Business as Unusual: Uranus in Taurus

Greetings, and welcome back to journeys! This month, we look at the return of the planet Uranus to the sign Taurus which begins this year.

The only people who are alive today who will have Uranus in Taurus (except those about to be born) will be in their early to mid 80s, so the information about how Uranus in this sign behaves in society and how it affects Uranus tribes of other zodiac signs will probably be more relevant to readers, unless they know someone elderly. Information about how Uranus in Taurus behaves in society and history is, however, of great import to literally everyone alive on the face of this planet at this time.

When the planet Uranus entered Aries (2010 being the preview, 2011 being the committed start) we saw, basically immediately,  many obvious and direct manifestations of its qualities – angry crowds, civil wars, massive explosions (Deepwater Horizon), Fukushima, political and social protests, militant movements bent on revolution and overthrow, social media turned into a weapon and a means to direct force, cyber-warfare, and many more events that introduced massive social pressures and threatening situations globally. These themes and more have been the talk of the worlds people and media for several years now. This era is about to end, the zeitgeist is fading with Uranus leaving Aries for Taurus this spring, returning to Aries for a brief farewell and review of business later this year and early next, before finally entering Taurus for good next spring. This year of 2018, then, is the preview year of Uranus in Taurus and the wrap-up year of Uranus in Aries, but it is 2019 in which the Taurus show really starts to get on the road. This years preview, however, is looking set to be very dramatic indeed.

In a previous article I presented a discussion on the general nature of Uranus cycles, which I will reproduce here for ease of reference and because it is an important part of the context of this article.

“The Uranus cycles are the ones we have to truly expand our minds to grasp. They are currently cycles connected with the integration of technology and human awareness since they resonate with the pace of innovation within the prevailing paradigm (which is scientific in our case), and given that the macro cycle is positioned towards the upper limit of our life span it also has resonance with the potential totality of conscious awareness that is present in human beings. In other words, it expresses the point at which the elastic nature of human awareness reaches its natural limits and begins to snap unless it radically adapts. It is difficult to remember everything (anything?) or even to care about the latest new thing when so much has already happened. By the time we are in our 80s the world has changed so radically from when we came in that it is almost unrecognisable, and we are struggling to keep up. Think on that – think of the struggle someone in their 80s has coming to terms with the fact that when they were born almost nobody had TV except the very rich, then they look up and contrast with today. Now, people have their own channels – and we just took one example. Its a total mindbomb nobody back then could have seen coming, and thats what awaits us all at the end of this cycle. Think on where you came into the world, now picture that accelerated far beyond your imagination. This is the spirit of the macro cycle. It is also part of the Great Work that is woven into reality by the Greaters.

This fact – that nobody can project crazily enough into the future to foresee the end of this macro cycle once it begins – is one of the greatest dangers facing us in our use of technology and scientific innovation. Our embrace of technology as an avatar of change and a bringer of solutions to our dilemmas is loaded with unforeseen consequences that we will only see play out fully if we reach a ripe old age, and this is what we need to realise – that only these people have this wisdom, and thus their alienation is part of our doom because we do not learn what they have learned, and just repeat the same mistakes on an elevated scale. Thus, the Uranus macro cycle is very much about how we treat our elders – will they be able to transmit what they have learned from their turn with (for example) Uranus in Scorpio to the newly born children of Uranus in Scorpio, or will that voice be lost because they are no longer seen as having a functional role in society?

This connection to the elderly is because the Uranus macro cycle is in a 3:1 resonance with the Saturn cycle – one orbit of Uranus around the Sun is equal to 3 orbits of Saturn. The third Saturn return and the Uranus return combine to bring to us an awareness of life coming to an end but also of having come back to the beginning. Therefore, the macro cycles of Saturn and Uranus intertwine about human awareness as it interacts with time and form the core or basis of collective or generational astrology. We might (as I propose) have to add Chiron to that heart of the matter, only time will tell.

The Uranus micro cycle is one quarter of the Saturn macro cycle, placing Uranus in resonance with Saturn on both scales. As mentioned previously, the 7 year scale of the micro cycle is resonant with generations we encounter in our schooling when we are young, and exactly when in the 7 year period we are born has a lot to do with the quality of social environment we encounter in school years. If we are born in the middle of the period, with Uranus in the middle of the sign, everyone we go to school with will be of the same collective mind and will easily form bonds (which can have an effect on sports teams, for example). If however we are born at the end or beginning of the period (with Uranus at the beginning or end of a sign) there will be more clashes in the early social environment, perhaps more ‘us and them’ cliquishness, with some groups being potentially very tiny and thus alienated, particularly when you add classroom division into the equation. However, this is a healthier environment in terms of variety and the kind of creativity that arises from chaos rather than co-operation. Its a matter of perspective, but also of recognising the different generations and finding ways to cater to both at the same time – then the magic is often remarkable and outstrips that of those with a more vanilla flavoured upbringing.

The micro cycle delineates a ‘techno-cult’ of some kind that forms around new technology and the first children to be exposed to it. Something new is introduced which has rapid and irreversible consequences for society, and what that is will be resonant with the sign that Uranus is in. It is important to understand what a technology is in the eyes of this planet, however – it is not necessarily a gadget or an invention, it can also be an ideal that drives societies, a ‘new wave’ of any kind or a major shock or collapse that forces movement in new directions, often on multiple trajectories. It leads to a new kind of meaning to things entering play. I have a theory that gatherings of the tribe bring about a rapid acceleration of change – that if you want to make a big, quick change, you get everyone with Uranus in a certain sign to be your ally. Rallies and demonstrations that are organised with a mind to emphasising the breakthrough potential of this planet may have a greater chance of forcing change, but that change may well be out of their control. This is why I have not spent much time writing about it. I feel we should work with Jupiter, Saturn and Chiron first. These also represent easier cycles to wield in intentional directions.”

To begin with, as usual, I will give you the timeline of Uranus in Taurus for the last millennium and the next hundred years, coupled with a detailed and lengthy but incomplete report of its historical impacts. After that I will discuss the themes I see, or some of them, and then we will get into some of the astrological details. On the off chance that anyone has actually been reading every single word of these since I have begun sharing them, you may have noticed that many events had been mentioned before in other articles. From this, you can see that any single event in history or any single thing is actually a complex formed from different astrological influences, from different sources. For example, in the list below you will learn that Uranus in Taurus gives us the atomic and nuclear age of power. However, that development also shows up in my article on Pluto in Leo. Therefore, the emergence or birth of the nuclear and atomic age has characteristics of both of these influences. Additionally there are nuances, with the first atomic bomb attack happening under Uranus in Gemini, not Uranus in Taurus (although Pluto was still in Leo). Uranus in Taurus addresses the arrival of a new resource, horrific weaponisation of that power developed alongside but was only deployed later. These nuances can be critical when you are doing astrological research.

