Saturn Square Uranus, 2021: A Collapsing Bridge over Troubled Water

(This article will appear in slightly different form in the summer issue of The Ingress, NCGR-NYC's quarterly astrology journal; I wanted to update it here.)

Attempting to write about the Saturn-Uranus square of 2021 is as complicated as living through it. I have never been one to sugarcoat challenging planetary aspects, whether they are natal, progressed, or transits. Still, this transit is a hard nut to crack and a bitter pill to swallow.

Traditional astrology maintains that more can be accomplished during tough aspects than flowing ones. Many of us in the United States are currently in a much better place than we were a year ago, with the rollout of highly effective, accessible, free vaccines for all individuals over the age of 12 that are saving those of us who are fully vaccinated from the rise of worrisome Covid-19 variants (at least for now). 54% of the total US population has now received at least one dose of a vaccine, with 46% fully vaccinated. With the Centers for Disease Control’s mid-May blessing, as well as the long-awaited reopening of New York City and the state of California, many Americans are acting as if the pandemic is in our rearview mirror. Traffic jams have nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels, office workers (some enthusiastic, others less so) have begun to return to the office at least part of the time, and more people are traveling by plane. And yet…

…the World Health Organization is now advising even fully vaccinated individuals to continue wearing masks indoors due to the rise of Delta, an official "variant of concern." A recent headline in BuzzFeed News reports that due to politically driven low rates of vaccination in the Deep South and rural areas across the US, ”The Delta Variant Could Create ‘Two Americas’ of COVID, Experts Warn” (Peter Aldhous, buzzfeednews.com, 6/17/21). Thus, as much of the nation is looking forward to a CDC-sanctioned unmasked-if-vaxxed summer of reunions, parties, museum visits, travel, and overall exuberance, this news item is a nagging reminder that Covid-19 is not yet in our collective rearview mirror. Indeed, this pandemic is not yet finished in much of the world—not because too many people are refusing offers of free beer, free joints, free doughnuts, and other free rides with Covid-19 shots for various reasons, but because vaccines are either not available at all or are not as effective as the ones we have here in the US.

And not all of us here are trashing our masks or double-booking our social calendars to make up for lost time. Some of us are grieving over major personal losses in a culture that stresses moving on by getting busy. Even some of the luckier ducks among us feel confused, worried, doubtful, and/or mistrustful. Not all of us wish to get back to a normal that entailed excessive noise, endless social obligations that necessitated a lot of unnecessary expenditures, and rampant rat-racing. Not all of us believe that our democracy is safe, that we won’t see another pandemic in our lifetimes, and that (even with record low temperatures followed just a week later by highs in the Greater New York area, and the West Coast facing severe heat and draught even before the Summer Solstice), the climate crisis is a hoax.

The beginning of the pandemic seemed to encourage a dawning awareness in the rugged-individual-oriented US that we were all in this together; all connected. Yet almost immediately, that insight had to compete for airtime with the Time to Get Back to Normal Show, the I Won’t Wear a Mask or Social Distance Show, and the Politicization of the Pandemic Show. Astrologically, this could be explained (astrosplained?) by the fact that the Saturn-Uranus square did not occur in 2020, as Saturn turned retrograde almost as soon as it entered Aquarius. Consequently, there was a turning away from truly dealing with the pandemic and everything related to this public health crisis (i.e., everything). For many (though by no means all) Americans, the election also brought a sense of relief that our nation managed to avoid the worst-case scenario.

