The Saturn | Uranus Cycle: Clash of the Titans
A 45-year cycle of society and culture from 1988–2032
Are we witnessing the era of a New World Order?
As I discussed at length in my recent article What’s Next: The Astrology of 2021, the major theme of this year will be the rather tense square aspect forming between Saturn in Aquarius and Uranus in Taurus. So I thought it might be beneficial to take a deeper dive into the symbolic relationship between these two planetary energies and examine the implications of this potent combination.
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn, depicted in the image above, is a 16th-century painting by Vasari and Gherardi that adorns the ceiling of the Room of Elements in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. It illustrates the Greek myth of the Titan, Saturn — the youngest son of the primordial god Uranus — in the act of castrating his tyrannical father with a sickle made of adamant (diamond), which was fashioned by his mother Gaia specifically for that purpose.
Entire volumes have been written attempting to unpack the complex symbolism and psychology of this succession myth. But for the purposes of this article, it provides us with a colorful backdrop for our discussion of the planetary archetypes that bear their mythical names.
Clash of the Titans
As planetary archetypes, Saturn and Uranus couldn’t be more different. They are in fact quite antithetical to each other, which is why the dynamic relationship of their cycle is so fascinating to observe. Saturn is the great boundary maker. It limits, restricts, confines. It is compelled to define and structure the world and bring order to chaos.
Uranus, on the other hand, revels in chaos. It is a most mischievous archetype that represents the urge to break free from all the limits, rules and restrictions imposed by Saturn. It is constantly bombarding Saturn with a relentless onslaught of revolutionary impulses, trying to break up all the crystalline structures that the old taskmaster has worked so hard to build, maintain and preserve.
Uranus wants to decondition us from all the conditioning patterns of life, family and society that Saturn represents. Why? Because it is an evolutionary necessity. In order to discover our true essential nature, we must progressively strip away all the conditioning patterns of our family, society and culture to find a deeper expression of the most unique and authentic aspects of ourselves — the core of our individual personalities. C.G. Jung referred to this as the process of individuation.
Depending on your own astrological framework, you may favor one side or the other in this cosmic battle between structure and reform, tradition and revolution, the safety and security of the past versus the risk and excitement of the cutting-edge future. Those of us with more Earth and Water in our birth charts may tend to be more risk averse and favor the Saturn side of the equation. Those of us with more Fire and Air may tend to be more risk-taking and embrace the exciting chaos of Uranus.
This tension between the archetypes of Saturn and Uranus often shows up as a “versus” dynamic:
- conservative vs progressive
- security vs adventure
- age vs youth
- materialism vs idealism
So we can expect these thematic tensions and energetic polarizations to be magnified within our culture this year. And keep in mind that the square aspect tends to constellate more of the shadow qualities of these two titanic archetypes.
Synod: A Journey Together
The concept of a synodic cycle in astrology comes from the ancient Greek word synodos which means to “journey together.” So the synod of Saturn and Uranus outlines the roughly 45-year cycle of their journey together, and it’s influence is most acutely felt at its conjunction, square and opposition points — the so-called hard aspects. In 2021, we are experiencing what we call a “waning” or “last-quarter” square, marking the ¾ point in the 45-year cycle.
Typically, this period in any synodic cycle is associated with a crisis in consciousness. It represents the challenge of integrating what has been learned since the opposition of these two planets (which occurred back in 1999–2000). And that opposition represented the point of the greatest maturation in the entire cycle, where the original “seed idea” that was planted at the last conjunction (which occurred in 1988) came into its fullness.
So what was the original “seed idea” of this current cycle? In order to answer that question, we need to rewind to the beginning of this entire cycle, so we can understand the deeper meaning of this current crisis in consciousness.
American Global Hegemony
The current Saturn/Uranus cycle began with the last exact conjunction — which occurred in February of 1988 — when these two planets met at 29ยบ Sagittarius. Of course, the beginning of a new cycle always signals the end of the old.
The previous cycle (from 1942–1988) perfectly bookended the Cold War Era — from World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the late 1980s, it seemed as if the USA had clearly won the decades-long Cold War, with its adversary, the USSR, having crumbled from within. America was emerging victorious as the sole global power.
A new era was beginning.
