Uranus opposition transit: The Midlife Crisis?
Uranus oppositions occur only once in our lives, when we are in our 40s. This seven- to eight-year time period is a waterfall of realizations, unexpected changes and shake-ups, sudden and persistent urges to change your life, and seismic shifts that pull you out of a life that does not fit the person you actually are and back into your authentic self. The Uranus opposition draws us into a phase of profound evolution as we contend with the reality of aging.
How Stella Got Her Groove Back, 1998
When does the Uranus opposition happen?
Your Uranus opposition begins when Uranus enters the sign that is opposite the sign Uranus occupies in your birth chart. This happens around middle age – in our 40s. Uranus spends seven to eight years in a sign and takes 84 years to go through all the signs. The zodiac is a circle, and the Uranus opposition occurs when Uranus has traveled approximately 180º from where it was when we were born.
Everyone who was born while Uranus was in the same sign as you (so everyone born within the same seven- to eight-year period) will be going through their Uranus return at the same time. It is a generational transit that will affect different people within a Uranus generation differently depending on various factors in each individual’s birth chart, including the house it’s in and the aspects it’s making to other planets in their chart.
Everyone will experience different peaks and valleys of evolution during their Uranus opposition. It’s most intense when Uranus is conjunct, opposite, or square a personal planet (sun, moon, Mercury, Venus, or Mars) or angle (ascendant, descendant, midheaven or IC) in a person’s chart, and when Uranus is within 3º of an exact opposition to your natal Uranus.
The Banger Sisters, 2002
Uranus opposition transit: A Midlife Crisis?
We all go through our Uranus opposition around the time we hit middle age, in our 40s, and it’s one of the most important transits we go through during that decade of our lives. In the modern world it is, in many ways, the transit of the “midlife crisis.” This is not to say that everyone goes through a “midlife crisis” or that everyone’s Uranus opposition is especially challenging, but it is a psychological and sociological fact that the time between 40 and 50 is typically the most universally challenging decade for a human being. And this isn’t only true in Western culture. Across cultures all in all different corners of the globe we see the same thing: this is a weird and often challenging time in a person’s life.
The modern, Western world is very attached to the idea we are more or less “fully formed” by the time we get to our mid-20s, and we assume that our personalities and our lives will remain more or less the same for the rest of our lives. This has slowly been challenged as people have begun to hit milestones at different ages, but there is still this pervasive belief that we just stop growing and evolving at some point. We love to joke about how the frontal lobe finishes developing at 25, but this is actually a myth that came from a study that only studied people 25 and under. In actuality, we have no reason to believe that the frontal lobe ever stops “developing” and there is a plenty of evidence to the contrary. This is a myth that merely reinforces a common but ultimately baseless belief in our youth-obsessed culture: evolution is an inherently upward spiral, and it ends at some point.
The Uranus opposition challenges this idea, and I think that’s a big part of why it is so difficult for many people. We are slapped in the face with the reality that actually we — and our lives — do have to keep growing and changing, and that part of our evolution as human beings is even linked to our physical decline. It’s during this time of our lives when we see clear evidence of this. We see clear aesthetic signs of aging and we start to see and feel our bodies not function as well. Parents are probably getting older and we may need to take care of them, or we might be losing our parents. Many of us realize that we’ve lost track of who we really are and question our choices in life so far, often with more regret than celebration. During our Uranus oppositions we feel a sudden, often unexplainable, and seemingly undeniable urge to make a huge change in order to get free of a life that has become a place of confinement, a life for which we had to become contortionists. The Uranus opposition makes clear that as our backs stiffen and our hair grays, we have outgrown any hope of contortionism.
The Mutilation of Uranus by Saturn [Cronus],Giorgio Vasari, 16th century
In myth, Uranus was god of the heavens. He fathered many children, including Cronos (or Saturn), and he was eventually castrated and overthrown by Cronos. A large portion of the Uranus opposition circles and coils itself around the fear that we will be overtaken and rendered ‘useless’ by the next generation, that somehow the younger generation (or even the simple fact of their existence) will strip us of what [the world has told us] is valuable about us, what has always felt fertile and alive about us. At this time perhaps more than any other we fear that we will be lost to time, just as the god of the heavens lost to Cronos, the god of time. This isn’t an unreasonable fear altogether; most of us do not live in a culture that holds all stages of life in equal value, and there is even biological validity to our fear too — during middle age most people don’t feel as energetic and generally well as they once did, and if nothing else, this the time at which human fertility is very much in decline (as if procreation is our only function!).