We do not have the luxury of turning away this year, and hell hath no fury like a square scorned. The first Saturn-Uranus square of 2021 occurred on February 17, when Mars was conjunct Uranus in Taurus. (Interestingly, the insurrection of January 6 occurred with Mars at the last degree of Aries; the Capitol was secured when Mars entered Taurus.) As Mars is an inner planet, and debilitated in Taurus, for many of us, there was a series of highly personal challenges involving financial health as well as physical health (both related to earth signs). Another manifestation of the square in mid-February: three severe winter storms (Uranus) in North America comprising cyclones, blizzards, ice storm, and tornadoes. This storm system was the deadliest, costliest storm system in North America’s recorded history; Texas’s power grid (Uranus) got hammered, resulting in the worst blackout since the one in the Northeast in the summer of 2003. The pandemic had begun waning in the US as the oldest and/or most vulnerable citizens became eligible for vaccination (even if too many of them had to stand outside for hours in the bitter cold to get inoculated), yet the biggest public health crisis in more than a century surged in many other countries, which gave birth to some worrisome variants of the virus.

We are now two weeks past the second Saturn-Uranus square of June 14. The spring was marked by several standoffs between Saturn (the set-in-stone status quo) and Uranus (the explosive revolutionary). The Israel-Gaza violence culminated on the exact second square with a coalition ousting Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu. There was a flurry of voter suppression bills and the return of mass shootings in the US. Liz Cheney got the boot from fellow Republicans for daring to repudiate former president Trump. As of this writing, calls for official commissions on January 6 and the pandemic are going unheeded. New York State legalized weed. India surpassed US Covid-19 cases and deaths. Some vaccines were paused; the rate of vaccinations in the US peaked in mid-April and have been declining since then. Seemingly out of left field, the CDC announced that only unvaccinated individuals need to continue wearing masks in most places. The US Supreme Court is preparing to overturn Roe vs. Wade. A container ship got stranded in the Suez Canal. The Mexican metro collapsed due to structural failure, causing 26 deaths and 79 hospitalizations. The Colonial Pipeline hack disrupted gasoline supplies in the southeastern states. The G7 Summit revealed more “cracks” than unity, with Cold War overtones concerning relations with Russia and China. Biden met with Putin. Someone who refused to wear a mask in a store in Georgia returned to shoot and kill the clerk who’d had the gall to ask him to mask up. The stalled infrastructure bill. And, on the day of the first Full Moon of summer (i.e., with the Moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn), a condo complex near Miami collapsed due to a critical structural failure that a consultant had warned the building managers about in 2018. Repairs were finally about to begin nearly three years after the report, but instead, a lot of people (and their pets) are now presumed dead in this preventable disaster.

The very definition of infrastructure (Saturn) is controversial (Uranus). The concept (and actuality) of infrastructure is clearly ruled by Saturn, the planet synonymous with organization, framework, architecture, skeleton, configuration, edifice, shell, government, and (of course) structure. Yet with the square from reform-oriented, tech-savvy Uranus, infrastructure no longer solely refers to roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, power grids, and mass transportation, but cybersecurity, telecommunications, AI, even health care and child care. Present-day electronics and electricity are inextricably linked to computer science and computer engineering. Basically, if it’s a system that has anything to do with how well or poorly a country functions, whether it’s tangible or not, it’s now considered to be infrastructure. And with the square, it has become painfully clear in the US (along with other countries with morally bankrupt leaders and/or unfettered capitalism) that governments, corporations, civil society groups, and individuals who are not superrich are vulnerable to cyberattacks and one-strike-and-you’re-out losses due to crumbling infrastructure, which could include a shredded safety net.

The last time we experienced a Saturn-Uranus square was in 2000, with the signs flipped: Saturn was in Taurus and Uranus was in its ruling sign Aquarius. Particularly in the US, the gap between the haves and the have-nots began widening into a canyon at that time. Unfettered capitalism, tax breaks, and the stock market have mainly benefited the 1% since 2000. Nearly all politicians are in the back pockets of corporations (Saturn). 9/11 occurred, resulting in certain personal liberties being dismantled in the name of security (an earth-element desire). Even as the internet, virtual reality, and AI gained traction with Uranus in Aquarius, the tech bubble burst in 2000, and true communication between disparate groups (Saturn and Uranus) got bogged down in the stubborn “my way or the highway” modus operandi that is the dark side of Taurus.