At its best, the initiation of a new Sa/Ur cycle represents the ability to take bold new inventions and innovative technologies (Uranus) and harness them in productive and lasting ways within society (Saturn). When they form a conjunction, they conspire to “birth’’ or “seed” a new vision that reflects the qualities of the sign in which they conjoin.
So we can frame this current cycle as one that began in the sign of Sagittarius, and is encapsulating a period of global expansion that has created a deeply interdependent global economy and a deeply interconnected global information ecology (via the internet). The notion of a Global Village first articulated by the famous media theorist Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s has now become our planetary reality.
Crisis in Action
The energy initiated during the conjunction in Sagittarius in 1988 would have come into its first hard aspect during its first quarter square in the year 2000, when Uranus had moved into Aquarius and Saturn into Taurus. The incredible period of technological innovation and global expansion that occurred throughout the decade of the 1990s (with Uranus moving through Capricorn and then Aquarius) created a dot-com bubble, which suddenly burst when Saturn (limits and restrictions) came into a hard square aspect in the sign of Taurus (resources and finances).
This first quarter square created a crisis in action and required a necessary adjustment. The unbridled enthusiasm of the early phase of the cycle needed to be harnessed into more practical and sustainable structures. Keep in mind that this was also during the period of Pluto’s transit through Sagittarius (1995–2008), so the energy pattern for global expansion was incredibly accelerated during this period.
But the dot-com bubble is clearly connected to the Saturn/Uranus (Sa/Ur) cycle. Particularly, this era of America’s global hegemony, which has been bolstered as much by technological innovation as by military might, witnessed the center of economic power shift from the industrial military complex of the previous cycle, to Silicon Valley and the tech giants of the current cycle.
From the perspective of the Sa/Ur cycle, we can see this first quarter square in the year 2000 as a point of adjustment: a revaluing and retooling of the entire tech sector. The next phase in the cycle would witness the potent combination of wireless networks and smartphone technologies that pushed the internet age to new heights.
The disruptive effects (Uranus) of the nascent app-based economy would prove to have monumental consequences for more traditional providers of goods and services (Saturn). The disruption of online retailers to traditional brick & mortar outlets was overwhelming. Over this period businesses like Barnes & Noble, a literal cornerstone of the retail space, would all but disappear in the face of competition from online bookseller Amazon, which ruthlessly leveraged its massive asymmetrical advantage to gobble up other areas of the retail space as well.
Disrupting The Grid
Another common manifestation of the Saturn–Uranus interface can be witnessed in disruptions to the energy grid. The rolling blackouts during the 2000–2001 square aspect that led to the California electricity crisis were a perfect example of this phenomenon. A myriad of factors were to blame, including a drought, lack of new capacity and market manipulation.
The last of those factors was directly connected to the Enron scandal that occurred during the same time period. The energy giant’s complex financial scheme was exposed as a massive fraud. The company went bankrupt and a few executives went to jail. But electricity consumers—mostly Californians—were left holding the bag. This is a common theme that tends to play out over the course of this push/pull, expansion/contraction cycle, as we’ll soon see.
Does any of this sound familiar? Should we consider the most recent Texas power crisis of 2021, when more than 4.5 million homes and businesses were left without power… in the dead of winter… during a pandemic? Yeah, these cycles tend to repeat themselves. It seems the current square aspect of 2021 is starting to feel a lot like the last square aspect of 2001. And as we’ll see, the parallels are becoming eerily similar.
Pluto Enters The Picture
By the middle of 2001, Saturn was moving beyond its square aspect with Uranus. But it was headed straight for another difficult encounter—an opposition with Pluto. The Saturn/Pluto cycle is yet another pattern of great significance in our world, one characterized by war, violence, terrorism and disease. And it illustrates how often these planetary cycles can intersect and overlap, sometimes with far-reaching and often devastating consequences.
On September 11, 2001, Pluto (planet of chaos and destruction) was in Sagittarius (sign of religious fanaticism), while Saturn (planet of rigid authority) had moved into Gemini (the Twins). How’s that for archetypal symbolism expressing itself?
In two years—from 1999–2001— a chain reaction between Uranus, Saturn and Pluto had triggered a major shift in geopolitics. The War on Terrorism, the Department of Homeland Security, the Transportation Security Administration, the Iraq War, the rise of the surveillance state— the world has really never been quite the same since. And the impact of this triple triggering transit—with Pluto interfacing the Saturn/Uranus cycle—would continue to exert a disruptive and transformational force.
