Until 13 March 1781 the farthest planet visible to human eyes was Saturn, which marked the Threshold. Beyond it lay the starry infinite, realm of the the divine.
Human beings are restless, curious, and persistent. Picture a small back garden at dusk in the city of Assembly Halls, Bath. The brother, a musician, heads out the door for another long night amusing the English social elite in prime mating season. He leaves lenses carefully ground and polished, telescope positioned, and ledgers ready for his sister’s meticulous observations of the darkened sky, or her entering the calculations required of his. With less interfering ambient light in the city then than now, and through a sustained working partnership, this new celestial body, a tiny prick of light, came to be observed by William and Caroline Herschel.
Discovery of a planet beyond Saturn was exciting to some, but it disordered an established hierarchy and brought into question cosmological givens. Astronomers thought at first to name it Herschel, crediting its discoverer; who, with diplomatic acumen, proposed Georgius Sidus, after the reigning monarch. But – Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, George? Or Herschel, for that matter. Wouldn’t do. However, it did earn Herschel appointment as Court Astronomer, freeing him from the long nights of a gigging musician. Five years on, a stipend as her brother’s assistant granted by the King, freed Caroline to be the first female professional astronomer, discoverer of comets, logger of stars.
The naming of planets is always a bit of mystery. This one, Herschel or George, was discovered at a time of significant political, military and philosophical challenges to order and empire, be it British, French or Spanish. Colonies rebelled. Indigenous populations revolted. The givens of established hierarchy were challenged. It was no small question: From whence do rulers derive authority? The answer animating colonies of Britain in revolt was that it lay within the consent of the governed. One could say, the people.
In time the planet beyond Saturn’s bounds was renamed after his forebear, the Titan Ouranus; although its signature effect seems more that of Prometheus, whose theft of fire allowed humanity the possibility of freedom from the gods. For that he suffered. But for humans the gift of fire to warm and feed the body, applied to metallurgy for forging tools and weapons; also released the capacity to think, observe and experiment. We look now to the motion of Uranus for indications of change, sudden rise of new ideas and innovative technology, a correspondence between the many versus the designs of a few.
In approximately 84 years Uranus makes its full cycle through the signs. One is well on in years when Uranus returns to where it was at life’s beginning. Notice that, mid way through, something very interesting happens.
Halfway along the journey of our life,
Having strayed from the right path and lost it,
I awoke to find myself in a dark wood.
O how hard it is to tell what it was like,
That wild and mighty and unfriendly forest
The very thought of which renews my fears!
So bitter was it that death could be no worse.
Around age 42 everything one learns, assumes to be true, or has absorbed up to this point as self-defining, the purpose, the plan, the right path – finds you lost, alone in a dark wood; O hard to tell what it is like. Each of us lost in our own way. More glibly than helpfully, some call it a mid-life crisis.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy is 44. His mid-life crisis was being elected actual leader of Ukraine after having so successfully portrayed a fictional leader of Ukraine, forever coping with the indignity of being leader of a ‘little’ Russia, destined to submit. Candidate Zelenskyy promised peace and reform, but in his first two years in office could effect neither. It was easier on television. Concentrated wealth and unscrupulous power within his own country, from his vast and covetous neighbor, compounded by an American president playing quid pro quo with Ukranian defense, left him nowhere to go, it seemed, but down. His popularity plummeted.
Born in 1978 with Uranus in Scorpio Zelenskyy brings intense feeling to family life, amplified by its square to his Moon in Leo, to creativity and work. He and his post-Soviet cohort are driven to slyly expose the secrets of domination, to loosen their fearful grip through humor. Zelenskyy’s Promethean gift is an ability to connect with his audience – playing them, ordinary people frustrated in the force field of corruption. Young Zelenskyy, appearing on a Russian talent show awkwardly translated, to English ears, as ‘The Club of the Funny and Inventive’ was disarmingly funny. Back home in Ukraine the Inventive Club banded together to create Kvartal 95, a production company of their own in active collaboration with other younger Ukranians who, like him, embraced both technology and personal freedom. Already at war with Russia before the invasion of February 24, most Ukranians were not lost in the dark wood of Putin’s atavistic dream – a restored Russian empire, its inalienable authority derived from the deep past: the Viking Volodymyr’s embrace of Christianity in 958. Governance by mystic sanction. The Divine Right of Kings. Again. No wonder toppled kings and autocrats populate Putin’s aggrieved justification for wider war. In time, nobody wants them. He should know; his grandfather was a cook for Lenin and Stalin. All those statues taken down…
Putin’s power persona, a Scorpio Venus in the First House, has proved unexpectedly unsuccessful on the battlefield. New cause of serious concern for diplomats and defense strategists, is a humiliated Putin. Uranus opposing his Venus by transit, has exposed the weakness behind his pride. It may in fact make him more dangerous.
But that’s him. Uranus is turning the devil’s bargain inside out for both of them.
Zelenskyy, a man suddenly lost in the dark wood of reality halfway through life’s journey, has instead awakened to his real capacity to lead as Uranus moves in opposition to where it was in 1978. He brings now everything he has, including his life, his family, his inventive friends, standing as example and leader for all Ukranians. Not subjects, free people. And, on the day of this writing, Zelenskyy brings himself before the fractured polity of American Congress to appeal to our ideals and our own history; to challenge our leaders to summon the strength it takes to bring peace. It is possible that everything has changed.
Minor addendum: written 16 March, the birthday in 1750 of Caroline Lucretia Herschel.
The Divine Comedy: Hell, Canto I, translated by Louis Biancolli, 1966.
Phyllis Hill Astrology 