This time around, since Uranus has moved from the sign of its rulership to the sign of its fall, the effects of the Saturn-Uranus square are harsher and involve not just a pandemic and economic misery for millions of people, but the climate-change emergency that is mainly kindling young activists (some still in their teens) who will be most affected by the coming devastation unless something is accomplished within the next decade or two to mitigate it.

In the spring of 2020, millions of individuals lost their jobs due to the pandemic, resulting in a global recession. At that time, Saturn backed off from the exact square to Uranus, but it is the signature aspect of 2021. The third and final exact square occurs on December 24 (will it be a lump of coal or a Green Deal for Christmas?), yet its effects will not diminish until the fall of 2022 because Saturn and Uranus will remain within orb of the square until then. Could 2022 wind up being 2021 Lite? Perhaps, but for individuals who are being crushed now, the gradual easing up may not make enough of a difference.

Crashes, clashes and hangovers are part and parcel of any Saturn-Uranus square. We should all know by now that true healing cannot occur by applying Band-Aids to deep wounds, “thoughts and prayers” lip service to the latest preventable atrocity. If adequate disaster relief is not given, the disaster will only be prolonged. Unless Covid-19 is tamed worldwide, this pandemic will still be a force to be reckoned with. Can we possibly take the best part of fixed signs—persistence and endurance—to find common ground and call it a draw, so that no matter what our individual circumstances or views may be, we can all emerge from the Saturn-Uranus square in a more unified place, if not in one piece or truly at peace?

It's the Great Conjunction, Charlie Brown (and the Great Mutation, Too)

“How many years can a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes,and how many years can some people exist
Before they’re allowed to be free?”

—Bob Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Six very long months ago, I threw a predictive hat into the ring that the upcoming Jupiter-Saturn conjunction would usher in “positive new developments, since it is clear to me that Saturn at 0 degrees of Aquarius (where it was in late March and early April of this year, and where it is currently) is a crucial factor for this particular pandemic. Aquarius rules groups of people, revolution, science, and technology. With Jupiter joining Saturn there at the end of this year, perhaps humanity will step up to the plate.” (From my blog post of 6/27/20.)

Little did I know when I was waxing so uncharacteristically optimistic in my usually downbeat astrology blog that this was to be no ordinary Jupiter-Saturn conjunction—not that any of them are, as so-called Great Conjunctions only occur every 20 years and serve as markers for societal epochs—but a Great Mutation. It came as mind-blowing news for me to learn that Great Conjunctions do not fall in random signs every other decade, as I had assumed ever since I began practicing astrology; instead, Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions occur in a single element for 200 years before jumping to a different element for the next 200 years—although there is a preview of the Great Mutation in the penultimate conjunction of each 200-year cycle. (Indispensable source material for this article: https://www.astropro.com, “Astrologer Richard Nolle’s 3000-Year Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction Table," published 4/26/98.)

In other words, by the time you read this article, we will have just emerged from an earth-element Great Conjunction cycle that began on January 26, 1842. Let that sink in for a New York minute: on a societal level, this cycle has been almost entirely focused on the material world. Even the flower children of the 1960s who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out of the dog-eat-dog rat race for at least a few years, wanted to (as per Joni Mitchell’s song “Woodstock”) “get back to the land to set my soul free […] And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Our most recent glimpse of the air-element Great Conjunction cycle was the 1980–81 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Libra, which marked the next two decades with the rise of the personal computer, the internet, and dramatic shifts in the institutions of marriage, law, politics, and borders. There was the rise of Reagan on the one hand, the fall of the Berlin Wall on the other.

In 2000 the final earth-element Great Conjunction occurred, in Taurus. With the exception of the preview of 40 years ago, our last Great Conjunction in the air-element cycle occurred on January 16, 1405—and it happened in Aquarius.

I am writing this with Jupiter and Saturn still playing tug-of-time in Capricorn, so I am finding it difficult to evade the clutches of earth-sign logic, which is empirical, not theoretical; rooted in the five senses and the mundane world. Perhaps it is the Capricorn influence that is encouraging me to fixate on an identical pattern during the last elemental shift from earth to air: Libra (1186) to Taurus (1206) to Aquarius (1226) rather than ditch history and simply predict that the coming Great Mutation in Aquarius will send humanity to group therapy…. Yet even if history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes.