Uranus in Taurus, 1000 – 2100 AD

• May 17 1013 – Apr 14 1021 (not including Oct 22 1013 – Mar 7 1014 or Jun 26 1020 – Nov 10 1020)
• Apr 28 1097 – Mar 25 1105 (not including Nov 19 1097 – Feb 11 1098 or Jun 7 1104 – Dec 4 1104)
• Jul 15 1180 – Feb 25 1189 (not including Aug 12 1180 – Apr 12 1181 or May 21 1188 – Jan 3 1189)
• Jun 6 1264 – May 5 1272 (not including Sep 22 1264 – Mar 25 1265 or Jul 28 1271 – Sep 30 1271)
• May 16 1348 – Apr 18 1356 (not including Oct 17 1348 – Mar 7 1349 or Jul 1 1355 – Oct 30 1355)
• Apr 26 1432 – Mar 29 1440 (not including Nov 14 1432 – Feb 10 1433 or Jun 10 1439 – Nov 24 1439)
• Jul 11 1515 – Mar 3 1524 (not including Aug 12 1515 – Apr 9 1516 or May 23 1523 – Dec 23 1523)
• Jun 12 1599 – May 15 1607 (not including Oct 2 1599 – Mar 31 1600 or Aug 9 1606 – Oct 2 1606)
• May 21 1683 – Apr 28 1691 (not including Oct 28 1683 – Mar 12 1684 or Jul 10 1690 – Nov 4 1690)
• May 3 1767 – Apr 8 1775 (not including Nov 29 1767 – Feb 15 1768 or Jun 19 1774 – Dec 2 1774)
• Jul 8 1850 – Mar 14 1859 (not including Sep 3 1850 – Apr 16 1851 or Jun 2 1858 – Jan 1 1859)
• Jun 6 1934 – May 15 1942 (not including Oct 10 1934 – Mar 28 1935 or Aug 7 1941 – Oct 5 1941)
• May 15 2018 – Apr 26 2026 (not including Nov 6 2018 – Mar 6 2019 or Jul 7 2025 – Nov 8 2025)

HISTORY

Notable events in history from these times that display a Uranus in Taurus motif:

1013-1021: Battle of Contarf ends Danish rule in Ireland but a Dane kills Irish King Brian Boru; after converting to Christianity in France, Olaf Haraldsson returns to Norway and promptly conquers land held by Danish, Swedish and Norwegian lords; Vladimir the Great dies and his domain splits into warring fiefs that eventually give rise to Belarus, Russia and Ukraine; Canute, Prince (and soon also King) of Denmark, invades and becomes King of all England; ‘Canute the Great’ codifies the laws of England; in China a hermit introduces the prime minister to “variolation,” an inoculation using germs from smallpox survivors; Machmud of Ghazni, a kingdom in central Asia, invades India and takes so many captives that the price of slaves plummets for several years; the Sunnis of Kairouan revolt against the Shi’ite Zirid Dynasty; the massive Kandariya Mahadeva Hindu Temple is completed in the Chandela capital of Khajuraho; Chola empire of India invades island of Lanka with 150,000 troops (largest amphibian military operation to date).

1097-1105: The conflicts of the First Crusade; the Kingdom of Jerusalem is founded in the Middle East; great flood of Goa leaves thousands cut off from the war-torn city of Ohpen Bheta; Tower of London takes in its first prisoner; Statue (moai) building begins about this time on Easter Island; William IX, the Duke of Aquitaine, returns from the Crusades and composes songs about his adventures, thus becoming the first troubadour (he is excommunicated for licentious acts, but his lyrics lead to the “courtly love” genre); troubadour musicians organize in southern France; intense urban activity in north and central Europe.

1264-1272: Baron’s War is fought in England (a high point of struggle for political power between the landed aristocracy of England and the King); first English Parliament is called into session; first known meeting of Irish Parliament; Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, moves his capital from Karakorum to what later becomes Beijing; Marco Polo departs from Venice with his father and uncle on his famous journey to Kublai Khan’s China; St. Thomas Aquinas pens his “Summa Theologica,” in which he attempts to reconcile theology with economic conditions; the Inquisition formed in Rome under Pope Clement IV; Mongol hordes sack Babylon and end 1,500 years of rule over Eastern Jewry by the high Mesopotamian priest known as the Exxilarch; Pope Clement IV dies and the following papal election fails to choose a new pope for almost three years, precipitating the later creation of stringent rules governing the electoral procedures; Roger Bacon completes his work ‘Opus Majus’ (the work contains wide-ranging discussion of mathematics, optics, alchemy, astronomy, astrology, and other topics); Pierre de Maricourt first describes magnetic poles and remarks on the nonexistence of isolated magnetic poles; Jews forced to wear yellow badges and other identifying labels in many places; the Eighth Crusade; construction of Caerphilly Castle, the largest in Wales, is completed.

1348-1356: King Edward III of England establishes the Order of the Garter, the first English order of knighthood; Europe and Eurasia decimated by Black Death plague – estimates range from 75 million to 200 million deaths; countless Jews are persecuted and killed after being blamed for poisoning wells and causing the Black Death; nobility suffer shortage of labour following millions of deaths; Maori ancestors arrive at New Zealand on seven legendary canoes from Hawaii, the mother-island of the east Polynesians; leaning tower of Pisa was constructed; Luang Prabang is founded (it was the royal capital of the kingdom of Laos and a center of Laotian Buddhism and court arts); the Treason Act of 1351 defines treason in English law (it is currently one of the earliest statues still in force under English law).

1432-1440: The Thames River freezes; the 350-foot high dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, the cathedral of Florence, is completed following 140 years of construction; foundation stone of Nantes Cathedral in France is laid; Incas establish an imperial state in the Andes of Peru (including the building of over 25,000 miles of road); Johannes Gutenburg invents the printing press with movable type (this changes everything, much like the Internet has in the modern day); kissing is banned in England in order to stop germs from spreading; Byzantium formally submits to Rome; in Ming Dynasty China a long episode of drought, flood, locust infestation, and famine cripple agriculture and commerce in areas throughout the country; Ming Dynasty disbands their naval fleet, altering the long standing balance of power in the Indian Ocean; China returns to a policy of isolation; Portuguese traders deliver their first cargo of African slaves to Lisbon; Incorporated Guild of Smiths is founded in Newcastle upon Tyne; Florentine polymath Leon Battista Alberti begins writing the treatise ‘On Painting’, in which he argues for the importance of mathematical perspective in the creation of three-dimensional vision on a two-dimensional plane; Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia becomes the first to explore the western coast of Africa, past the Tropic of Cancer; Prussian Confederation is formed.

1515-1524: At the Battle of Marj Dabik (north of Aleppo) the Turks beat Syria with the support of artillery, opening the way to 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule over most of the Arab world; Martin Luther nails his ‘Ninety-five Thesis’ to the door of the Wittenberg Palace All Saints’ Church (signaling the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Germany and Protestantism in general, shattering the external structure of the medieval church and at the same time reviving the religious consciousness of Europe); Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther; first public burning of books; first published account of the discovery of North America appears in “De Rebus Oceanicus et Novo Orbe” by the Italian historian Peter Martyr; Ferdinand Magellan makes the first voyage to successfully circumnavigate the world (he is killed by the journey but one of his ships eventually makes it); Sir Thomas Pert reaches Hudson Bay; Erasmus publishes his version of the New Testament; Thomas More publishes his “Utopia,”; music printed from engraved plates is used for the first time in Italy; Titian paints “Offering to Venus”; Albrecht Durer, German artist and engraver, designs a flying machine for use in war; Leonardo da Vinci dies aged 67; Raphael dies on his 37th birthday; founding of the Hapsburg dynasty; Nanak founds Sikhism; the last Mameluke sultan of Egypt is hanged; smallpox is carried to America in the party of Hernando Cortes; the Aztec and their leader, Moctezuma, welcome Hernando Cortez and his 650 explorers to their capital at Tenochtitlan (Montezuma, believing that Cortez could be the white-skinned deity Quetzalcoatl, whose return had been foretold for centuries, greets the arrival of these strange visitors with courtesy–at least until it becomes clear that the Spaniards are all too human and bent on conquest. Cortez and his men, dazzled by the Aztec riches and horrified by the human sacrifice central to their religion, began to systematically plunder Tenochtitlán and tear down the bloody temples. Montezuma’s warriors attack the Spaniards but with the aid of Indian allies, Spanish reinforcements, superior weapons and disease, Cortez defeats an empire of approximately 25 million people); Conquistadors under Cortez plunder gold from Aztecs; Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, Spanish explorer, sails from Cuba and discovers the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan; envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America; Juan de Grijalva, Spanish explorer, names the area comprising Mexico, Central America north of Panama, the Spanish West Indies, and south-west North America New Spain and is also the first known European to smoke tobacco; Aztec chronicler describes a comet as a “flaming ear of corn”; Seville Cathedral completed after 115 years of work; Florentine merchants granted a monopoly in the African slave trade; Bohemians minted silver Joachimsthalers, “thalers” for short – this was the basis for the word “dollar”; first running of the bulls was held at Pamplona, Spain; the first turkeys are introduced to Europe from America; first marine insurance policies are issued in Florence; Ottoman Emperor Suleiman the Magnificent successfully overcomes the Knights Hospitaller, bringing about formation of the Knights of Malta.

