Gathering together what Uranus has exploded and inspired as Venus leans in for a goodbye kiss…
Before you dive into this one, I do recommend first checking out my 2019 essay “Breath and Butterflies, Blue and Beltane” that I reference below, written as Uranus in Taurus was just getting cooking. It holds some useful orientation, is much shorter than this piece, and is representative of a kind of interweaving that I have missed doing in recent years.
For nearly two years now, I have wanted to write up personal reflections on Uranus finishing its transit through Taurus, which happens to be home to my natal Sun and Mercury in my 11th house. It’s been challenging to find the time and bandwidth I’ve felt I would need to do it justice.
Not surprising, perhaps, given the disruptive nature of Uranus, and Mercury’s relationship to thinking and writing. This has been a transformative phase, to say the least, and achieving enough distance to fully appreciate and understand a transformation — let alone articulate it — brings extra challenges when you still feel like you’re in the thick of it.
Curiously, as the Uranus-in-Taurus era was only beginning to dawn seven years ago, an upwelling of synchronicity spoke quite clearly (and gracefully, even) to me of the essence of this transit. It feels quaintly naïve or hubristic to write that sentence, given that in May 2019 I was still very much on the outside of the mystery about to unfold.
Yet the essay I wrote at the time, titled “Breath and Butterflies, Blue and Beltane,” still stands as one of my favorite things I have written, and I stand by the perceptions and associations my experience and intuition offered up at the time.
My attention had caught a series of threads that, as I wove them together, offered a gentle warm-up to the ideas of “change” and “ongoing process” — and even the shocks and splitting open — that Uranus can herald, all of it steeped in Taurean themes.
Of course, no gentle thematic warm-up could have prepared me for the specifics, both enlivening and devastating: opportunities to choose differently, mandates to move on and get free, losses, injuries, grief, creative left-turns and joyfully unexpected experiments, the incredible pressure when options seemed non-existent or too havoc-causing to consider…and so on.
At times, Uranus moving through Taurus has felt like exactly the creative spark I have needed to wake me up, get me moving, and prompt me to choose taking the lead in my own self-innovation and becoming. Refreshing! Exciting! Empowering!
At other times, I have absolutely felt like the stereotypical bull: so steady as to be stuck; so slow as to be five steps behind where I need to be; so wedded to my habits and what I know that I stay in situations and circumstances far too long; unable to manufacture sufficient velocity or motivation in the face of overwhelm.
The difference for these past seven years being that Uranus often brought consequences faster — and sharper — than in the past. And true to Taurus’s themes, those consequences and (ahem) strongly worded messages often were physical, tangible, and non-negotiable. (Though like any true, stubborn Taurus, I did sometimes try to “negotiate” in the form of ignoring or delaying my response — usually to my detriment, at least once to my benefit.)
However, like I said, the beginning of this transit actually felt rather beautiful on a personal level: for parts of 2018 and 2019, coinciding roughly with Uranus moving from Aries to Taurus both years, I had the privilege of immersing twice, for a week each time, in an intensive workshop focused on “freeing the natural breath and voice.” It was body-centered and throat-centered, it was about liberation, it was a process of evolution. Those workshops even connected with the themes of showing up in the world and self-expression that I associate with my two Taurus placements.
Of course, Uranus was in Taurus for less than a year before a radical shock upended daily life all across the globe. COVID swept through, and the widespread disruption to physical health and our collective sense of physical safety rocked our perceptions of shared values. And yet — at least temporarily — the upheaval helped many of us to slow down and reconnect with simpler pleasures. The destabilization of economic systems followed, well before AI threw gasoline on the situation, seemingly splashing the cosmic light socket.
Prior to all that playing out, in mid-February of 2020 I left my job of 10 years as an astrology writer and editor. It was a decision that had gradually formulated throughout 2019 as Jupiter transited Sagittarius and my 6th house, including my North Node, and got pushed into action by the need to close some karma with the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn that winter. Four weeks after my last day on the job, the world shut down.