The countless generations of astrologers who lived before the outer planets were discovered would probably slap me upside the head for not being aware of this Great Conjunction pattern, but back in the long-ago day, Jupiter and Saturn really were the naked eye’s final frontiers of our solar system. Every 20 years, they appear in the night sky to merge into one extraordinarily bright star, which in the year 6 BC was conjunct in Pisces three times (May, October, and December) and christened the Star of Bethlehem or the Christmas Star, alerting the Three Wise Men (code for astrologers) to the birth of a great spiritual leader. Before the outer planets were discovered, Jupiter co-ruled Sagittarius and Pisces, while Saturn co-ruled Capricorn and Aquarius. These final four signs of the zodiac are associated with transpersonal matters; appropriately, the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is also known as the Great Chronocrator, Markers of Time.

The Great Mutation at 0 degrees of Aquarius occurs on December 21, 2020, on the heels of the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, when the Sun enters the Saturn-ruled sign Capricorn. Saturn is clearly still a force to be reckoned with here, not ready to cede its dominance of 2020, and is putting its harsh taskmaster stamp on the “dark winter” that US president-elect Joe Biden has been warning us about concerning the pandemic. Although expansive, optimistic, gambling Jupiter will have an easier time transiting through Aquarius than in Capricorn (sign of its fall), it will still be dominated by Saturn, as the latter planet is still the co-ruler of Aquarius.

The chart for the Great Mutation in Washington DC points to a classic earth-air conflict, as the Ascendant at 0 degrees of Taurus (conjunct Joe Biden’s Moon at 1 degree of Taurus) exactly squares the Great Mutation, with wild-card Uranus in Taurus in the First House of identity, while the Sun-Mercury conjunction at 0–1 degrees of Capricorn trines the Ascendant. Consider, too, that the Sun on Inauguration Day conjuncts the Great Mutation, literally spotlighting its significance. I do not want to come off as Chicken Little here, but…the sky could very well be falling.

The seeds of Saturn in Aquarius were sown at the very beginning of last spring; this winter, they will bloom as social distancing (a manifestation of Saturn in Aquarius) moves into a new phase with new or enhanced forms of online or virtual technology (Aquarius) in an attempt to normalize on a collective scale what this time last year was unthinkable or unimaginable for most individuals. Social media will be more policed (Saturn) at the same time it expands (Jupiter); Zoom may roll out a Zany offshoot while Slack rolls out Slick. This past spring, I predicted that multiple breakthrough Covid-19 vaccines would be invented on the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction; at the time of this writing, approvals of various vaccines are already occurring in some countries, without necessarily finishing the standard protocol (Jupiter and Uranus going rogue on Saturn).

The most significant aspects of the winter of 2020–21, following the Great Mutation, are profoundly challenging: the Jupiter-Uranus square (1/17/21) and the first of several Saturn-Uranus squares (2/17/21), during the same period that Mars is conjunct Uranus in Taurus. As Mars is an inner planet, and debilitated in Taurus, there is no way for us to opt out of these challenging squares, and they will involve the same signs of the Jupiter-Uranus and Saturn-Uranus squares of 2000—just flipped. Rhyming history, anyone?

Think back to 2000, the final Great Conjunction in the earth element, specifically Taurus; reflect on the past 20 years of societal matters, and how they have all been tied into the sign of money and possessions. Particularly in the US, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened into a canyon. Unfettered capitalism, tax breaks, and the stock market have mainly benefited the 1%. Nearly all politicians are in the back pockets of corporations, which recently were determined to have the same rights as people (but not vice-versa). 9/11 occurred and has had the effect of dismantling certain personal liberties (e.g., Big Brotherish surveillance) in the name of security (an earth-element desire). Even as the internet, virtual reality, and AI gained traction with Uranus in Aquarius, the tech bubble burst in 2000 and true communication between disparate groups (Jupiter and Saturn) got bogged down in the bullheaded “my way or the highway” modus operandi that is the dark side of Taurus.

