Uranus Transiting Natal Mars: Lightning Bolts of Energy!

Lightning flashes over Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2014 – Photo by Gustavo Basso from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/record-breaking-lightning-bolts-spark-excitement-180975223/

In this post I’d like to talk about a transit that I’m currently experiencing, and which started in 2018. I feel I gathered sufficient personal experience in the last two years, to share with you now, how Uranus transiting my natal Mars feels like and give you some insight on what you can expect. This is not an easy transit and I feel I need to provide some guidance for those of you who are currently undergoing this transit and are wondering ‘What the hell is going on?’ or for those of you who will face this transit as soon as Uranus hits Gemini in 2025 (because being prepared usually softens the blow).

Uranus takes about 84 years to complete its rotation around the Sun, and as it tracks on its orbit it often beams its energy through a particular constellation on the Earth’s ecliptic belt (comprised of the 12 astrological constelations identified by our Spiritual Ancestors). This means that you might not experience Uranus transiting over any of your personal planets in your lifetime, or maybe over all at once (if you have a stellium, for example). Uranus might not conjunct a personal planet but it might make aspects to your personal planets (such as a square, an opposition, a trine or a sextile), urging you on some level to pay attention to the insights it is randomly producing in your life.

Outer planets are those considered to lie beyond what we can normally spot with our eyes from Earth. So our personal planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (with the honorable exception of the Sun, which is a star), while the outer planets are Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Whenever an outer-planet switches astrological signs there is usually an important fated or karmic mass change taking place in the collective. These transits usually mark generations, and they reshape the fabric of our social world and how we perceive it and relate to it. For example, when Pluto switched from Sagittarius to Capricorn in 2008 there was the Lehman Brothers financial crash which had ripple economic effects on the whole globe, or when Neptune shifted from Aquarius to Pisces in 2012 a 10-metre long tsunami affected a nuclear power plant in Japan. Now when an outer planet conjuncts a personal planet, this normally is a high-order activation which means that fated events will take place in that house of your chart where the planet is transiting. So I would suggest sutdying the deeper meaning of that house well to get ready to integrate this energy in your life with more awareness. I’ll be using my personal example for analysis because it is what I know best.

As Uranus is transiting closer to my natal Mars, it is activating my personal will-power and courage in the 7th house (the house traditionally ruled by lovely Libra, that place in our chart were we co-operate, relate, communicate, love, get married or sign long-term contracts). As you can imagine having Mars in this house is not the best placement since it foretells frequent arguments and conflicts with lovers and business partners. In addition, having Uranus transiting this house, it means I cannot ignore how anger plays a really important role in my love life and in how I handle parternships. This is because on a soul level, the 7th house is the house of repressed emotions, our unconscious self, or our Shadow Self (that blindspot within ourself that shows what Others see about us that we are not so aware of).

Uranus brings in a certain chaotic energy in a particular house of you chart and tends to electrify any personal planets. So ever since this transit started I kept being confronted with problematic people who are mirroring back to myself my own shortcomings, so that I may work through integrating my Shadow side by becoming aware of my flaws, my limitations, my love patterns and the boundaries of my Self in relation to Other people. The goal is loving myself more, reclaiming my self-respect and functioning in relationships on a higher, more mature level. I have also been energised to act differently than I had in the past, and I am experiencing moments of either excited and constant energy or low peaks in my energy when I procrastinate, feel weak and tired. This is because Uranus gives lightning-bolts of mental awareness which are then slowly processed on an emotional level. That processing slows us down on the surface level, but inwardly we are levelling up to higher states of consciousness. If it sounds scary, stay with me – I promise you it is worth going through this strange and random process of dismantling a previous version of your Self that just wasn’t helping you find peace and be happy in the world.

