Why Everyone Is On Edge: Round 1 of the Uranus/Pluto Square
Clash of the Titans
by Kathy Biehl
Pressure that’s been building for more than year is hitting is a breaking point now, as the cosmic change agents finally throw their first punches and make contact.
If you’ve been hearing the theme from “Jaws” playing in the background, you’ve been picking up the signal of this extraordinary clash. The two combatants, Uranus and Pluto, are anything but gentle and subtle, and they are coming at each other in an aspect that demands action. The approach is ominous. But not necessarily dire. (Remember that.)
In one corner of the ring is volatile, unpredictable and rebellious Uranus, the iconoclast, in the impulsive, militaristic energy of Aries, where his brick-throwing tendencies take on Molotov cocktail proportions. In the other is Pluto, lord of death, rebirth and everything that lurks in the depths of our being and planet, who has been performing the equivalent of a root canal in the foundations of our lives and societal structures, the domain of traditional, goal-oriented Capricorn.
They’ve been taunting each other since April of last year, dropping increasingly louder hints about the areas of our lives that are up for tear-down and renewal. You know what’s been destabilized. You know where something’s got to give. That’s going to start happening now that the giants are in the ring together and make their first contact early in the morning of June 24.
It’s challenging to predict the exact nature of how this square will play out. We have not in this lifetime experienced this aspect between Uranus and Pluto in same signs as they are currently occupying. The last time they squared, in the 1930s, Uranus was again in Aries but Pluto was in home-and-family-loving Cancer, which coincided with the Depression, the Dust Bowl and an epidemic of totalitarian governments.
Issues are less likely this time of national/ethnic/tribal identity and more likely to involve money, power and fundamental structures (big business, governments, the economy).
Warning signs have been all over the news, especially the political. (This is one big reason for the resurgence of reactionary fervor — and so many people teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.) They’ve been all over your own life, too. You may not know how this can play out — none of us really does — but you know the general arena for this bout of personal evolution.
Evolution occurs in stages. What we’re in now is a stage. It’s not a one-day event. We’re not going to sit up on June 24 and say, “I just felt the Uranus/Pluto square!” For one thing, the pressure before is more attention-getting than the day the aspect becomes exact; when that happens, the energy could actually relax and soften. (Slightly.) More importantly, June’s Uranus/Pluto square occurs a few days after the Gemini New Moon (June 19) and the Summer Solstice (June 20), which means it colors not only the next month, but also the entire summer.