1599-1607: Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, the “Virgin Queen,” dies; she is succeeded by her cousin’s (Mary Queen of Scots) son, King James VI of Scotland, uniting the crowns of Scotland and England (ceremonies are limited because of plague); England’s King James I decrees the design of the original Union Flag (also referred to as the Union Jack); Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned in Tower of London; Globe Theater has its first (recorded) performance; Shakespeare writes ‘As You Like It’ (“All the worlds a stage, and all the men and women merely players”); first recorded performance of Shakespeare’s comedy “Twelfth Night”; William Shakespeare’s tragedy “Othello” is first presented (at Whitehall Palace); “Henry IV”, “Henry V”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Much Ado About Nothing” are published; Shakespeare writes “King Lear”, “Antony and Cleopatra” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth”; many other works by Shakespeare are produced; Christopher Marlowe publishes his version of the “Tragical History of Dr. Faustus”; first part of Miguel de Cervantes’ satire on the theme of chivalry, “Don Quixote”, is published in Madrid (it is one of the first significant novels in the western literary tradition and becomes a global bestseller almost at once); Arjun, the 5th Sikh guru, compiles the sacred book “Granth Sahib,” a compilation of over 6,000 hymns meant to be sung to classical Indian ragas; Kabuki theater starts in Japan; Tokyo replaces Kyoto as the administrative center of Japan; founding of the Tokugawa Shogunate; Caravaggio signs a contract with Pope Clement VIII’s treasurer and paints many works before fleeing after accidentally committing murder; Galileo invents the thermometer; Arequipa, Peru, is destroyed as the Huaynaputina volcano explodes catastrophically in the largest volcanic explosion in South America in historic times; the eruption continues with associated earthquakes and devastates the socioeconomic fabric of southern Peru and neighboring Chile and Bolivia; explosion in Peru has effects on climate around the Northern Hemisphere where 1601 is the coldest year in six centuries, leading to heavy summer rains and famine in Russia that kills a third of its population and sparks a revolution; British East India Company is chartered by Queen Elizabeth I; Dutch East India company is chartered; Christian missionaries arrive in India with the first European traders; first official condemnation of tobacco is made (by King James I); the Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot is foiled; Henry IV establishes a building code that sets architectural themes; sudden flood (possibly a tsunami) around the Bristol Channel in southwest Britain kills at least 2,000 people and becomes the worst natural disaster ever recorded in Britain; William Gilbert publishes ‘De Magnete’, one of the first significant scientific books published in England, describing the Earth’s magnetic field for the first time and initiating the beginning of modern geomagnetism; ‘Year of Three Popes’ (the last until 1978); the announcement of national bankruptcy in Spain causes Bank of Genoa to fail.

1683-1691: The first volume of Isaac Newton’s  “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” is published, inventing differential and integral calculus and stating Newton’s laws of motion which obliterate the Aristotelian concept of inertia; Newton declares that time is absolute… “It flows equably without relation to anything external.”; the first settlers from Germany to US leave aboard the ship ‘Concord’; Antonie van Leeuwenhoek reported the existence of bacteria; James II defeats James, the Duke of Monmouth, at the Battle of Sedgemoor, the last major battle to be fought on English soil; by revoking the Edict of Nantes, Louis XIV abrogated the religious liberties of the Huguenots and declares France entirely Catholic again; in Canada there was a shortage of currency and playing cards are assigned monetary values for use as money; clocks begin to be made with 2 hands for the first time; Quakers in Germantown, Pa., adopt the first formal antislavery resolution in America; William of Orange makes a triumphant march into London as James II flees in the “Glorious Revolution”; British Parliament adopts the Bill of Rights limiting the right of a king to govern without the consent of Parliament and so representing the end of the concept of divine right of kings; England’s Protestant King William III of Orange is victorious over his father-in-law, the Catholic King James II in Ireland, touching off three centuries of religious bloodshed; war between England and France leads them to use their native American allies as proxies; the first paper money in America was issued (the currency is used to pay soldiers fighting a war against Quebec); Iroquois take Montreal; Peter the Great became tsar of Russia; the clarinet is invented in Germany; Edmond Halley, Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke have a conversation in which Hooke later claims not only to have derived the inverse-square law, but also all the laws of planetary motion; the River Thames and two miles out to sea freezes; Peter the Great decrees the construction of the Great Siberian Road to China; planet Uranus is first sighted and recorded by John Flamsteed, who mistakenly catalogs it as the star 34 Tauri.

