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"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 1, 1948; Uranus at 28º Gemini
"...that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."- Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, 1863; Uranus at 24º Gemini
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."- Declaration of Independence, 1776; Uranus at 8º Gemini
Ideals are like the North Star, guiding our direction but never an actual place to land. We can speak of social ideals, like respect and freedom for everyone and holding every person equally accountable to the law, but making these ideals real is a never-ending process requiring steady civil vigilance. When falling under threat, as freedoms always eventually do, a renewed effort is required to reforge what it means to be free. Primary examples of reforging a free society are the American Revolutionary War, the American Civil War, and World War II.
Geopolitical historian George Friedman has pointed out that the United States has consistently repeated a roughly 80 year "institutional cycle," where the institutions of governance enter a major crisis that leads to renewal. The three wars mentioned above fit into this cycle. Each war was like the punctuation at the start of a new cycle as the prior cycle ended. Each war lead to a stronger institutional system and a more progressive style of government, with laws reshaped to refine what it means to be free.
It so happens that a full cycle of Uranus around the zodiac also takes roughly 80 years. Each war occurred during the transit of Uranus through late Taurus to Gemini. And since the first war was already raging when the country was founded, that means that each subsequent war occurred during a "Uranus Return" for America.
Uranus has just entered Gemini again, and America's next Uranus Return is set to occur in about two years. Note that this is not a prediction of war, but that the time is nearing to reforge a new consciousness of freedom, and to again emerge victorious in the long quest to realize the ideals of liberty.
The meaning of Uranus in astrology includes the indomitable human drive towards freedom and the social consciousness required to make freedom real. Freedom is not a simple matter of doing whatever we individually want, it is a continually negotiated contract between ourselves and others. The struggle we encounter in working that shared tension brings us into a deeper relatedness that connects us to what really matters — mutual respect in the understanding of our shared humanity.
Strong transits from Uranus often correlate with reform movements that seek to uplift the conditions of the enslaved, impoverished, or marginalized. Examples include the Uranus-Pluto opposition of the French Revolution, the Uranus-Saturn square of the Civil War, and the Uranus-Pluto conjunction of the cultural and civil rights revolution of the 1960s. Uranus is the disruptor of the status quo, sometimes the menacing trickster, sometimes the righteous revolutionary. When Uranus aligns with significant planets in a natal chart it can indicate revolutionary moments in a person's life, whether major losses or gains, or dramatic changes of direction.
Each of the wars mentioned above began with Uranus in late Taurus and was won by the time Uranus had reached the end of Gemini. Each war began with democracy in serious doubt, but was ultimately won by the democratic side, resulting in radical democratic reforms. The area of late Taurus is significant because it is in range of a highly conflictual square alignment (90º) to the United States Moon in Aquarius.
In essence, the Moon in a country's chart represents the values held most dearly by the country's inhabitants, values that shape their sense of security. Like Uranus, Aquarius is a sign strongly linked with freedom, democracy, technology, and social causes. Its shadow side includes bigotry, an aloof lack of empathy, and the demonization of the marginalized "other".

An exemplar of the spirit of Uranus in Gemini, Frederick Douglass became famous as a social reformer in the 1860s for his fiery orations on the urgency of emancipation for Black slaves.
We certainly cannot boil America's natal chart down to just Aquarius, given that, for instance, the country's Sun in Cancer is joined in that sign by Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury (melting pot, or racial purity?). But the theme of Aquarius is a very strong one, not only because that's where the Moon is, but that the planets that are said to rule Aquarius — Uranus and Saturn — are placed in signs they are strong in, and are at a cooperative trine alignment with each other. That these two planets are aligned as they are tells us something important, even hopeful, about the moment we are in today.
Challenges to the ideals of democracy, a word rich with archetypal resonance to Saturn (governance) and Uranus (freedom), have arisen over and over again in America's history. In resonance with the trine alignment, every challenge has strengthened the country on firmer democratic ground. Whether we look at the fight to end slavery, the busting of corporate trusts, deranged Communist blacklisting, or cruelty towards immigrants, America tends to meet each challenge and rise a little higher as a result. Many themes cycle back again, to be worked further into the soil of our national consciousness, and each time, with a few exceptions, we take a meaningful step forward.

Julia Ward Howe became famous during the Civil War for writing The Battle Hymn of the Republic, channeling her fame into social activism and advocating for women's suffrage.
With history and astrology as our guide, there is no reason to believe our current crisis will be any different. As Uranus moves along in Gemini these next few years, with Saturn and Neptune moving along in Aries, new widespread commitments to democracy will become strongly apparent, fueled by the unstoppable evolutionary urge for a new liberation evoked by Pluto's transit through Aquarius.
Commitments to democracy are meaningless unless they become codified in documents. The Declaration of Independence, the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, and the UN Declaration on Human Rights — each written and disseminated with Uranus in Gemini — are examples of radical documents that set a course for the future of democracy. At its most basic interpretive level, Gemini is about the sharing of ideas. The writer and the written are both under the purview of Gemini's essential need to associate and link. Uranus in Gemini brings radical ideas to paper in inspiring words that promote an ever-widening field of liberty for all who have been, or may be, denied it.
As to the prospect of war, astrology cannot give us any certainty as we are still bound to the contingencies of free will. Whether enough people will have the courage and wisdom to make the right collective choices to avoid war is a fate yet to be written. But as I've been saying for years, the end of the 2020s will be a far cry from when the decade started. We are halfway there, with much left to do. Whatever our part is, we can do it with hope in the emerging astrological picture, with its emphasis on creative, social, and cultural innovation and renewal.
Thanks for your usual enlightening astrological insight. I do not perceive any of the trans Saturnians as positive for the individual, but always uncomfortable, revolutionary and disruptive. They upturn applecarts, the status quo and in so doing expose previously taken for granted ugly social faults. Personally and collectively these planets always express as a conflict between growth/youth and entropy/the elderly. With Uranus in Gemini the Old Order in both education and all media will become increasingly experienced by younger generations as violent and tyrannical. Pluto in Aquarius will expose the corruption in the foundations of all social collective institutions in our political and financial systems. Neptune in Aries will see a rising tide of individual heroism rooted in the very Ares expression of acting to both support and revenge the abused. Ares remains the only male figure in the pantheon who never uses his power to kidnap, abuse and rape and as such is a recognised mythic hero within Feminism.