Elizabeth Gulino - Refinery29
Another day, another retrograde. From August 24 until January 22, 2023, the Planet of Revolution will be wrapped up in a backwards dance. Although Uranus retrogrades every year around this time and we’ve experienced the planetary backwards motion in Taurus before, it’s still a transit that triggers some major reevaluating. Are you ready for it?
Uranus is an outer planet that affects our long-term goals. Since it stays in a sign for around seven years, we’re often focusing on the same themes for that entire time. For this transit in particular, Uranus’s influence is a bit serious on a collective level. “It brings change on a grand scale,” says Lisa Stardust, astrologer and author of The Love Deck. “When in Taurus, its least favorite sign to be in, it creates change around the foundations that we have built our lives on. Structures fall, the way we invest our money and source our food is radically different than before, and relationships evolve and grow in different ways.”
Mainly, retrogrades affect us on a more personal level, due to the transit’s reflective nature. Uranus is often associated with sudden breakthroughs and shocking revelations or events, but during its retrograde, “We’re choosing to reflect on the change that’s taken place in our lives over the past few months and what changes we need to make moving forward,” says astrologer Stephanie Campos. She urges us to create a cosmic game plan and ask ourselves, “How do we interact with change? Do we welcome it? Are we terrified of it? What changes have we been avoiding? How will applying some of those changes bring us closer to the life we truly desire to live?”
This is the time to dive headlong into our deep feelings, according Iva Naskova, astrologer at the Nebula app. “Uranus retrograde allows us to rethink and reflect on our goals and aspirations and challenges us to take a different approach, and it is more likely for us all to think and act a bit differently or in more creative and unconventional ways,” she says. If something hasn’t been working out for you this year, take note and change your direction. Although scary, change can often be the catalyst we need for a transformation.
Narayana Montúfar, senior astrologer for Astrology.com and author of Moon Signs: Unlock Your Inner Luminary Power, says that as Uranus retrogrades, its erratic energy diminishes a bit, which in turn allows us to really integrate changes that have been taking place into our lives. “If certain events took us by surprise this year, they could begin to make much more sense,” she says. “Uranus is the planet of creative brilliance, but its influence can sometimes be too much to digest when it is direct.” This retrograde can be great news, actually, and Montúfar says it’ll be especially so for those who have experienced significant change and any big life events this year. Although change is inevitable, big switches will happen at a much slower, more digestible pace during this time, which may save all of us a lot of turmoil.
This year in particular has been an incredibly active one for Uranus, mainly due to its connections with Saturn and the Lunar North Node of Destiny. “The foundations of our lives have been collapsing to make room for the creation of new structures that allow for more freedom and creativity — but the process hasn’t been easy,” Montúfar says. “We have been standing in this liminal space between the past and the future, sometimes resisting moving forward.”
And with Uranus retrograding, it will move closer to its square with Saturn, according to psychic astrologer Leslie Hale. “Uranus square Saturn is an intense transit prone to unexpected events that will affect the collective and us personally,” she says. “The peak period is mid-September through mid-October. While the results may play out for some time, this will be the final clash between these planets for years to come.” If a major change occurs under this aspect, Hale assures us that it will ultimately be for the better — even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time.
Like we said before, change can be scary — but it’s also necessary. Use the vibes of this retrograde to your advantage and switch it up. It’s daring to do something different, and may just turn your luck around for the better.
SEE
I CHING
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49, Radical Change
The revolution in hexagram 49 has deep roots. In hexagram 47, you experience Oppression, and turn inward to reconnect with the Well. And drinking from the unchanging source creates the imperative for change in the outer world. ‘The way of the Well does not allow not changing radically.’ Change is essential, to make the forms and patterns of life into a better Vessel. As Jack Balkin puts it, ‘You must change your life in order to make it cohere with who you are now.’
‘Radical change: putting away the past.
The Vessel: grasping renewal.’
The Vessel, Hexagram 50, securely encloses a sacred space where the energies of life can blend, interact and create new substance. Such renewal is not possible unless the old patterns of reaction have first been completely eradicated. Before renewal, revolution.
The authors of the I Ching knew this truth through a historical example: the Zhou people’s conquest of the decadent Shang dynasty. This would have been unthinkably Radical Change, to overthrow a dynasty whose power had been guaranteed by Heaven for far longer than living memory. But the revolution showed that Heaven’s mandate could change. The power to rule had left one dynasty and moved to another, like a snake changing its skin. This is the key Change of the I Ching – sudden, total, leaving no familiar ‘handles’ to grasp – the kind we attempt to map out and understand through divination.
In divination, Radical Change means very much what it says: the complete overthrow of old ways of understanding and ordering life. The Judgement says that there is truth and presence on Si day, the day of the snake: it is a time to shed your old identity, to try on new ways of being and of relating to others. The old character for Radical Change shows an animal skin: an identity and power the shaman could put on with the skin.
The new power can come from the new skin, or it might demand one: you cannot pour new wine into old vessels. The trigrams, fire in the lake, show the same idea in elemental form, ‘changing inner awareness that melts away obsolete outer form.’ (Karcher, Total I Ching) The new clarity of vision has to find expression; fire shines through the water, like the naked intelligence in the eyes animating the mask.
Tradition tells that water and fire stand in opposition here, ‘mutually suspended’ – holding one another in check. The same two trigrams in Hexagram 38, Opposition, pull away from one another; here, they are on collision course. A clash of objectives – unlike diverging visions – has to mean radical change.
In practice, the key issue in revolution is one of timing: charting the dynamics of the momentary equilibrium, finding the moment when it can or should be broken. What is ‘your own day’, when there will be truth and confidence?
The Image describes the work of finding the right moment:
‘At the centre of the lake is fire. Radical change.
In the same way, the noble one calculates the heavenly signs and clarifies the seasons.’
Wu Jing Nuan introduced me to the idea that this is about astrology. It’s one thing to rely on one’s intuition to know when to sow and reap, but what if the flowers are late or the birds sing early? The stars are a more constant, objective way to know the time. Long term, repeated patterns and objective analysis create greater security than just trusting your perceptions and intuitions, moment to moment.
Such understanding allowed the authors of the Commentary on the Judgement to fit unthinkable change into a greater scheme of things:
‘Heaven and earth undergo Radical Change and the four seasons are accomplished.
Tang and Wu changed the mandate in accord with Heaven.’
Wu founded the Zhou dynasty; Tang had founded the Shang. The chaos, upheaval and bloodshed were part of the natural order, though on a huge scale: seasons that might take many centuries to turn, but still seasons.
This may be the kind of understanding we look for when we divine – a sense of perspective, of over-arching stories that relativise our own traumas. We contain the changes within narrative and ritual – but can we be sure, even then? The core of Radical Change (its nuclear hexagram) is Hexagram 44, Coupling: the arrival of a new force with the power to overturn the old order. It shows the inner possibility that with Radical Change, you may be unleashing powers of change that you never intended or predicted.
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