1767-1775: Industrial Revolution gets into full swing; tensions rise and peak with the outbreak of the American Revolution; massive droughts in Bengal lead to the Bengal famine of 1770, in which ten million people die (a third of the population), the worst natural disaster in human history in terms of lives lost; the British East India Company increases its demands on the Bengali people to keep profits up; Moscow plague riot results from an outbreak of bubonic plague which kills 57,000; credit crisis of 1772 or the panic of 1772 (a peacetime financial crisis which originates in London and then spreads to other parts of Europe) forces banks to close and threatens the British East India Trading Company with bankruptcy; Los Angeles was born as El Pueblo de Nuestra de Los Angeles; Jeanne Baptiste Pointe de Sable settles what is now known as Chicago; boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon line, is agreed upon (the line, extended in 1784, came to be known as the dividing line between free-soil states and slave states); birth era of the modern circus by Philip Astley; stampede at a celebration of the newly wedded Marie Antoinette and Louis-Auguste in Paris kills more than a hundred people; volcano Mount Papandayan in West Java erupts and partially collapses, the debris avalanche killing several thousands; first US Chamber of Commerce forms; a group of English traders break away from Jonathan’s coffee house and move to a new building which becomes the forerunner of the London Stock Exchange; English House of Lords rules that authors do not have perpetual copyright; British Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the colonies; British troops taunted by a crowd of colonists fire on an unruly mob in Boston and kill five citizens in what comes to be known as the Boston Massacre; some 50-60 “Sons of Liberty” of revolutionary Samuel Adams disguised as Mohawks defy the tax on tea and board a British East India Tea Company ship, dumping 342 chests of British tea into the Boston Harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party; Rhode Island becomes the first colony to prohibit importation of slaves; first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; Capt. James Cook charts the coasts of both the north and south islands of New Zealand and Australia; Cook discovers Great Barrier Reef by running into it; Cook becomes the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle; construction of Britain’s Kew Observatory is completed (it is an astronomical and terrestrial magnetic observatory); entire Ottoman fleet is defeated and destroyed by the Russians at the 3-day battle of Chesme on the Aegean Sea; in India a famine wipes out a third of the population of Bengal, hardening opinion against the British East India Company; Calcutta becomes the capital of British India; authorized King James Version of the Bible is published in England; invention of toothbrush by prisoner William Addis in Newgate Prison; a group of 79 underwriters establish the Society of Lloyd’s, Lloyd’s of London, at the Lloyd’s coffee shop; slavery is in effect outlawed in England; first naval attack of Revolutionary War takes place when residents of Providence, RI., storm the HMS Gaspee, burn it to the waterline and shoot the captain; Daniel Rutherford discovers nitrogen; shoelaces are invented in England; Joseph Priestley, a British chemist, recommends the use of a rubber to remove pencil marks; James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile; Paris Faculty of Medicine declares potatoes to be an edible food; first public museum in America is established in Charleston, S.C.; large earthquake destroys so much of Antigua that the Spanish move away and build a new capital on a plateau 30 miles away that becomes Guatemala City; first sighting of the Orion nebula is made by William Herschel; conjunction of the Moon, Mercury, Venus and Jupiter in the same constellation spreads panic in Europe; Charles Messier discovers the Whirlpool Galaxy, an interacting, grand design spiral galaxy located at a distance of approximately 23 million light-years; Charles Messier publishes his catalogue of astronomical objects (Messier Objects) now known to include galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae; Kabul becomes the capital of Afghanistan; John Wilkinson invents his boring machine, considered by some to be the first machine tool; first recorded town cricket match is played at Horsham, England; America’s first insane asylum opens; Wolfgang von Kempelen develops a mechanical speaking machine, the world’s first speech synthesizer, James Hargreaves takes out a patent on his invention, the Spinning Jenny (a machine for spinning, drawing and twisting cotton); James Watt develops his steam engine, later to become a fundamental building block of the Industrial Revolution.

1850-1859: Panic of 1857 is the worlds first worldwide economic crisis (panic is sparked when a wooden-hulled steamship, the SS Central America, sinks while carrying 21 tons of gold from California to New York); court case in New York (Livingstone v Bank of New York) holds that a bank could not be deemed insolvent merely because, during a general panic, it could not redeem its notes; Charles Darwin publishes ‘The Origin of Species’; Benjamin Silliman fractionates petroleum by distillation for the first time; anti-slavery movements take root in America; Isaac Merritt Singer is granted a patent on his lockstitch sewing machine (he forms I.M. Singer & Co.); Henry Bessemer presents a paper titled “The Manufacture of Iron Without Fuel”and establishes the Bessemer Steel Works in Sheffield (his Bessemer conversion process revolutionizes the steel industry); English mathematician and physicist George Gabriel Stokes names and explains the phenomena of fluorescence; first attempt to lay a transatlantic telegraph cable fails; the first transatlantic cable is created, linking Newfoundland to Ireland, but it fails completely shortly after becoming operational; Gaston Plante invents the first lead-acid rechargeable battery; Japan is hit by three earthquakes (the 8.4 Ansei Tokai Quake, 6.9 Ansei Edo Quake and 8.4 Ansei Nankai Quake) resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and widespread destruction of infrastructure; San Salvador is destroyed by an earthquake; Nez Perce elders agree to sell most of their land to the US government but gold is soon discovered in the area and the US government calls for a new deal; San Francisco Mint opens; first California State Fair is held; first edition of The New York Times is published; the Lottery of the Golden Ingots in France (some 7 million tickets are sold for one franc each); first of 17 ships arrive in SF from France following a lottery by Napoleon’s government which provided passage to some 3,000 for the gold rush; Australia’s first gold rush creates boomtowns; Herman Melville’s novel “Moby Dick” is published; Fruit of the Loom clothing is founded in Rhode Island as the B.B and R Knight Corporation; MassMutual Financial Group is begun in Massachusetts (in 2005 the company employed 27,000 people and managed assets of $350 billion); Western Union is founded as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Co; first Chinese arrive in Hawaii; first edition of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus is published; Charles Dickens authors his novels ‘David Copperfield’, ‘Bleak House’, ‘Little Dorrit’ and ‘Hard Times’; San Quentin State Prison opens; India’s first steam locomotive; massive architectural modernization of Paris begins which leaves the city paralyzed by debt but creates the landscape we know today; a third pandemic of bubonic plague breaks out in China, killing 12 million people and eventually spreading to every continent of the world; Yellow Fever kills over 9,000 people in New Orleans; first great disaster involving an ocean liner in the Atlantic occurs when the steamship Arctic sinks off the coast of Newfoundland with 300 people aboard; Pope Pius IX proclaims the dogma of the Immaculate Conception; Britain’s national meteorological office is founded; a mid-Victorian craze for household aquariums; Royal British Bank announces a suspension of business after eight directors of the bank are put on trial for conspiracy to defraud the public (and found guilty); Monaco opens its first casino; rabbits are let loose in Australia; Mendocino Indian Reservation is established in northern California; first Australian Parliament opens; Ottawa named the capital of Canada by Queen Victoria; London’s Big Ben bell, weighing over 13 tons, is cast at the Whitechapel Foundry in East London.