Yet after sitting with the grief, disorientation, and fear of those early pandemic weeks, my introverted nature found some relief in the lack of obligations and FOMO. Pivoting from my original intention of expanding my professional acting activities, I settled into some self-directed and virtual opportunities to continue moving toward what I could feel calling me forward: working with clients as an astrologer, Lightworker, and healer.
Can You Hear Me Now? Uranus Calls Through the Body
In spring of 2021, about five weeks after I’d announced publicly that I was accepting clients for astrology and soul work sessions, I experienced the first of Uranus’s clear reprimands. I’d just done a soul work session for a friend of mine, a sensitive soul who’d gotten quite emotional, though she’d ended the session in a neutral place of “completion.”
While chopping vegetables after her session, I found myself doubting how I had guided her, doubting the tools that I had worked so hard to hone to access clear guidance and honor the highest good. Months later when I asked my friend, she reassured me that while her level of emotion had seemed intense, it had not been too much for her, and had regarded the session as helpful. But in that moment, fear and doubt stampeded like bulls in Pamplona.
Despite all my training, practice, safeguards, and guidance by my mentor, my mind kept running: Did I just do more harm than good?
Whack!
I was bolted back to presence by a single, solid chop — clear through the tip of my left thumb, diagonal through part of the nail bed.
More than just a surprise, I went into some mild shock at this sudden loss of a part of my body. If you have ever cut off a fingertip you might relate — or maybe you experienced it as no big deal in the grand scheme of things? Both responses are understandable.
For me, it felt so incredibly personal on a core level. I tended the wound and called my doctor-boyfriend, as the sense of having just been punished by the universe rippled through my psyche and soma. I took some Rescue Remedy and took time for some neuro-spiritual recalibration while waiting for my partner to stop by and assess the damage, not believing his reassurance that it would grow back just fine (it did).
Knowing that the Sun at the moment of injury was moving into a conjunction with Uranus, I quickly checked my astrology software. Sure enough, the transiting Taurus Sun was exactly conjunct transiting Uranus, still applying to the precise arc minute. This was definitely a message.
But I had a “Zoom theater” performance that evening. Stubborn Taurus that I am, and determined that the show must go on, I pushed any deeper exploration of the chart, the injury’s spiritual significance, and my background sense of punishment to the morning.
After meditating and running through my standard spiritual checklist that next day, I began using my muscle-test — despite the essential left thumb being bandaged and sore — to check possible messages, reasons, and meanings. My understanding has long been that the universe doesn’t “punish” us in the classical Greek mythological sense. It does, however, ask us to pay attention to our lessons; and sometimes the harder the lesson, the sharper the demand for correction.
What came through crystal clear was this:
CUT IT OUT!
As in, “Amanda, knock it off with this self-flagellation. Trust your tools, your training, and your guiderails. Yes, take care with sensitive topics and empower clients to say ‘no’ or to redirect a session. Ask for their consent as you proceed. Then trust them, and don’t fear their emotions.”
I sat with this a while, feeling into its fullness and letting the message sink in, stepping into the understanding and aligning with it, owning it. The inner shift was palpable.
Just to be on the safe side, I did ask Spirit that if, on the off chance I should need another reminder on this topic, could it please come through a little gentler? And, um, WAY less literally?
Looking at the chart for this incident again now, I am struck also by how the transiting Taurus Sun and Uranus were precisely sextile my natal Pholus in my 10th/Pisces, to the degree (if you don’t use Pholus, one delineation is, “small cause, big effect,” and like all the centaur planets often relates to healing processes, especially of the intergenerational and/or karmic variety). Less than two degrees from Pholus is my natal Jupiter in my 10th house/Pisces.
Transiting Sun-Uranus were also applying to sextile my natal Mars in my 1st house/Cancer, within one degree. Even transiting Chiron was in the mix at 10+ Aries.
Not to be left out, transiting Trickster Mercury, late in Taurus at the time, was applying within about half a degree to conjoin my natal Mercury in Taurus. Isabel Hickey writes of Mercury in Taurus that it “learns more from travel and experience than from textbooks.” Oy. Rings true.
