There aren’t many good books about Uranus and Liz Greene’s The Art of Stealing Fire: Uranus in the Horoscope was out of print for many years. So when The Wessex Astrologer issued a reprint, I eagerly snapped it up and wasn’t disappointed. The text is a transcript of two seminars given in London in January and February 1996 as part of the CPA Seminar Series on psychological astrology.

The first part of the book covers the myths of Ouranos and Prometheus and how we relate to the Uranus archetype as individuals. There’s a breakdown of how Uranus works in each house in the natal chart and a small section on aspects to natal planets. Then the second part of the book covers the cycles of Saturn and Uranus and the transits they make to their own placements, showing how they interact and balance each other.

Greene is particularly keen to correct the usual view of Uranus as being related to individuality. She emphasises right from the start that Uranus isn’t concerned with individual development because what it symbolises is:

“the antithesis of individual expression (which is solar)”

Uranus is a collective planet so it tends to work through mass consciousness and can be destructive to the individual. It inspires visions of the future that trigger revolutions driven by abstract ideas that often overlook human emotions and values. Under the influence of Uranus you can be swept up in a reforming zeal that ignores the real suffering caused by revolutionary change in the collective.

It’s also important to remember that the Uranian rebel doesn’t sit on one side or the other of the political spectrum. We tend to see Uranus as progressive and allied with the ‘Left’ but it might be more realistic to call it reactionary. Uranus will rebel against whatever the norm happens to be in society if that norm goes against the Uranian ideal. But if the social norm does reflect the ideal, Uranus will react against anyone who rejects the norm, as she explains:

“Try being a genuine individual, for example, within the framework of a Uranian ideal community, such as the hippie communes of the 1960s, which seemed so individualistic to the more conventionally minded. They were as collective as the collective which they so passionately opposed.”

When it comes down to it, Uranus can be just as much a tyrant as Saturn.

It’s Uranus’ intellectual bias that makes it so easy to overlook feelings and empathy and that makes atrocity more likely. You can dehumanise others because you’ve cut yourself off from your own humanity, and you might not even realise that you’ve done it because it works unconsciously. You get taken over by something that you don’t understand and can’t control, and unleash intolerance, bigotry and slaughter in the name of the ideal.

This is more likely to happen where there isn’t a strong ego or sense of self that can hold space for the individual:

“Because of Uranus’ tendency to generate dissociation and possession by an archetypal idea, it is urgent that there is a person at home, a strong ego-consciousness that can contain the Promethean vision…”

Without a strong ego you can become possessed by the Uranian archetype and overtaken by ideological fervour, convinced you’re right and that you must force everybody else to see what you have seen. She gives Hitler as the obvious example who had Uranus on the ascendant.

When Uranus strikes, you need to be able to step back from the urgency of the vision for long enough to think things through on a more human level, and ask: “Am I morally capable of implementing [this vision] without my integrity being destroyed?”

Of course, many would simply decide that yes, they are – I’m on the right side of history! I’m doing God’s work! I’m serving humanity! And other delusions of grandeur. But:

“Without such sober questioning, we are at the mercy of something which is not intrinsically destructive, but which is archetypal and collective; and it may mow us down as easily as enlightening us. Maybe it will not do so globally, in the sense of a Third Reich, but it can flatten our individual values and feelings in specific areas of our personal lives, and then we must live with the consequences.”

Sometimes I felt Greene may be pushing the “Uranus isn’t about individuality” line a bit too hard and was in danger of overstating it. But she’s just trying to counterbalance the overly positive delineations that many give to this planet (and Aquarius).

Uranus does serve an important purpose in balancing the crystallisation of Saturn by breaking you out of structures that are too limiting or stagnant. Obviously, you’re not always happy about that. But Uranus transits can create greater awareness of your individuality and your potential – what you could become.

So it’s not entirely wrong to equate Uranus with individuality. It’s part of the process of you becoming an individual but it needs to be balanced and contained by a strong Saturn and Sun.

The cycles of Saturn and Uranus are synchronised early in life but slip out of alignment as you age. They often work as a tag team where Saturn crystallises structures and Uranus shatters them. But it can also work in reverse, where Uranus reveals a new potential and Saturn makes it real.

For example, when Uranus transited opposite my natal Sun, I started writing following a ‘bolt from the blue’ inspiration. Then a few years later, Saturn moved to conjunct my Sun and I won a screenwriting competition which consolidated the breakthrough triggered by Uranus. The Uranus transit wasn’t disruptive at the time but it did change the course of my life, with Uranus serving the development of my individuality (Sun) backed up by Saturn.

To get the best out of Uranus, or any of the transpersonal/collective planets, you need a strong sense of self that’s grounded in reality. Without that you’re liable to be blasted to bits by Uranus. Your sense of self needs to be authentic and this is what Uranus is trying to achieve when he zaps you with a new perspective or possibility. Then you need to incorporate that vision into your sense of who you are, which might not be a comfortable process.

Greene explains that the masses are conservative by nature, ego-focused and averse to too much change or disruption. This is why Uranus is experienced as revolutionary and destructive by so many people.

“…there is so much potential good and creative energy in Uranian vision. But there must be an individual ego which can mediate it, and consider the consequences on a human level.”

She says this especially applies to astrologers because we can get caught up in the wonder of peering into the hidden workings of the cosmos and seeing the beauty of how transits line up with events. But then what do you do when confronted by the suffering these events cause?

There’s a price to pay for the increased consciousness, the stolen fire, that Uranus brings. It gives us God-like powers to create technology and subdue nature but do we have the wisdom to use it? At best, the Uranian vision creates genuine progress in line with humanitarian ideals and principles, but it so often goes the other way.

To balance and ground this vision in reality you must re-integrate your shadow and internalise your projections. This creates more inner conflict that you then have to learn to live with, like Prometheus chained to the rock having his liver pecked out every day.

“Jung believed that the only resolution of the suffering lies in giving something back to the collective – an individual creation, to replace what has been stolen. This is perhaps the most profound way of viewing the meaning of Uranus for the individual.”

If you want to understand how Uranus works in your life, I highly recommend The Art of Stealing Fire. The text includes lots of interaction with the seminar participants with interesting sidebars and insights into various subjects, as well as case studies and a chance for Liz Greene to do some off-the-cuff psychoanalysing of the audience. The book is suitable for beginners and essential for experienced astrologers too. I learned a lot and my copy is now covered in pencil scribbles and asterisks!

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