1934-1942: The Great Depression bites deep into the world economy; the Dust Bowl; major heat wave strikes North America; France shut down by millions of striking workers; Edward VIII abdication crisis; the ‘May Crisis’, the Munich Agreement declaration by Neville Chamberlain that “I have returned from Germany with peace for our time” followed by the immediate actual outbreak of WWII; Winston Churchill (considered one of the greatest orators of modern times) in his first address as Prime Minister tells the United Kingdom, “I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”; food rationing begins in Great Britain; Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939, giving the government full control over all persons and property; Dunkirk evacuation; Battle of Britain after Nazi occupation of France; “The Hardest Day” in the Battle of Britain in which both sides lose more aircraft combined than at any other point during the campaign, without the Luftwaffe achieving dominance over RAF Fighter Command; Churchill says “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”; bombing of Berlin begins in an all night RAF air raid; “Second Great Fire of London” (Luftwaffe carries out a massive incendiary bombing raid, starting 1,500 fires and many famous buildings, including the Guildhall, are either damaged or destroyed; demise of the League of Nations; rumor that Hitler is dead sweeps the United States as millions of CBS radio listeners hear the Führer cut off in mid-speech during a shortwave relay; attack on Pearl Harbor; Voice of America propaganda begins broadcasting; construction begins on the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, the largest in the United States during WWII; War Relocation Authority (WRA) becomes responsible for the internment of Americans of Japanese and, to a lesser extent, German and Italian descent, many of them legal citizens; Battle of Los Angeles (over 1,400 AA shells are fired at an unidentified, slow-moving object in the skies over Los Angeles for several hours, but nothing is downed, no wreckage is ever found and the official explanation is a weather balloon); Jewish Star of David is required wearing for all Jews in Nazi territory; German Lorenz cipher machine operator sends a 4,000-character message twice, allowing British mathematician Bill Tutte to decipher the machine’s coding mechanism; Joseph Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ or ‘Great Terror’ in the Soviet Union; worst coal dust explosion to date claims 1,549 lives in China; West China Famine (five million die); Tenzin Gyatso is proclaimed the tulku (rebirth) of the thirteenth Dalai Lama; Mahatma Gandhi begins a fast protesting against British rule in India; 1938 Yellow River flood (created by the Nationalist government in central China breaching embankments during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of Japanese forces) kills at least 400,000, cover and destroy thousands of square kilometers of farmland and shifts the mouth of the Yellow River hundreds of kilometers to the south; Great Hong Kong Typhoon kills an estimated 11,000 people; Hindenburg disaster; the Holocaust; death and concentration camps built; the Tsuyama massacre (Matsuo Toi kills 30 people in a village in Okayama, Japan in the world’s worst spree killing by an individual until 1982); Spanish Civil War; US National Archives and Records Administration is established; Volkswagen designed and created; first x-ray photo of entire body is made; Joseph Stalin, in his first address since German invasion, calls upon the Soviet people to carry out a “scorched earth” policy of resistance to the bitter end; Battle of Moscow begins as temperatures around Moscow drop to −12 °C and the Soviet Union launches ski troops for the first time against the freezing German forces near the city; Joseph Stalin opens the Moscow Metro to the public; US government opens a maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay and the first federal prisoners arrive; oil is discovered in Saudi Arabia; plan to construct oil pipelines under the English Channel between England and France is tested; US federal agents oversee the transfer of $1.5 million in gold from the San Francisco mint to the Denver mint (it was said to be the largest movement of treasure in the history of the world); Woodrow Wilson, the 28th US President, appears on a Gold certificate valued at $100,000, the largest note ever issued by the United States; Social Security Act becomes law as President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill; creation of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the United States; General Motors recognizes the United Automobile Workers union; minimum wage is established by law in the United States; U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is placed under the Federal Security Agency; YMCA Youth and Government program is founded; Coit Tower in Pioneer Park on Telegraph Hill opens to the public; Griffith Observatory opens in Los Angeles; historic Uptown Theater (Washington, D.C.) opens; construction of Hoover Dam is completed; Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County is opened to pedestrian traffic; LaGuardia Airport is dedicated and opens for business; dedication of Thomas Jefferson’s and Abraham Lincoln’s head at Mount Rushmore; ground breaking ceremonies are held for the Pentagon and construction begins; Niagara Bridge at Niagara Falls collapses due to an ice jam; 600 foot (180 m) long center span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (known as Galloping Gertie) collapses; Borley Rectory (“the most haunted house in England”) is destroyed by fire; Mao Tse-tung decides to abandon his base in Kiangsi due to attacks from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists and with his pregnant wife and about 30,000 Red Army troops, he sets out on the “Long March”; first pair of Jockey briefs goes on sale; first superhero to wear a skin-tight costume and mask, The Phantom, makes his first appearance; first appearance of Superman; Batman makes his first appearance; first appearance of Captain America; first ever issue of ‘The Beano’ and ‘Dandy’ children’s comics are published; ‘The Wizard of Oz’ movie premieres; Orson Welles’ film ‘Citizen Kane‘ premieres; epic historical romance film ‘Gone with the Wind’ premieres; Walt Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, the world’s first feature-length animated film, premieres; CBS television begins commercial operation; NBC television begins commercial operation; world’s first legal TV commercial (for watches) occurs; Billie Holiday records “Strange Fruit”, the first anti-lynching song; first World Science Fiction convention; John Steinbeck’s novel ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ is first published; Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war play ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ receives its first theatrical production; Billy Butlin opens his first Butlins holiday camp; Knotts Berry Farm amusement park is conceived and built; Polaroid sunglasses and Ambre Solaire sunblock first marketed; first canned beer, “Krueger Cream Ale,” is sold; breakfast cereal Cheerios is introduced; very first McDonald’s restaurant opens in San Bernardino, California; Nylon stockings go on sale for the first time (almost 5 million pairs are bought in the US on day one); László Bíró patents the ballpoint pen; flag of the Netherlands is officially adopted; stress is first recognised as a medical condition; US Congress declares soil erosion “a national menace” in an act establishing the Soil Conservation Service in the Department of Agriculture; in Quetta, India (later Pakistan), a magnitude 7.5 earthquake kills some 50,000 people; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suffers the worst flooding in its history; Crystal Palace is destroyed in a fire; seismologists Beno Gutenberg and Charles Francis Richter introduce the Richter scale; steam locomotive ‘Mallard’ sets the world speed record for steam by reaching 125.88 mph; Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger imagines the experiment known as ‘Schroedinger’s Cat’; Alan Turing submits his paper “On Computable Numbers” introducing the concept of the “Turing machine” (computers); Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of uranium, the scientific and technological basis of nuclear power, which marks the beginning of the Atomic Age; Plutonium is first synthesized in the laboratory; LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann; Kirlian photography is invented; Germany-based BASF discovers how to make recording tape; Roy Plunkett discovers Teflon; William Hewlett and David Packard begin their Hewlett Packard Co; Hagia Sophia Byzantine cathedral is turned into a museum; the Tsukji fish market opens in Tokyo and grows to become the largest fish market in the world; Alcoholics Anonymous is founded; world’s first parking meters are installed in Oklahoma City; first live television coverage of a sports event in world history (Berlin Olympics 1936); first ascent of the Eiger north face; all persons born in Puerto Rico are declared U.S. citizens by birth; Valley of Geysers is discovered on the Kamchatka Peninsula.

2018-2026: See the themes below and apply them in context with modern issues and times but consider: the sudden arrival of robot labour; the impact of cryptocurrencies; oil, coal or gas shortages; future power sources emerging; genetic modification of food; economic cyberwarfare; nuclear war (sadly); completely synthetic food; radical economic changes; nervous and paranoid markets; extreme stock market instability; drought and famine; complicated and protracted conflicts over land, resources or territorial rights; major new commercial brands and franchises (which often look very trivial or undeveloped at the time); changes to landscapes (iconic buildings arrive or are destroyed, rivers shift their mouths hundreds of kilometers away); long standing ideas in science, society and art either arriving or being replaced; the unexpected causing something long thought to be an unchanging and reliable fact of life to radically change, hand in hand with strong and resourceful resistance to that change; false reports or multiple reports of different physical realities (false starts, such as the May Crisis that preceded WWII, seem to be a manifestation of Taurus slowness to get going, while completely fake reports of alternate realities – like the idea that ‘Hitler is dead!’ – fracture the picture of material happenings; financial conspiracies; major revolutions in audio technology (probably 3D sound systems); mutation in both nature and in the traditions of society; major new industrial and commercial structures or entities being built or formed along with new trade agreements; workers groups and revolutions which arise from poverty, war, famine, drought or need for other physical resources.

