Return of the Planets Part III - Opposition of Uranus – Achieving emotional balance

In the years between thirty and fourty, man continues ahead on the trails of the process we saw in our previous post ( here ) , trying to set his goals and do something important with his life. Approaching the age of fourty, though, a different type of developments starts to happen within human psychology. Anxiety begins to  mount, the tension, unexpected events, factors that cannot be controlled, dependence from
people and things we cannot control (spouse, family, children, friends, co workers) put us, among other things, in front of a set of emotional challenges of how we can manage to hold the balance in our relationships. It is not an accident that between the age of thirty five and forty many marriages go through a crisis. Many parents are confronted with their children’s puberty but also accept the first calls for support by their parents. All these needs increase the emotional tension in the psychology of the adult, build up anxiety and lead to a feeling of having lost our life’s purpose.

This tension comes at its highest, according to most astrologers, at the age around forty two years, an age when the opposition of Uranus to its natal position takes place. This opposition has a purpose to teach us how to balance our emotions internally and how we can manage our relationships and our communication with other people well. Linking astrology with metaphysics, some astrologers place the crisis of Uranus actually in the astral plane while the crisis of Saturn in the physical plane.
Alongside the influence of Uranus, latest generations happen to experience around the same age, the square of Pluto to their natal position. An aspect which in older generations took place at a later age, in latest generations, because of the elliptical orbit of Pluto, happens during middle age. The square to the natal position works alongside the influence of Uranus but with different results. This aspect forces the person to subject to restrictions he hadn’t had in the past. It forces him to experience situations so limiting that in order to preserve his emotional balance, he is forced to leave behind him people and things that were very important in his life so far and move forward counting only on his personal will. In contradiction to the Uranus crisis which teaches us how to redirect the tension of the emotion, the crisis of Pluto teaches how to harden our heart to withstand the pressure. 

From a more evolutionary point of view, the aspect of Pluto makes us maybe less “humane” from what we consider politically correct and many astrologers say that the square of Pluto is an aspect used only by people who couldn't stand up to the task of responding to the challenges of Uranus. My personal opinion, however, is that Pluto and Uranus are similar in what metaphysics calls first and second aspect of divine being. So, there is the way of will and the way of love for anyone to survive in the astral world, to say it in metaphysical terms. Each and every one of us can choose his own way or be affected by both of them, without one being better or worse than the other.

In any case, the person who manages to overcome the opposition of Uranus has learnt to control the tension of life. He has learnt to channel his emotional anxiety, to relax and ground the “electric” - according to the metaphysics – energy of Uranus with “chirotic” actions as New Age astrologers call them or in other words with alternative practices  such as yoga, massage, spiritual hobbies, crafts, etc. The secret of this process is for someone to understand that they must operate as a conductor of emotional energy. Words, actions, emotions and spiritual energy must go right through us and leave and not stay inside us, accumulate and become anxiety, stress, complexes and a cardiac arrest. 

Learning how to act as “conductors” in our lives is the teaching of Uranus. To learn, that is, to let all the offences we experience every day to go right through us and leave (meant on an emotional level implying non identification) instead of keeping them inside, to recycle and strengthen them. And the grounding of these energies takes place according the so called experiential astrology by using alternative practices that allow relaxation, expression of emotions in a creative way, understanding of things that happen to us subconsciously and the silence of the mind.

How about Chiron, though and how does his return participate to the crisis of the so called middle age? Before we enter presentation of the meaning of the return itself, let’s take a look at the aspects that he forms during the earlier years of man’s life, in greater detail.