American Dream or Financial Ruin?
The next major aspect came in 2009 with the opposition of Uranus in Pisces to Saturn in Virgo. This exactly coincided with the height (or rather depths) of the Great Recession that resulted from yet another bubble — this time the one created by the subprime mortgage scandal that resulted in the housing crisis.
Considered to be one of the greatest economic disasters in US history (second only to the Great Depression), the fallout from this crisis spread around the world, exposing just how interconnected — and perilously fragile — the global economy had become. Reflecting back on the fact that this cycle began in Sagittarius, we can understand how this opposition reveals the maturation of the “seed impulse” towards globalism that was implied by the original conjunction in 1988.
It’s also interesting to note that the opposition occurred while Uranus was in dreamy and deceptive Pisces, expressing both the American Dream of owning your own home and the deceptive practices of the investment banks and financial institutions who knowingly packaged these low-grade and risky investments and labelled them as A-1 quality. The bankers were using high-tech and extremely complicated financial instruments (Uranus) that even they didn’t fully understand (Pisces). In a classic expression of the opposition aspect, we had become divorced from reality.
So when Saturn moved into opposition in practical and detail-oriented Virgo, and the lawyers and accountants came in to analyze the nitty-gritty details of the “cooked” books of the investment banks, they quickly realized they were in way over their heads, and that entire global economy was about to come to a screeching halt.
But a new concept was born from this crisis: too big to fail. Now, if that doesn’t have the fingerprints of Saturn conjunct Uranus in Sagittarius all over it, I don’t know what does. But it really does set a dramatic stage for the theme of the second half of this cycle. When we unpack this concept, we see that when something is too big (Sagittarius) to fail (Saturn), it’s going to require some massive reform (Uranus) in order to survive, otherwise it will likely be destroyed (Pluto).
Again, I’ve interjected Pluto into this formula, because it continues to be a major player in this unfolding Saturn/Uranus story. Coincidently, Pluto moved from Sagittarius into Capricorn at the exact time the Great Recession was imploding in 2008. So the symbolism of Pluto (the impulse for necessary change and evolution) moving from Sagittarius (global expansion) to Capricorn (social structures, institutions and hierarchies) highlighted a need for necessary reforms to the system in order for society to continue to evolve.
But those reforms never happened. The Federal Reserve printed a few trillion dollars out of thin air, and everyone pretended to go back to business as usual. The problems and inequities inherent in the underlying fundamentals of the global economy that were laid bare by the events of Great Recession were never properly addressed.
As Pluto has continued its journey through Capricorn, all the various systems and institutions that make up the global economy have been increasingly stress-tested. Keep in mind that Pluto tends to elicit evolutionary change in one of two ways: either by slow and deliberate evolution through cooperation and conscious effort, or by sudden, catastrophic destruction and havoc wrecked by unconscious impulses. Which side of that equation does it feel like we are embracing?
Crisis in Consciousness
Now in 2021, we are entering the last quarter square phase of the synodic cycle between Saturn and Uranus, which is characterized by a crisis in consciousness. What’s required to handle the current situation is not so much new actions, but new ways of thinking. During the opposition of 2009, we were shown how dangerously divorced we had become from reality, revealing a world increasingly divided between haves and have nots, the 1% versus the 99%.
There’s an interesting symmetry between this last quarter square we are entering now in 2021 and the fist quarter square we endured back 1999–2000. At that time, Uranus was in Aquarius and Saturn was in Taurus. This time, it’s the other way around — Saturn is in Aquarius and Uranus in Taurus. Might we expect some sort of role reversal?
During the tech bubble of 2000, what was disrupted (Uranus) was Big Tech (Aquarius), which caused limits and losses (Saturn) to the financial markets (Taurus). This time around, a scenario could play out where the disruption (Uranus) will occur in the financial markets (Taurus), causing limits and losses (Saturn) to Big Tech (Aquarius).
Could the Big Tech platforms be in for a rude awakening this year? Or have they become — like the out of control investment banks in 2009 — too big to fail? It seems counterintuitive to think that tech stocks — now riding all time highs in the current (and highly irrational) bull market — could somehow suffer the limits and losses often imposed by Saturn during these triggering transits. But stranger things have happened, my friends.
