The waterbearer (a fixed air sign) is ten steps ahead of everyone else. They are impatient for the rest of the world to get the hit and catch up. Uranus ruled Aquarius follows structured Capricorn on the zodiac. Uranus' favorite gag is to shoot a lightening bolt into saturn's structure and obliterate it. Study the picture card of THE TOWER in Waite's Tarot deck. What Capricorn builds can become crystallized into old forms that do not focus on the movement in the cosmos. Aquarians are adept at rocking the boat. Old forms must die before new and more responsive forms can be born. Uranus is the planet of rebellion. Although there is great debate among astrologers as to when the Declaration of Independence was signed, one possible chart shows Uranus on the Ascendant of one 1776 chart. The USA rebelled against the crystallized idea of a king, fought a rebellious war for freedom, then wrote the Constitution, which has been deemed one of the most evolutionary thought processes along with the Magna Carta.
Aquarius and the Aquarian experience become deeply personal for us when our treasured ideas are smashed. When we are suddenly fired from the job we believed we'd stay with. When the lover we hoped we'd marry abandons us. When the car dies preventing us from taking that foolish and expensive vacation. Uranus erupts and is abrupt. No pity. No mercy. And it is all for good -- later -- when we realize the absolute perfection of losing that person, place or thing. It allows us to take the next higher step.
The universe is not static. Our lives are not static. We are moving at the speed of light. Aquarians understand that intuitively. One of Buddha's 8 noble truths states that everything that lives, dies. In other words, our old ideas also have to die along with outworn psychic structures that prevent our thrusting ahead.
The downside of Uranus' revolutionary energy can be revolution for revolution's sake; tyranical attitudes; snap judgments with no basis in fact; and instablity. I think of Timothy Leary who could be so cooly lucid in the highest Uranian sense, then suddenly spin off into untested, unverified realms stating them as gospel. That is the action of an unbridled Uranus. Aquarius learns stability and more human generosity from its polar opposite sign, Leo. Leo, ruler of the heart brings "heart" to Uranus which can often forget the warmth of vibrant sun for the coldness of the ivory tower. Balancing heart and head are the tools Aquarians need in order to temper unchecked rebellion.
Starcats' editorial: The Age of Aquarius, a much anticipated shift, will not be accompanied by Uranian ideals of utopia. Instead it is a new form of tyranny. Aquarius' shadow side is a wounded (ignored) Leonine individualism. By removing the "heart" (Leo), a Uranian technocracy may push us further into the isolation of computers and other electronic devices that override the natural human need for face-to-face counterbalance. Further, unrecognized Leo rebels and becomes exceedingly tyrannical by playing overlord to Aquarius' "political correctness" whether it is expressed in the new ageisms of "spirituality," or in the political arena. Political correctness in this sense has nothing to do with reclaiming the equality of the races, nor of advancing human causes. I am referring to New Ageism political correctness where denial of the negative within leads to unconscious repression of contents. Eventually those contents will erupt. My supposition is that it will emerge in the collective as the "Anti-Christ."