Trickster Tag

Force of Nature—Uranus returns to Taurus—March 6th

And now you’ll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won’t be false, and they won’t be true
but they’ll be real―Mary Oliver

We cannot ignore the wind of change that is blowing across the world right now. We cannot ignore the fierce rattle at the windows of economies and governments. We’re living at a tipping point of turbulence and transformation that will test our spiritual mettle.

These winds that shake the barley may blast us from the echo chamber of our minds, unstop our ears, open our hearts. As Einstein said, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  Now more than ever we require a new dimension to our consciousness, a new way of Being in a world where nothing is certain.

Most of us doggedly resist change, pay lip-service to diversity, avoid new beginnings. We’re hard-wired to take the path well-travelled.  And yet, on some level, most of us know that the external props in our lives are as flimsy as straws when the wild wind blows. Nothing and everything has changed.

Our initiatives and ambitions may be undermined this week, visibility obscured. Mercury—Magician and Trickster—begins to swim backwards in Pisces on March 5^th, entering a three-week Retrograde period until March 30^th, during which Mercury also conjoins Neptune for the third time. Mercury Retrograde cycles offer us a new perspective, an opportunity to retrace our steps, to rethink, repair, redo, return perhaps to where we started from. Mercury rules data, information, communication, travel, mechanical things.  Mercury in Pisces floats and dreams, softening sharp edges, blurring what we believe is the truth. On March 6^th Civil, a new platform for investigative independent journalism is launched, born on the winged sandals of Mercury, the messenger, the net-worker, the communicator. We’re coming back with real stories.

Mercury Retrograde cycles have gained notoriety for miscommunication, transport delays, and technology that malfunctions.  But if we allow ourselves to yield; if we sigh out, soften; if we can relinquish our tight grip of structure and schedules, we may be astonished. Mercury Retrograde periods are times to notice how the outer world reflects our inner world.

The New Moon in Pisces on March 6^th signals an expectant new beginning, that may draw us deeper into concealed currents of emotion. In Pisces, we don’t pare down, divide or analyse; rather, boundaries dissolve, colours run, everything empties into One.

As we return once more to that pure potent energy of freshness, we feel shiny and new.  The Sun conjunct Neptune swells the surge of fresh water, softening the sharp edges of our personal will, seeping through our defenses, stirring compassion, imagination, and our child-like belief in whimsy, in mystery, in magic.

This is also the day that Uranus returns to Taurus. We may begin to trace our footsteps along a road that winds back to the months between May and November 2018.

We may take a moment to revisit the discomfort of adjustment to new circumstance, the choices, the decisions, the roads we travelled.

Uranus remains in Taurus until 2026, shaking and jolting us from the steady rhythm of our cossetted lives, widening the fault lines in our relationships, swallowing the earth from under our feet. As we ricochet from our rut, Uranus may escort epiphanies that separate us from what we love and value, pushing us over the edge. Uranus destabilises, brings anarchy, chaos, revolution and rebellion. Uranus is the Sky god who brings innovation on winds of change.

As Uranus moves through Taurus, cracks will appear in financial systems. Where we’ve been holding on greedily to possessions and those things we think we value, we may experience sudden losses, upsets, that unchain us from those things that bind us. In the West, our worship of materialism, our lust for power, and insatiable craving for more and more is the wound that cuts us off from Mother Earth, from the natural rhythm of our bodies. Uranus in Taurus will highlight our physicality, our inter-connectedness with all living things and the cycles of Nature. Taurus is associated with cattle. The BBC Four series, Secret Life of Farm Animals shows how cows thrive in the wild, intuitively eating those herbs and shrubs that aid digestion and control parasites, how they love music and problem solving, how they tenderly nurture their young. As Uranus moves through Taurus, the conditions of cattle in the meat and dairy industries will have consequences.  Yuval Noah Harari writes, “You want to know how super-intelligent cyborgs might treat ordinary flesh-and-blood humans? Better start by investigating how humans treat their less intelligent animal cousins. It’s not a perfect analogy, of course, but it is the best archetype we can actually observe rather than just imagine.”

As Uranus moves through Taurus, climate change and erratic weather patterns will remind us of the inter-connectedness of all things. As Uranus moves through Taurus, we may encounter the Minotaur at the centre of the labyrinth: that part of ourselves, or the society we live in, that has been secreted away, feared, disowned, denied. With Uranus we may feel a sense of alienation, of being an outcast. We may feel restless, distraught, utterly alone. Uranus is associated with breakthroughs, the kind of breaking through that breaks us open, brings us to our knees―the sudden death of a loved one, the shocking news that upends our world, the lightning-bolt encounter that electrifies us, shifts our perspective.

When we’re shook up and shattered, on our knees, we may receive a flash of insight that directs us to a new bend in the road.

To live authentically in this new world, we will require grit and integrity and the spiritual strength to hold the tension of opposites. To enter, as the Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, who lived in the burning times of The Inquisition (1500s) said: “let us remember that within us there is a palace of immense magnificence”. 

For astrology workshops in the UK and consultations on Skype or Whatsapp, please email me―ingrid@trueheartwork.com