The sharpness of Mars, the suddenness of Uranus, the illumination of the Sun, the small cause and big effect of Pholus, Chiron acting as awareness-raiser and focusing agent on the wounding and healing potential, the teachings of Jupiter (and protection, of a sort: there are far worse potential injuries)…how dramatically this small-yet-arresting moment sliced through my emotions and ruminating mind to jolt me back to full attention. And how significant the spiritual awareness and healing that followed.
Little did I know that while that specific lesson had landed, Uranus was only getting started. During the next three years, as Uranus rolled back and forth over my Sun, zapping it like an electric cattle prod — and then visited my natal Mercury last year — the Taurus-scented messages and provocations continued, both from within me and around me:
— The chronic dislocation of the right side of my jaw, which began without warning May 14, 2022. It was immediately clear my body was screaming at me about the stress of an ill-fitting part-time job. But I felt deep obligation and responsibility not to jump ship, and thereby leave a community I loved in chaos at the worst possible time for them.
I’d known the position was a bad fit two months in, and the pressure culminated Aug. 1, 2022, during the most intense and depleting part of the commitment, as the transiting North Node, Mars, and Uranus all converged in one degree of the zodiac: the degree occupied by my Sun.
It felt impossible to “break free and pursue my dharma” at that moment, in the way I imagined it should look, according to my stress-and-desperation-informed interpretation of the symbols. But a week or so later I tendered my resignation, agreeing to fulfill the rest of my contract during the ensuing, much slower months.
Although my spiritual and energetic recovery was fairly quick, the jaw dislocation repeated with frightening and disheartening regularity for more than two years, finally seeming to resolve (fingers crossed) in 2025. I am still on high alert when eating tough, hard, or chewy foods, and any time I notice a hint of jaw or neck tension.
I’m still not 100% sure I made the right decision by not ditching the job two months in. I definitely caused myself harm in staying, though seemingly not permanent. However, I also gained tremendous experience, some new skills, stronger relationships in that organization, and a new sense of myself as a leader. My legacy to the community has turned out to be a significantly more sustainable leadership structure, created in direct response to my experience.
Looking back, I am struck by how the “obvious option” felt so impossible. How resistant I can be to forces urging freedom or the need to pivot, once I settle into something or take possession of it. It was not a new awareness for me, but it came with a startling degree of force in its delivery and impact. And still, the tendency persists.
“Nature Is Not a Place to Visit. It Is Home.” — Gary Snyder
Yes, But…
I have also been forced to reckon with the loss of beloved natural spaces that I had long stewarded and felt a sense ownership toward — actually, more like kinship. Like my favorite wee pond tucked away in the woods, where I used to skinny-dip and spend hours alone on the perfect rock. My sanctuary suddenly became off-limits when the landowner decided to cash in on the pandemic land-grab in Maine.
Or how the brand-new owners of the building I’d rented in for 16 years decided gravel parking for their other building next door was more “valuable” than my building’s ample, increasingly rare-for-the-neighborhood yard, with its 12-foot lilac trees, raised vegetable beds, and irises that I had tended lovingly. They leveled it all to grass during their first year of new ownership, which was hard enough; the gravel went in after I was gone.
I grieved the loss of both these green spaces heavily, and there have been additional, if less intensely personal, instances, including where I live now. The wakeup call to just how hollow my love and sense of stewardship were in our capitalistic, territorial, possessive society was a harsh slap in the face. I still can’t even consider visiting either site to witness its current state.
Oh, and those new owners of the building where I’d rented for 16 years unceremoniously evicted me (no cause needed, since I’d had no lease for more than a decade) just a few weeks after that Mars-Uranus-North Node conjunction on my Sun in 2022. A push from the heavens screaming, Move on to what’s next already!
I hadn’t intended ever to leave Portland, Maine, and was quite content living solo. But I’d read the handwriting on the wall that previous December and had made a couple halfhearted attempts to seek a new apartment with my partner during the year. Luckily that meant we actually had a place lined up when I got my notice.
