Down the Rabbit Hole: Seven Years at the Mad Hatter's Table
Uranus enters Gemini tomorrow. That's the very DNA of 'change.' What can two self-mythologizing Uranians tell us about the tunnel we're about to enter?
You’re reading WOODRUFF. I cover the convergence of pop culture, psychology, and astrology. Join my entourage of subscribers. My bio is here. Curious about a consultation? Head here.
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
OF ALL THE PLANETS in the pantheon, Uranus is analogous to an endlessly elusive koan. You can’t chop it, slice it, or dice it. Nope. Uranus is the essence of what Rilke meant when he said that questions were way more entertaining than answers. Also, the planet is the essence of unpredictability. A real pain within a divinatory art like astrology.
A word that best summarizes the human condition is ‘habituated.’ Because of this, when you’re planning for an upcoming Uranus transit, the keenest defense is an offense. It’s best to scan your life now and put your recurring habits in the crosshairs. Most likely, those facets of your life are what Uranus is gunning for.
For those who still hope to wrangle something directional about Uranus, I suggest they observe folks who have Uranus conjunct one of the lights—the Sun or the Moon—in their horoscope.
Hmmmm, who comes to mind with this sort of conjunction?
The president of the United States.
Take every reaction you’ve registered over the past ten years concerning Donald Trump, and there you have a condensed version of Uranus as it moves, or attempts to move, through the solar principle. The Sun is conjunct Uranus in Trump’s chart. And that’s a big deal.
Trump is a Gemini genius. You must give his inner trickster props. I’ll never ever forget that August night in 2015, watching Trump—center stage at the debate, flanked by ten other (boring, cookie-cutter) GOP candidates. Watching Trump, I felt in my bones what was happening, just then, across America. People were thinking, “This is a fucking blast. Someone is finally cutting through the political bullshit and giving us what we love most—entertainment!”
Stop for a second and consider the Sun. Our star bestows on our world boundless light. Pure lightness. The most taken-for-granted feature of life on Earth is light. Night is primary. Day is a periodic interlude—present only when the Earth faces the Sun; otherwise, we face the immensity of night. All of that black.
Light is a spectacular anomaly. Astrology is the study of light as it moves through and animates our solar system. The light reflected by the planets and our Moon contains every color, blend, and hue that makes up the world we see. There truly is nothing like the Sun.
So Trump’s solar light channels Uranus. Or attempts to. This is not an easy conjunction to align with. Uranus is a transhuman planet. When Uranus conjuncts the Sun, there is a gap between having an idea and being possessed by an idea. With Uranus, the idea has the person, not the other way around.
The Sun in Gemini, taken on its own, is a hard equation to live out. Gemini longs for connectivity, relationships—to explore every possible version of what it means to be human—and curiosity for curiosity’s sake. Gemini is the giver of names, which means everything must be encountered and then registered.
But loneliness is inherent to the Sun. Isolation is inevitable with the astrological Sun. Singularity is what holds our solar system together. Imagine if there were several stars in our system, competing to maintain harmony in space. The glory of light doesn’t blend well with families, committees, and certainly not mobs or political parties. When I’m not in an agitated state reacting to Trump, I return to the image of him as the loneliest person in the world. Trump, true to his chart’s ruler, the Sun, is a star. Or, as I call him now, with a nod to Star Wars—a Death Star.
Bob Dylan is a Gemini, too; only it’s his Moon in Taurus that conjuncts Uranus. So this is an approachable (Moon-Taurus) expression of Uranus. Uranus has entered the flesh—this is an entirely different setting. The Moon reflects and humanizes sunlight—makes it accessible, and as the Moon is directly connected to the public, the Uranus Moon person can typify and demonstrate what a more mammalian relationship to Uranus might be about or look like. That’s saying a lot. Why?