What’s that old saying on Wall Street? Bulls make money. Bears make money. Pigs get slaughtered.
Mad Money
Another area that could be up for disruption and sudden change is the entire global monetary system itself. With central banks printing trillions of dollars out of thin air under the auspices of “quantitative easing,” and crypto fever pushing Bitcoin over $50,000, the climate seems ripe for some kind of showdown between traditional fiat currencies and the emergent digital coin culture. This is classic Saturn/Uranus.
The two recent events that most characterized this archetypal complex are the Capitol Riot (irresponsible or harmful forms of rebellion) and the Gamestop phenomenon (challenging the bedrock assumptions of a worldview).
Both may be harbingers of things to come.
The “Big Brother vs. Little Brother” theme of Saturn and Uranus seems to constellate just these types of scenarios. More often than not, the Uranian or Promethean-like hero figures end up being subdued by the Saturnian or Authoritarian-like powers that be. But in this new Aquarian Age, might those tables be turning?
There are a lot of big ideas and big numbers being floated. Infrastructure packages exceeding $2 trillion. Great Resets and Green New Deals. Debt jubilees, indigenous reparations and universal basic income.
Many of the major decisions that are made in the next few years will determine how this entire 45-year cycle will end. We likely won’t know the true outcome until 2032, when the current cycle concludes and a new cycle begins. The next conjunction will occur in the sign of Gemini — certain to usher in a future era mediated by exponential advancements in information technology. Will it look more like a decentralized, equitably-distributed and inclusively-oriented global village — one that restores the tragedy of the commons? Or will it devolve into a dystopian prison planet dominated by Big Brother and Big Tech — one that perpetuates the zero sum game of a voracious global technocracy?
We are about to find out.
Resolving Internal Conflicts
2021 will continue to be a year dominated by this square energy. We have Uranus in Taurus — a progressive planet in a rather conservative sign, in square with Saturn in Aquarius — a conservative planet in a rather progressive sign. So we can expect a lot of tension (square energy) between progressive and conservative impulses throughout the remainder of 2021. This will likely play out on the political stage and continue to ripple through the culture at large. Additionally, each of us as individuals will likely feel this tension internally as well as interpersonally.
Many of us are internalizing the push/pull dynamic of this current energy pattern. We are torn between clinging to our past and traditions (Saturn) and embracing what seems like a necessary and inevitable future (Uranus). Any cursory cruise through any of our social media feeds will show us this tension playing out in real time amongst our friends, family and colleagues. We’re all in the midst of a crisis in consciousness. So what is the best course of action to navigate this current crisis?
When we consider the best qualities of the archetypal Saturn/Uranus complex, we are encouraged to pursue the paths of responsible freedom, cautious innovation and liberation through everyday routines. None of it is super sexy, but it does contain the kind of sober medicine and healing elixir that is necessary for the times.
When properly and potently combined, the archetypes of Saturn and Uranus arm us with the courage to challenge the bedrock assumptions of our worldview. What is wrong, or simply outdated in our approach? What new perspective is required to continue to evolve and innovate? How can we extricate ourselves for the problem — solution — more problems trap? How do we embrace the dialectic process of moving beyond thesis and antithesis, and shift into some new synthesis?
There are no easy answers. There rarely are during difficult or challenging times. These are times of character testing. These are times to dig deeper. These are the times that try our souls.
We have crossed a threshold. We have entered into the Aquarian Age in earnest. We opened a cosmic and collective doorway during the Great Mutation that occurred in Aquarius on the Winter Solstice last December. With Uranus as the modern ruler of Aquarius, and Saturn as the traditional ruler, the combined planetary energies certainly align with Aquarian values. The question is: which aspect of the Aquarius archetype will we embrace? The positive side of responsible freedom and cautious innovation? Or the shadow side of extreme polarization and rude awakenings?
There will be two more exact squares of Saturn and Uranus this year — on June 14th (with Saturn retrograde) and again on December 24th (with Uranus retrograde). Regardless of which side of the equation manifests, we can all expect to feel an acceleration of the acute tension between conservative and liberal elements, between materialism and idealism, between past comforts and future needs — both in ourselves and in the world at large. And we will all be required to reconcile these tensions within ourselves. May we endeavor to do so with the courage of love and the humility of necessity.
Sat Nam, everyone.