My former astrology mentor used to joke that all the Tauruses he knew still lived in the same place as when he’d met them, no matter how many years ago that was. I suspect he has come to realize that even the most steadfastly rooted Taurus is no match for Uranus.
Embracing the Experiment — and All its Results. Mostly.
Though the more painful lessons from Uranus were the most dramatic, Uranus wasn’t all shock-and-horror. Honest!
Befitting an 11th-house Sun and Mercury, I’ve felt excited to explore new ways to offer my gifts to the world and step into new community roles: serving on the board of a theater org close to my heart; forging ahead into the world of self-employment as an astrologer and soul worker; offering astro-guidance in new-for-me formats; giving mini-readings at an in-person fair.
Embracing the concept of “self-reinvention” has buoyed me through all of this. Yet at times Uranus moving through this zone of my chart has felt a little like the lightning coursing through Mary Shelly’s fully-formed-yet-new-to-the-world patchwork creature, the electricity enlivening my material form as I struggle to catch up to what it all means. How can I bring cohesion and vision to the grand experiment of my life when I am building and discovering myself as I go?
Okay, everyone is doing that, all the time. But the “out of nowhere” character of Uranus’s energy can make it extra challenging for those of us who struggle with planning, organizing, and creating a logical structure on our own. The charge needs a channel, solid connections, and the appropriate circuitry to work ideally. Lacking those elements, the amount of effort, focus, and support required to manage the electrical load increase.
I suspect that’s partly why the intensive voice and breath workshops I immersed in when Uranus was still so new to Taurus felt like such a natural, easy expression of the energies (in addition to the fact that my personal Taurus placements were not yet feeling the full wattage of this transit). I was in a sturdy, focused container being held by someone else who had already mastered the specific process of transformation she was guiding us in.
Self-reinvention on one’s own, without a map, guidelines, or clear boundaries, simply takes more. Of everything. At least, it does for me.
Some people seem to only be in their element when innovating their next self-iteration. I envy them often. They thrive moving from instar stage to instar stage: their caterpillar skin splits repeatedly as they molt and grow, without dissolving completely into the unrecognizable goo required to transfigure from caterpillar to butterfly.
I’ve had that experience of “successive molts,” too. The last few years, however, I have noticed a level of disorientation that intermittently brings up uneasiness regarding the goo and dissolution intrinsic to the chrysalis stage.
That sense of “taking more of everything” to keep up with the self-reinvention and energy input? With the complete lack of outside structures, routines, priorities set by a “boss,” and the support of a team of coworkers, my efforts to be completely self-employed have brought a difficult realization into focus.
Flashes of insight two years ago about the conditions of my Mars and Mercury, plus my 6th house placements, helped me to understand how my current situation was lacking some of what I require externally to succeed. But I still floundered at implementing what I knew I needed, bewildered by my inability to translate understanding into motivation and consistent action despite my pressing need.
Not until last year did I finally face and accept that I am yet another Gen X woman whose ability to achieve in the supportive, structured, stimulating environment of school and certain jobs had masked an ADHD brain.
It took my environment pushing back consistently, with increasingly frustrating consequences and unnerving levels of disarray and overwhelm, for me to get the message and take action to get help in understanding how to work better with my brain. And I had to surrender to a new facet of identity to allow the process to start.
I’m not a fan of attaching to labels and diagnoses in place of a holistic, grounded sense of self. As any astrology chart demonstrates, we’re made up of myriad pieces and potentials all weaving together to create a map of who we are — and a map of multiple options for who we can become, depending on the circumstances we encounter from birth to death.
But if a new identity factor opens up a world of tools, tactics, self-compassion, empowerment, empathy, and a healthier, easier path forward? Then fuck yes, I will feel my way into seeing and accepting myself through that lens when relevant. I value healing, growth, and the pursuit of self-awareness as tools to help us be in service to this gift of life on this planet and the web of life forms we share it with.
