Uranus in Pisces: Liberating the Imagination

Prometheus, the revolutionary fire-stealing Titan
whom historian Richard Tarnas argues should
be associated with the planet Uranus. I agree with him

Uranus has navigated the Piscean ocean with panache over the pat seven years, making waves in all kinds of directions. At the same time, Pisces' ruler Neptune has been washing slowly through Uranus' own sign Aquarius. So the two outer planets have been reinforcing each others' energy.

That's all about to change next year. But while we have these two heavy-hitters still working along similar lines for the next few months, it's worth thinking a bit about what this energy means. These outer planets influence the collective. In other words, fashion, politics, the general spirit of the times; the dreams that we share.

Uranus and Aquarius – planet and associated sign – represent, among many other things, rebellion, revolution and innovation. Neptune and Pisces represent, again among many things, the unconscious and imagination. So how does Uranus in Pisces revolutionise our collective imagination?



Last time Uranus was in Pisces was in the 1920s, a time of enormous artistic innovation, a phrase which neatly summarizes one aspect of Uranus in Pisces. It was in the late degrees of Pisces – where it is now –from 1925 to 1927.

The Jazz Singer, the first talking
picture was released in 1927.
Film =  Pisces;  Uranus =  breakthrough.

Fiction, music, film, theatre – these are all products of the imagination. But let's look at just one - the novel. Here are just a few published in those years. I've left out many so this is just a sample. They are not all "great" literature, but how important and groundbreaking were they? Were they revolutionary? Were they innovative?

I think it's remarkable that these books were published in the space of three short years. They created a benchmark by which modern literature is still measured.

And what does fiction writing do for us? It shows us the world afresh, gives us a new angle on life, allows us to inhabit a different skin. So Uranus in Pisces opens up the collective imagination to new ways of expressing itself.

1925

This captain of the unconscious,
Sigmund Freud, published a
book called The Future [Uranus]
of Illusion [Pisces] in 1927. 

The Great Gatsby - Scott Fitzgerald.
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Countefeiters - André Gide
Carry On, Jeeves - P G Wodehouse

1926
Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne
Mary - Vladimir Nabokov's first novel
The Castle - Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway.
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie

1927
To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf.
Steppenwolf - Hermann Hesse.
Remembrance of Things Past (final instalment) - Marcel Proust
The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder

The house journal of the group
La Revolution [Uranus] Surrealiste [Pisces]

 I'll leave you with this thought from the poet Andre Breton who started a revolutionary artistic movement in 1924 with the publication of the first Surrealist Manifesto.

"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and low,  cease to be perceived as contradictions. "

And I ask this question: has there been similar radicalism in the arts this time around? 3D Movies maybe?