Bye, bye Stagnation! Hello, Untamable Energy

Uranus has been in Aries for the majority of the Pluto in Capricorn era, creating a number of Cardinal Cross moments and tense squares to Pluto. That was a historical period, which one astrologer whom I love and admire, Mystic Medusa, called ‘The Zap Zone’ – a time of great social upheavals around the world and military rebellious insurgencies. Then in 2018 Uranus switched signs into the Earth-bound and Venusian sign of Taurus, and for a while there was a sense of increased stability – one which was broken in 2020 when Saturn entered for a short while in Aquarius and thereby creating another tense energetic aspect of forced growth (and which astrologers call ‘a square’). We are now in an environment where work and the stability or the prosperity it brought is being reconfigured, where there is a sense of financial and environmental chaos that is also affecting our relationships to our stable sense of self and our health and bodies (all of these areas are ruled by sturdy and fertile Taurus). The material realm is currently reconfigured by making us face our own vulnerability to fast-mutating viruses and living in a quickly shifting new weather and environmental climate (and whether we enjoy the ‘ride’ or not, we are given the opportunity to use our minds to find solutions).

The first period of Saturn in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus saw the beginning of lockdowns in the world. I personally was more creative than I have ever been and growing my You Tube channel ‘The Spiritual Social’, momentarily kept me from experiencing deep fear and disillusionment. This is because I have a natal Venus in Aquarius and a natal Mars in Taurus (so the transiting heavenly square activated the natal Yin-Yang square I have in my natal chart, or better said the energy I carry within me since birth). Any squares which are activated in our charts produce a lot of energy which must be processed externally in creative and innovative ways. But the second time Saturn dipped into Aquarius and joined Jupiter as well during the great conjunction on last year’s Winter Solstice (21st December), I felt as if my entire stability was crumbling beneath my feet and I had to come up quickly with an overwhelming amount of solutions. Below are some of the core traits that I personally witnessed with Uranus activating a natal Mars placement:

1. When Uranus hits your Mars placement (it doesn’t even need to be conjunct but just in the same house), I would suggest making it easier on yourself and prepare to let go of what you thought your schedule was. Your daily habits will inevitably change as you will go through erratic energy levels. One moment you have the strength and courage of a legion, the next you need 4 cups of coffee just to roll out of bed. It’s a ‘bender’ kind of energy, where you receive jolts of action, followed by moments of pasivity where you cannot do much but rest. Give these moments a clever name such as ‘my powering up stage’, ‘I’m juicing myself up’, ‘filling in my batteries’ or ‘re-loading’, just to help you cope and to make you feel like you are not just sitting around being lazy, but are actually gathering your energy for the next part of the learning curve, and keep in mind that Uranus will keep you up on that steeo learning curve like you’re on a rollercoaster ride, until it leaves that house!
2. Figure out how long the transit lasts. The current transit of Uranus in Taurus began on the 16th of May 2018 and will end on the 27th of April 2026. You can easily check the dates of the planets by consulting an Astrodienst ephemeris (basically a map of the sky in a given year). Knowing how long something lasts, can help you plan, organise and prepare. If it’s a good transit then you can decide to enjoy the ride, but it’s a difficult transit, being aware of its expiration date can help you overcome it.
3. Another thing that helps is figuring out which aspects it makes to other houses or planets in your chart. I am aware that this transit is activating a really difficult square in my chart (Venus square Mars) so I prefer to remain single as I integrate a lot of unconscious aggression back into my system. Most astrologers call this aspect ‘the domestic violence marker’ and because I am aware of this potential I control it by actively owning my anger, acknowleging it and training myself not to react on it (although there are days when I somehow ‘get it’ and others when I fail at it and can lash out). As this process unfolds what I discovered is that I am brimming with creativity and I feel inspired to produce a lot of things (clips, services, articles etc.). By knowing that the higher vibration of Mars is profound creativity and intuition, I set daily intentions to be guided in this direction rather than in the lower-energies of violence and conflict.