THEMES

Some of the themes which we see emerging from these periods of history include major economic reforms and upsets including labour inventions and heavy financial crashes and the consequences that follow them; conflict over territorial rights and borders; physical land invasions by outsiders; significant technological advances in audio technology; the creation of major new laws of the land and/or borders; geographical mutations; advances in immunology and understanding the bacterial and viral causes and vectors of physical disease; completion, planning, collapse or onset of the construction of massive monuments, in the modern day especially connected with commerce and business while in the ancient world it is religious locations like Jerusalem; advances in understanding magnetism, especially geomagnetic forces; more extreme than normal floods, quakes, avalanches, droughts and other disasters which affect farming and food production and so bring famine as well; abdication, death, or exile of long standing monarchs or empire rulers; new trade agreements (remembering the Brexit negotiations which will come into effect in this period and the many complex and lengthy trade negotiations Britain will be forced into); slavery (yes it still exists and the world is due a wake-up call  with an estimated 40.3 million people forced into modern slavery each day of 2016); holocausts and genocides based on religious traditions, racial hatreds or both; inventions and technologies which end up driving the future of the business and corporate world; in arts and modern culture work which has a traditional but truly lasting appeal that somehow reinvents itself anew; convenience or “junk” foods (the food for the consumer or worker on the go); iconic figures with ridiculously extreme physical powers and abilities (Batman, Superman, Captain America, also see Bruce Lee in the notable figures section) and the presence of superhero figures in general; invention of new items which become so much a part of the fabric of our everyday lives that we find it hard to imagine a time without them later (often causing some kind of consumer craze or distorted market); inventions which change how we earn a living (before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century 80% of the global population were busy in farming, compared to just 1% after) and so require new social contracts between labourers and industries/governments; food rationing; resource and energy rationing; new conservation efforts; workers unions and labour conditions in the news; strikes so widespread they can cripple nations; ultimately, any kind of radical event or change that is definitely not business as usual but is instead business as unusual, at times extremely. By the time this era closes, the world is always in a very, very different place than it was just seven years beforehand. Things that we have long taken for granted as the way things usually go turn out to no longer operate that way, and something fundamental about our life on Earth changes. These changes introduce themselves dramatically in this period but take decades or even centuries afterward to make their full consequences known, as befits the plodding but thorough nature of Taurus. One of the key things they confront us with is the question of value, specifically the value of life, especially human life but also animal and plant life. It’s a critical question for these times. Complex and polarized social debates will dance around this key question with few ever really naming it – this question is what unites the arrival of the atomic bomb and nuclear power, extreme disasters arising from drought and famine and poor care of the lands resources, revolutions which arise from extreme poverty or lack and concerns about income and wages, living conditions, health care and the memory of the Holocaust. Human life – in fact all life – is not a commodity, and yet we have seemingly made it one. This is the heart of the conundrum.

To be born into such a period must be a strange thing just a little later when we realise that there was a world before the one we knew. For example, imagine being born in 1938 in London, as my mother was. She was too young to remember much of the bombing she experienced, but there must have come a time in her childhood around the age of about four in the early 1940s when she came to realise something about what was happening, and how unusual this time was. One of the first things that she learned about her world was that this was not how it was meant to be nor how it was in the recent past. Anxiety and insecurity are often at extreme levels during these periods because the fabric of life, the status quo which we have been so used to for so long, suddenly shatters and falls apart or is disrupted in such a way that it can never be the same again. We are left without anything to rely upon, or at least the sense of it, as things which were once perceived as common sense are suddenly ineffective, old, inadequate and too simplistic. However, the children born into these periods have not known any other kind of world and they can only look forward to a future which is shrouded by obscurity, since the unusual nature of the times informs very few adults about what is coming. The adults of these times are busy struggling to cope with the changes to their normal way of life and have more important problems to think about than the future, which is exceptionally murky anyway because no one alive has ever seen this kind of thing happening before.

So this focus on the present moment and on the simplest and most basic daily needs for survival – food, water, shelter, money – is often not just made out of necessities but out of an inability to reliably plan ahead because the radical changes to the status quo heralded by Uranus in Taurus make the future unknowable. This generates fear. Readers of last month’s message about Saturn in Capricorn will realise how closely this resonates with that influence and so understand that fear is one of the great enemies we face between now and the middle of the next decade (at least), but most especially between now and 2020, while Saturn is present in Capricorn. When Saturn enters Aquarius after 2020, the emphasis will shift more towards something radically changing in the way the world currently works, in other words stimulus will be added that shakes up ideas abut the future world we are moving into. It’s hard to ignore the current energy crisis looming in the world and not wonder if this will play a major role. I would like to think that new technologies will replace combustion technologies and oil, and many powerful and wealthy individuals are pouring resources into this area which seem likely to bear fruit over the next several years. Transition from oil would certainly be an extremely fitting manifestation of Uranus/Taurus energy. However new technologies, while they may provide solutions to some of our problems, cannot help us to answer the core questions these times pose, one of which, concerning the value of life, I have already identified.

While they may not all realise it the people of this tribe are therefore seeking practical answers to this question of the value of life. They want to know not only what they (or any given thing) are worth, but what the meaning of that worth is. For these people, finding a secure and consistent and realistic sense of their own self-worth is an important gateway into the human collective awareness. They rapidly understand their own role in the human race by understanding both their own unique resources and the resources of the human species as a whole. Therefore, they will seek to find their own worth and their own value by asking others to value them and by assigning value to the contribution of others. If the human collective awareness were a bank, these people would be the currencies. They act as resource finders and evaluators, both to themselves and others. They are often also radically conservative and practical, eschewing waste and striving to get the most out of every drop, but they have financial and material fluctuations that make it difficult to hold onto anything they own for very long. Particularly if the value or meaning of a thing changes, a Uranus in Taurus person somehow ejects it. There is an inner dynamo in these people which in effect turns everything into a currency invested with meaning which they are continuously re-evaluating the worth of. This isn’t to say that they see everything with a price-tag on it or that they are perversely materialistic in some way, on the contrary it is to point out that they are specifically equipped as a people to evaluate the worth and value of things, especially material things. The most spiritual of them see all material things as the shared property of all human beings, in particular because all of these things are given to human beings by nature. Deep inside, these people understand that a loving and secure relationship with nature is not a possessive one but one of evaluating each parts contribution to life. In nomadic times, before we lived in settlements, these people helped guide the care of the lands they moved through, understanding its complex interactions and how to nurture and supply every part of it with what it needed so that it was secure place for all that lived there. In modern times, with the concept of landed property, the notion is instead that owning land brings security, and that is a notion that Uranus in Taurus people can become confusingly entangled with, seeking either to acquire as much as possible or to shun it all and live a life on the road, moving from territory to territory as needs demand, in a kind of rebellion against owning any of it.

The list of notable people with Uranus in Taurus provided at the end of this message supplies many clues as to the talents and predilections of individual members of the tribe. We see an array of painters, builders, comedians, composers, dancers, cartographers, architects, musicians (especially vocalists), orators, socialists, founders of empires (both geographical and corporate), reformers of traditions (religious, social, cultural and scientific), businessmen, bankers, industrialists and all kinds of people who make tangible and very material breakthroughs in our understanding or comprehension of the world. There is an immense power source here. There are genuine, real- life superheros in this gang.  Uranus is like a strike of lightning, while Taurus describes a creature with enormous physical presence and strength. Combining the two provides the power source that can make breakthroughs of these kinds. When this combination is operating there is a flash of intuition which reveals a new resource or a new opportunity to enhance one’s physical profile, and then tremendous effort and strength are poured into claiming that resource or opportunity. Sometimes, the flash of intuition pays off literally as you jump ahead of the game that all of your competitors are playing. At others, it lets you down. When you live your life by this kind of rhythm you become vulnerable to extremes of gain and loss, and so there are many members of this tribe who experience sudden changes in wealth and in security.

