Uranus on the four angles (Garth Allen)

[Jim Eshelman]

(By Garth Allen, reproduced in American Astrology 2/74.)

Delineations of natal planets on or near the Ascendant are familiar to the average reader, so the usual blah-blah about Uranus there making the native look different than his rising sign would normally indicate, and such things as breakup of the family pattern in early childhood, hardly bear repeating. Suffice it to say, a person with Uranus conjunct the Ascendant senses his own differences from the throng. He knows instinctively that he is a unique creation in time and space and is able to view things impersonally when he wishes to really understand them. Disliking all control by and obligation to others, he tends to reap a reputation for unreliability by often venting his inborn protest against servitude by failure to be depended upon when most needed.

When natal Uranus occupies the lower meridian (4th cusp or nearby), the individual is apt to delight in playing a Prodigal Son role in life as though fearful of losing self-identity by living and behaving exactly as mamma, the preacher and the teacher demand he live and behave. He seems never to do or be the sort his kinfolk expect. One of the most powerful discoveries he might make around coming of age is that he is the political black sheep or emotional mutant of the family, the one among his kindred who can't seem to follow suit or fill the mold for which heredity and social pressures had him slated. He is constantly making discoveries about himself through his relatives, especially his parents, for the filial scene is a spasmodic source of surprises, shocks and conceptual revolutions. His greatest happiness, however, comes from the realization that his parents still love him despite his contrariness. No matter how dark the path or severe the storm, he can always find renewed hope and reaffirmation of affection at home, even though he probably struck out away from the family hearth at an earlier than usual age.

No dewy-eyed, sentimental chapter is the Uranus-descending story, though. This native is basically opportunistic, possessing what is called an overwhelming personality - "a way about hi" that commands respect and to step aside to let him go his way when he's ready. He forever seeks psychological reassurance of his own uniqueness and respectability, in his mate, in intimate friends and in general public opinion. Keeping marital and social life separate, our native of setting Uranus does not suffer the pangs of conscience for disloyalty or infidelity. That is, while faithful in his fashion to wife or friend or boss, he has a maddening knack for rationalizing any situation which finds him impeachable. A great danger: Aloofness from intimacy can too easily resolve itself into chronic cynicism, and a cynic in this world is worthless in any capacity save, perhaps, when on the Pinkerton payroll.

Now about the plight of our culminating-Uranus lady. Plight? Not at all, unless her Uranus is the receiving end of a malevolent aspect. There is something Messianic about Uranus at the Midheaven, for the first thing it signifies is that the native is the hub around which the lives of many others revolve, sometimes precariously. The key endowment is: Immunity from the fear of others' power. A saint to some, a sinner to others and a conversation piece to all, he is so realistic that he can hardly be cowed by a display of splendor and omnipotence, being ever alive to the fact that the human animal remains just that despite the fluff and brass. Uranus on the 10th cusp often makes for a One Man Show in politics or the arts. To underlings he may seem too exacting, fanatical and sharp-spoken. His Uranus pushes him to ride roughshod over what are considered the most sacred of institutions, because like all angular-Uranus people, he ca without qualms sacrifice his own emotional biases for the sake of anything he believes to be the truth or otherwise worth-while. He squirms under second-billing and readily resigns from any endeavor in which he is not given a free hand to do what he thinks best, so he's apt to be thought of as an unstable job or contract-jumper. His idea of success is to become the very symbol itself of whatever he champions in society. His mission I life comes before everything else.