I’m grateful my stubborn attachment to one version of identity finally relented enough for me to act on those values in this capacity. And I’m grateful these Uranian-themed years of “trying new things” laid bare a reality I hadn’t been able to see before.
Anti-Values, Wealth, and the Grace of Venus
Earlier this week, contemplating writing this piece, I struggled to connect my personal experience — punctuated by seeking meaning in the midst of upsets and the joy of creative experimentation — with the massive, global changes during the last seven-plus years. Something wasn’t meshing, even though collective events have impacted me just as much as everyone else.
I considered how in the middle of Uranus in Taurus, the collective upset of COVID rearranged everything economically and socially, accelerating our retreat into devices and away from physical presence and connection. I noted how generative AI is now disrupting how we engage with artistic creation, our need for social contact, and even thought itself, devaluing physical participation in these pursuits — devaluing even the very living, breathing, corporeal human beings we’ve held in high esteem for millennia for their gifts in these areas.
In the midst of that questioning, I read an article in the May 2026 issue of The Atlantic titled, “Everything is Free and Nothing Matters.” In it, Noah Hawley recounts his 2018 experience — incidentally during Uranus’s brief visit to Taurus that year — at a retreat hosted by Jeff Bezos, and how it has informed his understanding of the unprecedented wealth being accumulated by the world’s richest individuals. Hawley writes:
“It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. [In that scenario] the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.”
I might debate Hawley on their “not becoming evil.” My spiritual training in souls and the concept of “working for the negative power” comes from a framework that encompasses more than developmental psychology. But his point is valid: that the lack of hard, tangible lessons and pushback in the world of unimaginable wealth dissolves all sense of morality, ethics, and even any meaningful conception of the very existence and relevance of other people.
Hawley puts it this way:
“This sense of invulnerability has deep psychological ramifications. If everything is free [i.e., cost is no issue] and nothing matters [no consequences], then the world and other people exist only to be acted upon, if they are acknowledged at all. This is different from classical narcissism […]. What I’m talking about is a self-definition in which the individual grows to the size of the universe, and the universe vanishes.”
The phrase “anti-value” came to me as I read this. Not exactly nihilism, with its pessimism, impulse to destroy, and belief that all values are baseless. Nihilism feels different to me somehow. It still seems to operate within the existence it condemns.
Hawley’s description feels like the most shocking possible correlation to Uranus zapping the sign of values. As though Uranus had managed to completely electrocute the concept for certain people.
“All wealth comes from the earth,” as one mentor of mine would say of Taurus. Yet in Taurus, Uranus the Liberator has apparently described the “liberation” of extreme financial wealth from the solid ground of reality that everyone else must live within. Along the way, it has also “liberated” the uber-wealthy from valuing basic empathy, and from the development of normal moral reasoning.
I don’t think I ever want to be that “free.”
Sorting this out as I write, it occurs to me that Bezos, Zuckerburg, Musk, Thiel, et al., illustrate the exact flip side of my personal Uranus-in-Taurus takeaways. For me, Uranus the Awakener has brought me into closer contact with solid ground: the reality of myself, my environment, and my mind.
I am not done learning. There is much I do not see clearly about myself. Plenty of ways I am still a drowsy bull, chewing my cud. I have even wondered recently if I have felt pushed to change in ways that are not actually authentic to me or might not serve the highest good during these last seven years.
Tonight, April 23, Venus moves in to give Uranus a soft kiss goodbye before they each leave Taurus for Gemini’s swiftly shifting air currents, April 24 and 25, respectively. Their conjunction in Taurus’s final degree is exact at 9:58 pm EDT.
Venus sending off Uranus like this reminds me that no matter how surprises change us, the biggest surprise of all is often just how much we are still the same. Perhaps the more the world around us changes, the more valuable certain of these quietly persistent facets of ourselves become — along with the most tangible, sensual, physical aspects of living in a body on planet Earth.
Here’s to offering ourselves and each other grace as we falter and fall along the way. I would much rather hit the ground of reality occasionally than forget that it exists entirely.
With love,
Amanda
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