The notion of individual freedom (Uranus) is wrapped up in acquisition of physical security (Taurus) and so the tribe can be possessive in a variety of ways. More than some other tribes of Uranus, the Taurus tribe seeks financial but more importantly physical independence and autonomy. Without its own resources, savings and income, there is a tendency for these people to feel an extreme erosion of freedom until that erosion becomes unacceptable and there is a spontaneous reaction or outburst. Yet even when a sufficient degree of financial security is acquired either by fortune or hard work, these people will still tend to be restlessly unsatisfied with their material security. This is because there are deeper concerns underlying their need for material and physical security. We must not forget that Scorpio lies opposite Taurus, giving breath to all the complicated and messy emotions that Taurus does its best to avoid. The presence of the planet Uranus in Taurus, however, makes it so that the native is never allowed the luxury of completely avoiding these turbulent undercurrents. The emotions therefore have a cyclical habit of breaking through the surface of calm and serenity that Taurus tries to suppress them with, a habit that will be triggered by transits and progressions to Uranus in Taurus. This is also why things go ‘business as unusual’ at regular intervals as well, since the transformative undercurrents of Scorpio are intense enough to overwhelm even our own conscious intentions.

On the positive side the tribe can look to gain much greater inspiration through practice rather than by any teacher or book. They are inspired by doing. Their innovation arrives through perspiration and their strengths cause humanity’s resources to come into focus and to multiply. Compared to other tribes of Uranus, for example Uranus in Gemini, this tribe is slow to adapt to change despite being born into radically changed times, or perhaps because of it. However, they are on a wavelength that allows them to grasp and communicate new practices and norms of society to the rest of us, so despite being reltively resistant to change they are often inspired to provide it and on the whole the rest of us should listen because Taurus is always sensible. There is a heightened environmental awareness, and in some people telepathic ability with specific or many rural beasts. The tribe also has members in its herd with an electromagnetic affinity for the plant world and many others with unique mental insights and gifts related to various physical matters, including the intelligence of rocks and minerals. They are sensitive to both the ecosystem and the landscape so if there is a lot of building work or construction going on around them, they experience it at a much more heightened level than is the norm. They may be more prone to effects which cause physical mutation than other tribes of Uranus are. I suspect that many of them are very physically sensitive to electromagnetic fields and other invisible energy fields. If there is a continuing sickness affecting the body like a drainage of energy, tiredness and sleepiness, inability to concentrate, headaches or some other persistent phenomena which does not respond to conventional therapy, it may be due to overexposure to electromagnetic fields. Since these are a relatively recent tool in human history and we are still yet to understand human biology to its fullest extent, it seems likely that there are unforeseen and unknown effects upon our own bio-electric field given the dramatic increase and changes in the atmosphere of the Earth which we have rapidly introduced. It may be that when the current incoming group of Uranus in Taurus have grown up, someone among them may point this out or provide evidence of its effects. Or they may come up with a solution, or a source of power for our devices which is very different.

Some of the tribe’s more negative qualities are its illogical stubbornness and obstinate blocking and manipulating of others because it likes things the way they are or just because it can, its tendency to be close minded to anything that does not represent an opportunity for it to make material gain, its temptation to recklessly gamble security away, callousness and emotional coldness; a tendency for muscular spasms and other conditions affecting the strength and power or flexibility of the physical body, a tendency to deafness or hearing difficulties, a chaotic economic nature, inability to hold onto stability for very long, being bullish in unpredictable in often illogical ways, a reckless seeking of comforts and the material promise of luxurious security and strange sexual peccadillo’s, tending to involve the sensation of touch and/or bondage but any that provides a thrill for the skin or the more tangible and tactile senses like taste and smell.

The agenda of the tribe includes among other things, the question of the value of life and the process of integrating new visions of the future and radical changes into traditional conditions thought resistant to change (e.g., radically traditional religions, geopolitical ‘realities’, etc.), the agenda of setting up human institutions which facilitate these things and the task of creating a stable and sustainable relationship with nature and its resources while at the same time progressing technologically, the agenda of securing a society (Uranus) that provides for the basic needs (food, water, shelter) and comforts (health care, power, free time) of the common people (Taurus). All this and more is part of what stirs up the changes we are looking at in the next several years.

The greatest context for these changes will be found among the people in their early 80s who are having a Uranus return during the period of Uranus in Taurus because these people will have had a lifetime beginning from one iteration of the pattern to the current one in which they have been able to see all of the changes to society that have occurred in between. These people will have an insight into the nature of these times simply because they are born into similar times that speak of similar issues. For younger perspectives on their challenges the tribe can look to people of Uranus in Capricorn (1988-1995) or Uranus in Virgo (1961 to 1969). The younger tribe of Uranus in Capricorn help the tribe of Uranus in Taurus to bake in structure and give form to its inspirational use of its resources, while the Uranus in Virgo tribe helps the Taurus tribe by providing assistance in direct, practical ways that focus on rationing its resources and correcting any leaks in its storage tanks (by which I mean plugging up any flaws or holes in its plans). To both tribes Taurus is able to provide access to the resources needed to further the agendas of those tribes and to bring together the people and power necessary to make them happen. The Uranus in Taurus tribe can also find help from people born with Uranus in Pisces (2003-2010) or Uranus in Cancer (1948 to 1956). Both of these tribes help the Uranus in Taurus people overcome their obstinacy and lack of trust in emotions (emotions being chaotic and therefore something Taurus seeks to control). The emotional support these two tribes bring to Uranus in Taurus cannot really be overstated, because it’s these two groups that can help Uranus in Taurus stay healthy. The younger Pisces group keep their imaginations from becoming stuck by the multiple and chameleon like practical considerations they deal with, while the older Uranus in Cancer group provide protection and sanctuary, nourishment and sympathy, sentiment, sense of family, security and comradeship.

The same agenda is met by other tribes with resistance and opposition. Resistance towards the agenda of Uranus in Taurus comes mainly from people in the camps of Uranus in Aquarius (1995 -2003) or Uranus in Leo (1955-1962), while flat out opposition comes from Uranus in Scorpio (1974-1981). However, all three of these camps also provide vital motivation and energy for the Uranus in Taurus people who in turn have key things that each of these other camps need – the problem however is that such advantages will not come easily, without a struggle. Changes and compromises may have to be met more often than is the norm between such people, and it’s also worth pointing out that these three camps are not in any way in agreement over their resistance and opposition to what Uranus in Taurus represents, because they are themselves in disagreement with one another. For example, the Uranus in Scorpio people are very much concerned with among other things the penetration of technology into our private lives but for the people of Uranus in Taurus the answer is simple – keep your private life off-line, and don’t be so worried, relax…and then the person with Uranus in Aquarius chips in accusing the Uranus in Scorpio person of being a delusional paranoid conspiracy freak and the Uranus in Taurus of being out of date, which seems offensive to both the Taurus and Scorpio person, yet makes the Uranus in Leo person chuckle but then challenge the Aquarius person with several high profile celebrity stalker stories that prove there is a problem. They will probably not be able to agree what to do about it, anyway, but in the process of hacking it out together all 4 will find their opinions reshaped and (if it is an opinion worth defending and your opponents are any good) in fact strengthened by the attacks of the others, since many of its flaws will have been exposed to you and you will have some questions you need to think about. However, the Fixed nature of the challenges involved in the dynamic between these four tribes can sometimes be insoluble and in these cases impasse after impasse teaches that since no one will back down everyone will have to find a way to live together or fight it out until one is dominant.

