my sense of self.

The Aquarius Ascendant reinforces the need to express my unique identity and free myself from externally imposed social roles and constructs. It shows a need to detach from social groups in order to see through them with a new perspective and find my own path through life. This is also reinforced by having the north node in the 1st house which shows a need to be true to myself and not compare myself with others.

The compulsion to be radical and break from the past can create resistance and insecurity because you fear being isolated by becoming yourself. There can be experiences of ostracism, bullying and victimisation for being different or odd. This may have ended badly in previous lives and there could be memories of executions, burnings at the stake, or being exiled for refusing to go along with the consensus of the time.

This kind of unconscious trauma can keep you trapped in conformity through fear of being alone. But going along with the crowd and its social norms may also leave you feeling empty, which is a different kind of loneliness.

When I was younger, I tried to fit in and belong but was never any good at it and was picked on at school for being “weird”. Since then I’ve always been the resident freak, reading ‘crazy’ books and thinking strange thoughts (Mercury conjunct Uranus). Part of me leaned into it and enjoyed my status as an outsider – I don’t fit in and don’t want to fit in! – but being excluded by others still hurt and I often felt lonely.

As I got older and expanded my understanding of the world and myself, my resistance to Uranus’ promptings reduced and I was able to walk my own path, whether or not it was successful – becoming a sound engineer as a woman is one example (more about that here).

Like the other placements in the Evolutionary Axis, the sign placement of Uranus is largely generational. The Uranus in Libra generation was born between 1968 and 1975 (exact dates here) and has a need to disrupt and revolutionise relationships, values, self-expression through art and beauty, and justice and law in relation to equality and fairness. This also applies to those who have Uranus in the 7th house.

You may need more personal space and independence in relationships with a desire for the freedom to be yourself within partnerships. If you can remain objective you could be a good diplomat and bring balance to situations by seeing a larger perspective beyond the personal and taking a logical approach. You tend to be cooperative and fair in your dealings with others and may be shocked when they don’t reciprocate.

So the trauma is experienced via the expectations that you project onto others, as well as what they project onto you. You may experience unexpected changes, separations and loss in relationships, or fear that they’ll end suddenly. Subconscious memories of traumatic endings may create fear of dependency and a tendency to sabotage your relationships. Or you could become so detached from others that it creates trauma and loneliness.

For me, this placement creates an inner conflict that I often found confusing, and I’m sure it confused others too. With my Sun and Mars both conjunct the south node in the 7th house, I would lose myself in relationships in a neurotic way and never felt complete unless I was connected with someone else. But then I would react against that and push for more space because I felt suffocated. It took a long time for me to realise that the feeling of suffocation was coming from my own expectations and assumptions about the relationship.

The north node in the 1st house reinforces the need to define myself more clearly as an individual within relationships and in general. So Uranus in Libra supports my evolutionary purpose by disrupting relationships and forcing me to take a more objective view. This has got easier as I’ve got older, largely thanks to the menopause because I’m no longer being jerked around by my ovaries! It’s opened up a whole new area of life to explore.

All of this plays out through the house placement of Uranus, which in my case is the same as my Pluto placement so many of the same themes come up.

With Uranus in the 8th house (or Scorpio or aspecting Pluto) you need to individuate and free yourself from old patterns of psychological and emotional conditioning related to the use of power and sexuality. You may have profound insights into the motives of other people but can also project your own issues onto others without realising. This can create confrontations and power struggles, as well as issues with trust, intimacy and secrecy, perhaps driven by unconscious memories and/or experiences of betrayal or abuse.

You may also have unconscious memories of dying or being killed for going against the accepted ways of the times. This could make you feel very precarious, as if the rug could be pulled from under you at any moment, making you distrustful of life.

By working through these issues and taking a more detached view, you can develop a deeper understanding of yourself and others. You can see through your fears and witness what’s going on in your psyche and between people without getting caught up in it. This can lead to an accelerated awakening because, as Ari Moshe Wolfe says in this video, you can:

“step away from the allure of the 8th house drama.”

This also allows you to get a cosmic perspective on the nature of the soul and how karma works, and manifest many unique talents that you can use to help others to free themselves and individuate. You may also be able to free yourself from the fear of death but only after confronting the trauma of these experiences perhaps via retrieved memories or through dreams.

These memories could return in a flash, blasting a new reality into your mind without warning and turning your whole view of yourself upside-down and inside out. Perhaps I’m more prone to this because my natal Mercury is conjunct Uranus, but there’s been a few hair-raising moments during meditation. One minute I’m focusing on my breath, as best I can, and the next I’m somewhere else.

Some of the memories (if that’s what they are) are benign, such as suddenly finding myself halfway up a mountain, connected by a rope to a man ahead of me and blinded by the glare of the sun off the snow.

But the worst was finding myself on the ground on a battlefield with a chariot racing towards me while I scrabbled to get out of the way and being sliced open by the knife attached to the wheel. It was so vivid it made me cry out and clutch at my belly! 😱

Is this a soul memory or an ancestral memory or something else? My family is Celtic and some say they used scythed chariots in battle, as described by Julius Caesar when he invaded Britain in 54 BCE. So it’s possible. But why this memory and why now? There are more recent ancestors who’ve had a more profound effect on my psyche, like my schizophrenic grandfather. Then again, maybe these things are connected?

It’s no coincidence that I have Mars conjunct the south node – my soul has probably had multiple lives killing and being killed. But all this speculation doesn’t help me. The point is to understand the feelings and overcome the fear of death. When I can relive a ‘memory’ like that without reacting, then I’ll know I’ve transcended!

The awakening process itself can also lead to trauma, especially if you experience a sudden revelation or breakthrough that shatters your previous worldview and identity. The fire of illumination that’s released during the process of individuation is linked to pain and suffering, as seen in the myth of Prometheus. Awakening can be isolating and lead to social ostracism until you find others who have experienced the same thing and can form a new community.

My initial awakening happened in my early 20s during the breakdown of my false self when my progressed Sun moved to conjunct Pluto. Saturn was also transiting my 12th house and was then joined by Uranus and Neptune. The Uranus Neptune conjunction in Capricorn was quincunx my Moon and conjunct my Part of Fortune when I first became conscious of my higher Self and my spiritual journey began. (More on that here)

This demonstrates that these experiences are rarely the work of just one planet and it sometimes feels as if they’re ganging up on you! Uranus and Neptune often work as a tag team in my experience and they were at it again when I ‘had’ my first satori 12 years after the initial breakthrough. By then Neptune was conjunct my Ascendant and Uranus was conjunct my north node in Pisces and together they shoved me onto the next stage of my journey. (More on that here)

The awakening process usually unfolds in stages, gradually opening up more layers of your being and awareness. Each time you have a breakthrough it releases another load of shadow material that you’ve repressed and now have to deal with. It often feels like you’re going two steps forward and one step back.

The individuation process requires the integration of the shadow so this is unavoidable. It confronts you with your greatest fears and blind spots and weaknesses so you can overcome them and become stronger and more whole. The most egregious example of this in my experience happened when Uranus was transiting opposite my natal Pluto and threw me into my own personal hell. (More on that here)

The ultimate purpose behind the awakening process is to strip away everything that prevents you from remembering who you really are, and as Adyashanti says, this is an inherently destructive process:

“Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It’s seeing through the façade of pretence. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.”

Thankfully, this doesn’t usually happen all at once. The return to the source of your soul unfolds in stages through four conditions of evolution which we’ll look at next…

For more on the house placements of Uranus watch these great conversations with Kristin Fontana and Ari Moshe Wolfe.

Read whole series here

Images: Purple; Aurora; Shocked; Red

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