This time around, however, Uranus has moved from the sign of its rulership to the sign of its fall, which suggests that the effects of this square will be even harsher and involve not just public health and economic misery for millions of people, but the climate-change emergency that is mainly kindling young activists who will be most affected by the coming devastation if nothing is done very soon to mitigate it (as it may already be too late to stop the damage entirely).

During the spring of 2020, millions of individuals lost their jobs due to the pandemic, and a global recession ensued;
Saturn backed off from the exact square, but starting this winter, the square will be in full force. While the Jupiter-Uranus square willencourage conspiracy theories, cultlike groups, rampant fake news, and gambling with money and literal lives, the real crash will come on the exact Saturn-Uranus square. Incoming president Biden may say “Bye Don” as the Lame Donald Duck is removed from the White House with a butterfly net (or, depending on what he attempts during the Jupiter-Uranus square, in handcuffs). But unless the US Senate is flipped in the January runoff in Georgia or the Senate Majority Leader candy-flips, Americans may not be helped in any real way this winter as Covid-19 ravages the nation and vaccines are at the very earliest stages of being distributed. As of this writing, there are talks in the Senate of passing a compromised stimulus bill to help individuals and businesses; if there is no significant improvement, and individuals are being evicted and going hungry, even more people will take to the streets in protest of this utterly avoidable mess than the Black Lives Matter movement (though there will be overlap). And the protesting could easily turn violent.

The stubborn nature of this Great Mutation in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus also indicates that another bubble will burst, with more potential violence: the information bubble, which has polarized our society and is yoked to money in the form of corporate interests and hucksters. Critical thinking has become a lost art, as has compassion and a sense of fair play. Every opinion is a fact; every fact is an opinion. Many of us, no matter how nice, educated, or “evolved” we are, have our own set-in-stone beliefs on just about everything, gleaned from such disparate sources that when op-ed columnists opine, newscasters speak, epidemiologists weigh in, the CDC flipflops, Facebook friends post, or twitterers tweet, they are all preaching in echo chambers to their very separate choirs. Very recently, I became aware of Parler, a far-right social media platform that formed in response to pushback from Facebook.

Federal mask mandates and strict three-month lockdowns may work in some countries, but not here, and particularly not during a 20-year cycle defined, as in the last 20-year cycle, by Jupiter and Saturn squaring Uranus in fixed know-it-all signs. Freedom has become such a loaded term, used by many people to define their right to not wear a mask to protect other people, that I nearly scrapped the Bob Dylan reference at the beginning of this article. As the poet William Butler Yeats put it so eloquently in “The Second Coming,” just following the First World War and the last pandemic:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Now that we are trying to tame the worst public health crisis since Yeats wrote that poem in 1919, the center must regain its footing if we are to make it as a species, or at least as Americans, to the next potential renaissance (as occurred in Italy midway through the last air-element Great Conjunction cycle). We need not to “get back to normal,” as recent normal was not working out so well for many of us, but to be inspired by a long-ago era.

An era when the newborn Magna Carta was used as a springboard for common law outside of England. An era when the populace (symbolized by Aquarius) hungered and fought for human rights (Aquarius again) that would benefit as many people of all races, religions, and walks of life as possible instead of sinking into tribalism, cynicism, nihilism, and authoritarian populism (which has enabled fascism, holocausts, ethnic cleansing—and most recently, a mentally ill psychopathic grifter to become the President of the United States). An era when ideas and communication (domains of the air element) were valued at least as much as things and ownership (ruled by earth).

Tribunals and revolutions may be unavoidable during this elemental societal change. But if enough humane humans unite, we can get the true Age of Aquarius rolling…with the great transformer Pluto transiting through Aquarius, to boot. This winter, let us mask up, take a deep breath, and begin a 200-year-long journey.