Uranus in Aries Awakens our Inner Strength and Courage

‘News You Can Use’

I’m so happy that Uranus has entered Aries at this great time of crisis on our planet.  We need plenty of inner strength and courage now and Uranus can awaken those qualities in us if we open ourselves to such a possibility.  We’ll have seven years to do this for Uranus will be in Aries until 2017 with a brief return into Pisces from August 14th until March of 2011 when we’ll be dealing with the watery realm of both chaos and potential understanding and compassion once again.

Uranus, being a ‘sky god’ will undoubtedly be happier and more effective in a fire sign where the impetus for change and innovation can really take off.  Michele Finey in a recent great article in Mountain Astrologer calls Uranus in Aries ‘A spark of hope for the future’, and I heartily agree.  Uranus represents an inventive, even revolutionary impetus to change the status quo while encouraging individualism and freedom of spirit.  Already we see new engineers bursting at the seams with discoveries and inventions that can change our technologies from fossil fuel based to alternative anti-gravity, free energy devices.  Aries is what Uranus needs to push forward away from the collective past represented by Pisces (which rules oil).  Solar, wind power, and other sources may finally gain momentum to eventually replace our dependency on petroleum but there will undoubtedly be a major struggle as Uranus continues to oppose Saturn (status quo) and squares Pluto (the power elite) over the next several years.  Uranus squares Pluto on and off until March of 2015 which is the year NASA’s probe finally reaches Pluto in deep space.  Much will come to light between now and then as Pluto’s grip of power and secrecy is finally cracked through the challenges of Uranus and the urge for freedom and openness gains strength.

I recently saw a most remarkable story told through the documentary film ‘Blindsight’directed by Lucy Walker and produced by Sybil Robson-Orr.  If you haven’t seen this inspiring film I highly recommend that you rent it soon.  It depicts perfectly the archetype of Uranus in Aries.

Every blind person in this story is a personification of strength and courage starting with the young teacher, Sabriye Tenberken, from Germany who travels to Tibet and starts a school for blind children who are treated as pariahs due to the prejudicial belief by many Tibetans that they are possessed by demons.  One day she decides to write a letter to another very courageous blind man, Erik Weihenmayer, who climbed to the very top of the world, Mt. Everest, in 2001.  Here are a few excerpts from that letter:

“Since my boyfriend Paul and I had read your book with great pleasure, I decided to tell the children about your life….how you became blind, how you dropped your canes from bridges, how you finally met other blind people and then how you became confident in wrestling…..they realized that it does not matter much if you are a blind child in Germany, USA or Tibet, the experience one has who becomes blind, the embarrassment at first, the confidence which builds up slowly but steadily, the reaction of the sighted surrounding is probably for every blind person the same.
And at this day when I ended your story by saying: ‘this man, who is blind like you climbed the top of the world, not by holding the arm of a sighted friend, but with the help of some strings and two canes’, They all proudly decided to walk on their own, without the convenience of walking with the sighted.  Stories like yours change their lives.  Most of them now understand that there is nothing to be embarrassed about.  They can be very proud little people, and they say quite often: ‘we are blind, so what?  We can speak English and Chinese, we can find our way in the labyrinth of Lhasa’s walkways, we are able to read and write in three different Braille scripts and we read and write without using light.

…Last week I told them already that I wanted to write to you to ask if you would like to come to Tibet, maybe even to do a small climbing workshop with our kids.

…In a way we are something like colleagues, maybe in encouraging the blind to stand up and to find and overcome their own borders.”

The result of her letter is that Erik not only comes to Tibet to take 6 young blind teenagers on a three-week trek up to 21,000 feet of Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest, but he brings a seasoned crew of climbers willing to assist each blind student and the entire expedition is filmed by Sally without interference as to any agenda.  Thus unfolds both a human drama of relationships between the teenagers and their mentor guides as well as an interesting dynamic between Erik and Sabriye whose different points of view build tension yet ultimately lead to greater cooperation and unity.  Each blind student is featured so that by the end of the film you feel you know them intimately.

The stunning views of the Himalayas create the perfect backdrop for this exciting and inspiring film highlighting lessons in courage.  On the DVD there are special features which follow-up with each student and you get to see how the trek itself gave them the necessary confidence to accomplish really good things with their young adult lives.

I see this film as an example of what we are all facing now in some sense.  We, too, are like those blind young trekkers.  We need a boost in confidence to overcome our own limitations in reaching new goals and we need to discover our inner strength as we make the great effort to each climb our own peaks in life at this time.

In my next article I will look at each house arena for transiting Uranus so that you may better know where this energy of awakening courage needs to manifest in your own life.