Bigger is Better: The Astrology of Midlife & Uranus in Pisces

The 84 year orbit of Uranus around the sun means that it is inevitably a planet of midlife crisis.  Mathematics dictates that Uranus must circle halfway around the zodiac and oppose its own natal position in every person's chart in their early 40s.  During the opposition of transiting Uranus to natal Uranus, each person is urged on some level to reconcile who they are now in the world compared to who they thought they were going to be.  Right now, Uranus is about a third of the way through its transit of the sign of Pisces. It has been and will be impacting people born between mid-1962 and mid-1968.  It is also impacting everyone with natal placements in Virgo, Pisces, Gemini, and Sagittarius. 

People born in the 60s not only have Uranus in Virgo in their birth charts, but Pluto, too. This generation is scheduled for a double dose of Uranian energy. 

Uranus in Virgo in the birth chart is, in my opinion, one of the best placements for Uranus.  The combination is, as a general rule, mentally lively, rather charming, quite practical, inventive, and expressive of a desire to be useful. 

When Uranus in Pisces opposes natal Uranus in Virgo, though, all of a sudden those wonderful qualities are simply not enough any more.  Uranus in Virgo naturally thinks rather narrowly. It wants people born with this placement (called natives) to be generally competent and cheerful at doing what they do, but it doesn't much care about the greater meaning of what is being done. If Uranus in Virgo sees that children in Africa needs shoes, it simply wants to get them some shoes. It doesn't naturally contemplate why they don't have them or what their lack of shoes means about the world. 

Uranus in Pisces, on the other hand, takes a very broad view. It wants to understand the meaning behind the particulars and it really cares on an emotional level about the global factors that impinge on everyone. It's compassionate. 

For natives, the influence of Uranus in Pisces may simply mean that they suddenly find themselves questioning the meaning in their lives, whether all the useful things they have been doing add up to anything meaningful in a larger sense. This can be quite exhilarating.  A person can think "I've been ignoring my needs for meaning all my life, but doggone it, I'm going to start addressing them now.  I'm going to start doing more of the things that I've always felt were really important." It can be stressful, too, when a person suddenly wonders how exactly they are supposed to infuse the mundane realities of life with real meaning. They start wondering what they're supposed to be doing with their lives really. 

Uranus in Pisces thinks that bigger is better.  Bigger meaning, bigger focus, bigger picture, bigger feelings, bigger creativity, bigger concern with the changes occurring around the world.  Sometimes it wants to use technology to bring meaning to people's lives (Uranus loves technology); sometimes it's concerned with bringing more people together in a form of global community.  Sometimes it wants natives to express their innate compassion on a bigger scale. Sometimes it wants bigger personal goals or more meaningful relationships. 

However it expresses itself, the restless feeling of Uranus in Pisces is that the old ways the native is used to just aren't satisfying anymore.  They're not enough; the soul feels cramped and squeezed into a too-small box, and it wants out.  Some people search to liberate their souls through investigation of alternative methods of spirituality or healing.  On some level, Uranus in Pisces tries to get all the people affected by it to want more.  It tries to create a crisis of the spirit that will send a person seeking greater fulfillment and union with the forces of the universe.  Some astrologers suggest that this quest for greater spiritual and compassionate fulfillment represents the purpose of the second half of these natives' lives.      

This trend toward purpose through more global compassion and a greater search for spiritual meaning is not a bad thing in many ways. It can be stressful for those of the generation born in the 60s, as they struggle to figure out how the problems of these times can be solved in ways that benefit everyone, not just a privileged few.  That is part of the life task of this generation, though, and perhaps there is no escaping it.  We might as well embrace it.  If we don't figure out in our own lives how to be part of the solution instead part of the problem, we may well find that the problems we face (e.g., global climate change) will reach a point of no return.  That's an outcome that Uranus in Pisces definitely does not want.