Erratic and Episodic Love

If you are Venusian (i.e with planets in Libra and Taurus), this transit might not be a ‘joy ride’ since you’ll find it hard to plan or to stick to a plan, and make it look elegant and poised. And this is also because Uranus is re-organizing you at a primal level, as Mars rules over our instincts. In general, Uranus teaches emotional detachment because it wants you to pay attention to the new insights it will bless you with. But in order to help you change your energetic pattern or relationship to your basic instincts, it first has to show you where you are wrong and are mis-using your energy. And that is the humbling part of the ride, the uncomfortable trigger that pushes you to change something. I had so many moments of saying ‘Enough!’ to people, places, routines and my own inner critic, since this transit started; and in this way I empowered myself. At the same time I burned some bridges, so I am in the process on understanding how I can form relationships with this new sense of self-respect now.

As you will begin to analyze your life from a brand new light, it helps if sit down from time to time in stillness to integrate the messy emotions that overwhelm your clear insights in this period (similar to the period when Uranus transits over your Moon, in which case your emotions are key to accessing higher states of consciousness).

So with Uranus on your Mars – which represents your willpower and life-force, your energy and creativity, your charisma and courage – you will enter a period of time when you will either have little to almost no energy for days and then followed by a massive downpouring of energy that keeps you up for a potential period of 72 hours straight. Uranus’s electricity will affect your willpower and energy in fantastically unpredictable ways, making you feel messy and disorganized. I would suggest not trying to control this energy by rigidly keeping it within a 9 to 5 because it won’t work – it will backfire on you and eventually might even get you fired from a conventional job with strictly delimited and stable parameters. Uranus wants you to get out of any comfort zones you might have willingly or unwillingly placed yourself into, so you can ‘think big’ and grow into your authenticity.

What is it that you’ve always love doing? When Uranus hits your Mars and unleashes your primal drive in small and shocking spurts, then you will be faced with the inevitability of following your heart. The only way to ‘control’ this energy is by deciding to commit to following your own path, going solo or doing your thing for a while and as you are doing so, accept the social disapproval or backlash which might ensue in your social circle. After all, Uranian energy wants you to rebel against the status quo and defragment old patterns of your thinking (usually inherited from your parents, cultural and religious backgrounds). So you might as well give into this energy and allow it to creatively lead you down previously untrodden new pathways in life.

Genius Shocks

Basically, when Uranus travels over your Mars it creates a power dynamo, so you’re better off letting it roll than holding it tightly in your palms and risk being burned by its sheer intensity. I have a South Node in Libra and the major defects with this placement are a tendency to people-please and be indecisive – well, at the moment Uranus is not allowing me to do either of these things. Every time I fall into that comfort pattern a conflict ensues that teaches me to step into my own power and reclaim my energy. At times I also experience these briefly humorous moments when it’s almost as if the Divine steps in to remove something or someone from my life that was harming me. The best thing about this transit is that you are unconsciously pushed into action to deal with things that you previously disliked but somehow tolerated.

Uranus unleashes the cool warrior within. In this way, Uranus liberates you – it shows you that you must take action now, because that job or that relationship has become intolerable and tomorrow is not guaranteed. To be honest a part of me is slightly dreading the moment when Uranus will hit 16 degrees and will exactly conjunct my Mars, just by judging how this transit went so far. But my case is more difficult because I am having this transit opposite my Pluto in Scorpio in the first house and squared by my Venus in the 4th house ( which is also under Saturn’s clutch for the next 2 years)….so it’s not exactly a smooth walk in the park. Some of you have this transit with a lot of trines, and some of you have this aspect natally. However, the higher the number of the degree the riper the energy of a sign and the slower the pace of the karmic lessons which are delivered at a more manageable pace. I’m not sure what the future brings, but I can say that once Uranus will hit 29 degress Taurus in 2026 the environmental and financial landscape of the collective will be a brave new world…and maybe by then these random bouts of energy will subside and I can get on with my love life in a more consistent manner 🙂 The best part however, will be looking back on all the creative outputs I brought into being during this transit and how freer I will feel on an energetic level. And this is the gift that Uranus leaves you with: the levelling up on a lifetime!

Fire cracker – Image from Unsplash.com

With universal love,

Lexi ❤