In this sense, struggling through the Uranus opposition is in part a result of the fear that we will have nothing to offer if we no longer have the sexual allure of youth to bargain with. It makes sense to struggle with this given the youth-obsessed world in which we live, a world in which people — especially women! — are not allowed to be Uranian, which is to say multidimensional, once we are past “a certain age.” We are flattened into beige and every wrinkle becomes a barrier, a sign that life is trickling away (as it always has been!) and that those who still want to live had better run from us, as if aging is a plague.
But what happened to Uranus’ severed genitals? They were thrown into the sea, and from them, Aphrodite (or Venus) was born. We struggle with middle age and with our Uranus return partially for very real reasons, and in part because we are afraid to sexually evolve or to embody Venus’ orgasmic creative spirit to become something else. It is painful to go through this transition, as Uranus’ castration would have been too. But this is not the end of the line. Like Aphrodite emerging from the seafood, something else will, and must, emerge, for that is the nature of living. Middle age and the Uranus opposition is a new, albeit arcane phase of our evolution, or a really, really deep makeover. To some extent you must let go of who you’ve been so far and allow yourself to become a version of yourself that is authentic to this phase of your life.
Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889), The Birth of Venus (1863)
Interestingly, in an article titled “The Two Choices That Keep a Midlife Crisis at Bay“, Arthur C. Brooks writes, “I have found that in many cases, the most important impediment to chipping away is a belief that success = more. In middle age, this is bad math. Work to change your objective by stepping away from voluntary duties and responsibilities, and making more time to think, read, love, and pray—the work that you need to do to reengineer you.” This, too, resonates with the castration myth. Being “overthrown” indicates an unwanted loss of power, yes, but it is also absolves us of our previous responsibilities. Who would you be if were no longer responsible for the things you’ve always been responsible for? This is what you get to find out through your Uranus opposition.
For this reason, people who have lived for others in one way or another often report that their Uranus opposition hits hard. Not because Uranus is some rugged individualist (though Uranus certainly adores individuality, individualism isn’t a concern) but because Uranus requires evolution and cannot be confined (or defined) by expectations. It’s during our Uranus oppositions when we are forced to contend with the fact that we have abandoned ourselves or our dreams and lost ourselves to expectations and responsibilities. Maybe you really had no choice before, but what if you could get back on track now?
If you’ve been living a life in which you haven’t been able to be authentic, if you’ve followed the crowd or what seemed to be a “safe” path rather than going your own way, if you’ve been living a life that you thought you wanted but ended up feeling unsatisfied in, or if you rebelled against your own nature or haven’t been following your own electric current, the Uranus opposition may come in with some big shakeups to snap you out of complacency or stagnancy and wake you up to the reality that something is very wrong. You are realizing that you’ve wasted time doing things that you don’t even like, surrounding yourself with people you don’t like, and prioritizing what is essentially conformity over genuine freedom. This also often comes along with sudden realizations regarding mortality and that you only have so much time. The sudden awareness of time, both how much time has passed and how little you might have left, also relates to your second Saturn opposition, which happens in your mid-40s as well. Saturn oppositions are times when we feel a notable sense of urgency, like time itself is calling out to us… or breathing down our necks.
The Uranus opposition ushers in an era of deconstructing our old lives and constructing a fresh, fluid, ever-evolving life that really fits. Instead of contorting to fit into our little boxes, Uranus insists on fluid evolution, truth and realness. That’s what you’re doing through your Uranus opposition, and any Uranus transit, really! You are remembering who you’ve always been and what you always wanted before the world ever told you. A vast majority of the realizations we have during Uranus transits in general are simply moments of remembering. You already know who you are. You know what you want. You know what lights up you, what enchants you with the electric force of life. Like all other living creatures, you instinctively know what it feels like to be genuinely free. Now you’re just figuring out how to be.