Without warning, the tornado tears up your street, through the front door and right under the bed covers just as you’re drifting into a warm, fuzzy sleep. Before you know it you’re being whisked off on an adventure to an unknown land.

Say hello to Uranus.

Uranus surges into your life unannounced, bringing chaos and disruption. If you’re ready to leave the safety and security of Kansas, then the twister may be just what you have been waiting for. But ready or not, you’re going on a journey of change when Uranus comes to town.

As with all of the symbols of astrology, I am not talking literally about the planet Uranus out there in the depths of the Solar System, but rather the archetypal energy that it represents in our lives. Uranus’ rays are not beaming down to us here on Earth, instead its energy is awakening within us and precipitating the urge for change that our Soul desires at this time in our lives.

Uranus symbolises the inner urge for freedom and liberation from the chains that bind us. Uranus is the rebel, the awakener, the liberator. Under his influence we simply cannot stand to continue in our life the way we have been doing. The sense of limitation, restriction, bondage becomes too painful and we simply have to break free of it. Uranus demands that we become more authentic in our lives.

Uranus says to us, “Take a risk!”

Uranus is freedom from the known.

For some people a Uranus transit is exciting, for others scary. Those people heavy on the Earth and Water signs (Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn, Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces) tend to prefer routine and stability, while Fire and Air types (Aries, Leo, Sagittarius Gemini, Libra and Aquarius) are more inclined to excitement and adventure and hence often more welcoming of Uranus. If you like routine and want things to remain as they are then you are in for a rude awakening.

If we are conscious enough to recognise the impending need for change, then we can use the energy of this transit to catapult our lives into the Stratosphere. To listen to the inner urge to take a risk and make important life changes at this time is to move in harmony with what life, and our Soul, want for us. It may be (will be!) disruptive for a time. Life will be chaotic with no sense of stability or certainty of where it is all leading. But rest assured that if we make a decision based on a need for greater freedom, liberation and authenticity, then life will conspire to bring us these things.

We just may have to go on a little journey down the Yellow Brick Road first.

Exactly what area of our life is affected depends on what Uranus is hitting in our natal chart. For example, if it transits our Midheaven then it relates to career and vocation. This position in the chart more widely relates to the question “What am I to do with my existence?”. And when Uranus gets to this place we simply must make changes so that our work or vocation express more authentically who we are. Freedom from a limiting work situation is essential at this time.

If Uranus transits our natal Sun then our entire sense of personal identity, as well as our fundamental life path, are going to change. By the time the transit is over we may not recognise ourselves from who we were a year ago. Over the Descendant and it could be time to move on from that relationship that has become stagnant or no longer serves you.

During 2017 Uranus will be traversing backwards and forwards from 21 to 28 degrees of Aries. If you have any planets or angles of your chart (Ascendant, Descendant, Midheaven, IC) between these degrees then get ready for some fireworks. (This also goes for planets/angles at 21 to 28 degrees of Cancer, Libra and Capricorn.)

If you were born between 10th and 17th April then Uranus will be directly on top of your Sun during this time – one of the most important life transits that you can have. (Sun at 21 to 28 Cancer, Libra and Capricorn will also be affected.)

While knowledge of one’s unique individual birth chart is necessary to know what is currently being affected by the astrological weather, there is one transit of Uranus that everybody experiences at more or less the same time in their life. Uranus takes roughly 84 years to go round the zodiac, and hence everybody has their Uranus Opposition transit at age 41-43.

This is the ‘mid-life crisis’!

It doesn’t have to be experienced as a crisis, but often is for those people who have never looked deeply within themselves. Then comes a sudden urge for freedom from the routine and prison that their life has become. This is when the married businessman with 3 kids suddenly buys a Porsche and runs off with his 21 year old secretary!

Usually people’s experience of this transit is not as dramatic as this. But there is some recognition that “I’m not old, but I am no longer young”. And a feeling that if ever I am going to make that big life change I’ve been wanting to do then this is the time to do it. It is a window of opportunity. To do something more in alignment with our own unique expression.

It is sometimes called the ‘divorce aspect’. It is a very common time for marriages to end. It may have been coming for a while, but this is when the person finally realises that they cannot go on any longer. The intensity of the Uranus urge forces them to make the break for freedom.

It can also be a common time for a person to start their own business. When they finally have the courage to break free from the security but the confines of their employer (Saturn) and to break out on their own.

The Uranus Opposition can be a time of breakthrough and illumination in one’s life path and soul purpose; where we reclaim something lost at the age of 21 (the Uranus Square). A time of finding oneself.

An opportunity to soar.

The cyclone is coming, Dorothy. Are you going to try and evade the inevitable or embrace the turbulence and let its power rip off the chains that bind you?

My Uranus Opposition is beginning right now. Two days ago I realised that it was time to let go of something that has been a major part of my life for the last 13 years (since my Saturn Returns). It is time to call an end to my healing days with ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is responsible for not only saving my life but completely transforming it beyond all recognition (astrology is one of the many things that came out of it). It has been so incredible for me, but it has served its purpose and to continue with it would now hold me back in life. It is clear to me that it’s now time to cut those ties and release the old in order to create space for something very new that wants to come in (and with Uranus being full of surprises I have no idea yet what that will be – just a clear recognition that I am in a time of big transition and the old must be relinquished). It is a time to find my own way in life and to trust my own inner guidance as I step into a new level of authenticity.