Uranus is always a puzzle filled with a mass of contradictions, but Uranus in Taurus is an especially odd bird, a curious astrological combination that requires some mind expansion to fully understand. On the one hand you have the planet Uranus which is characterised as rapid or sudden change, revolution, spontaneity, craving excitement, eccentric and not normal, weird. On the other hand you have Taurus which is slow and steady as she goes, maintains the status quo, resists change, craves calm and stability and predictability, and is not weird but instead a comfortable, placid, familiar and grounded creature. The basic mix of these two is volatile, they are in conflict and part of the difficulty of mixing volatile astrological formulas together, especially ones involving Uranus or Pluto, is that they can unleash something which obliterates the entire laboratory. There is a pressure here of immense proportions which eventually results in explosive release. So it is almost written into the soul of this astrological combination that there will be some kind of explosive release because Uranus and Taurus do not mix easily together. We are likely to see immense changes but also immense and stubborn resistance to those changes until there is some kind of catalyst or overflow and then the whole thing escapes our control and possibly takes control of our lives. There are times in human history when it feels like we are just along for the ride, when events seem to overtake our ability to control them and we have to sit them through, like in World War II, and this is what I think we are about to encounter again, possibly on multiple fronts. I am not saying World War III is dawning, I am saying that a world changing event of that magnitude – like the Industrial Revolution, like the American Revolution, the Danish invasion of England, Newtons Laws, Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, the First Crusade and founding of Jerusalem, or the arrival of printed books and printing presses – is about to occur again, and the last time it unleashed nuclear and atomic energy, but it need not be war now. Whatever it is though, it will change our lives. There is still much we do not understand about how changes in human awareness globally affect global events, how quantum entangled all our mundane daily lives are with the great scale of life that extends into infinite material space, and so our fates are more our own to decide than not.

If we meditate upon this we may come to perceive that the opportunity of Uranus in Taurus is connected with setting the course, the future physical reality that we will begin manifesting for ourselves in which we will have to deal with specific material consequences in the future as a result. The arrival of Uranus in Taurus opens an esoteric or occult potential for completely new physical realities to begin manifesting. To put this another way, 84 years from now – in the 2100s – the world will still be dealing with and talking about the issues that come up in the next seven years. Therefore, the way in which the people of the Earth handle this oncoming change will determine much of the course of the rest of the century.

Notable Claimants [those in bold are with Sun, Moon or ascendant (with accurate time) in Taurus, and conjunct Uranus].

Anawrahta Minsaw (founder of Pagan Empire, father of Burmese nation); Al-Bakri (greatest geographer of the Muslim West); Baron Freidrich von Humboldt (naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps); Muhammad al-Idrisi (cartographer); John Ogilby (cartographer); Geoffrey of Monmouth (English chronicler who wrote that Merlin used magic to bring the stones of Stonehenge from Ireland); Chretien de Troyes (in the 12th century introduced Camelot into the Arthurian legend and placed Lancelot in the saga along with the quest for the Holy Grail); Francis of Assisi (founder of the Franciscan Order and first recorded person to bear the stigmata); Henry III (Holy Roman Emperor); Su Song (scientist and engineer); Dante Alighieri (Italian poet); Giotto (painter); Vincent van Gogh; Regiomontanus (Johannes Muller, astronomer and astrologer); Catherine I of Russia; Vladimir the Great (grand prince of Kievan Rus’); Ivan III (the Great); King Philip IV of Spain; William Wallace (Scottish knight who became one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence); Mateo Realdo Colombo (Italian anatomist and discoverer of pulmonary circulation); Tecumseh (Native American Shawnee warrior and chief who became the primary leader of a large, multi-tribal confederacy); Charles I of England; Mary Stuart; William Lilly (astrologer); Claude Lorrain (painter); Rembrandt; Johann Sebastian Bach; Hildegard of Bingen (mystic writer and composer); John Gay (playwright, wrote the Beggars’ Opera which attacked the court of George II); Ramanujacharya (Hindu philosopher); Ram Mohan Roy (Hindu religious and social reformer who crusaded against social evils such as sati, polygamy, child marriage, caste system, infanticide and illiteracy etc.); John Harvey Kellogg (doctor, health reformer); Frank Winfield Woolworth (entrepreneur and the founder of F. W. Woolworth Company); George Dayton (businessman, founder of Target Corporation); Cecil Rhodes (businessman); George Berkeley (bishop and philosopher who argued that the things we see around us exist only as ideas); Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit (physicist and instrument maker); Benedetto Marcello (composer); Johann Adam Birkenstock (composer and sandal designer); Alexander Pope (poet who gave us ‘a little learning is dangerous thing’); John Quincy Adams (sixth president of the United States); Woodrow Wilson (28th President of the United States); Arthur Wellsley, Duke of Wellington “Iron Duke,” (defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and later became the British prime minister); Napoleon Bonaparte; William Wordsworth; Ludwig Von Beethoven; Johann Friedrich Schubert; Richard Trevithick (inventor of the steam locomotive); Johann Balthasar Neumann (architect); Antoni Gaudí (architect); Robert Owen (factory owner, socialist); Andrew Mellon (banker, philanthropist); Sir Walter Scott (novelist who wrote “Ivanhoe” and “Rob Roy,”); Alois Senefelder (inventor of lithography); Alexander Pope; George Bernard Shaw; Oscar Wilde; Arthur Rimbaud; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Howqua (Chinese merchant, after the Opium Wars one of the richest men in the world); David Ricardo (economist and stockbroker who postulated that landlords become rich at the expense of society); Sigmund Freud; Antoine Henri Becquerel (physicist and the first person to discover evidence of radioactivity); Nikola Tesla (electrical engineer, inventor); André-Marie Ampère (physicist and mathematician who was one of the founders of the science of classical electromagnetism); Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (physicist who discovered energy quanta); Emile Berliner (inventor of the flat disc phonograph record and the Gramophone); Sydney Pollack (director); Joseph Conrad; the 12th Dalai Lama of Tibet; current and 14th Dalai Lama; Arthur Edward Waite (commonly known as A. E. Waite, poet and scholarly mystic who was the co-creator of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck); H.R. Giger; Brigitte Bardot; Donald Sutherland; Rudolph Nureyev; Bob Dylan; Brian Epstein; Ringo Starr; Tom Jones; Dusty Springfield; Tina Turner; Kenny Rogers; Ritchie Valens; Marvin Gaye; Leonard Cohen; Glen Campbell; Bill Wyman; Roy Orbison; Bobby Darin; Frank Zappa; Michael Parkinson; David Frost; Peter Cook; Dudley Moore; Natalie Wood; Ursula Andress; Lee Remick; Burt Reynolds; Dionne Warwick; Mary Tyler Moore; Jackie Collins; Jane Fonda; Lily Tomlin; Julie Andrews; Germaine Greer; Vanessa Redgrave; Luciano Pavarotti; Warren Beatty; Woody Allen; Al Pacino; Dennis Hopper; Christine Keeler; Brian Blessed; Jim Henson; George Carlin; George Takei; Robert Redford; Juan Carlos I of Spain; Jack Nicholson; Oliver Reed; Nancy Pelosi; John McCain; Saddam Hussein; Colin Powell; Ian Brady; Silvio Berlusconi; Pope Francis; Morgan Freeman; Patrick Stewart; Anthony Hopkins; Ridley Scott; Francis Ford Coppola; John Cleese; Sir Ian McKellan; Pele; Bruce Lee.