Jupiter Conjunct Uranus (January 4, 2011)

Today was a very busy day. Not only are we enjoying the New Moon Eclipse, but several other alignments are also in force. The most significant, Jupiter conjunct Uranus was the signature aspect for 2010. Now we experience their third and final contact. What have we experienced in this alignment; and what can we expect?

Jupiter and Uranus come together in a conjunction (like a New Moon) about every 14 years. Their relationship combines and releases the Uranian (unusual, inventive energies) with the Jupiterian (expansive, bountiful energies). 2010 was a year that "seeded" new ideas and inventions in the sciences and technology. We will see these discoveries and applications become more widely experienced and transform our lives over the next many years.

If we go back and look at their alignments, we can see this rhythmic release of inspiration playing out in our personal lives, culture and economy. For example, their conjunction in 1983 was accompanied by: The discovery of the virus that was the cause of so much concern, AIDS. The change of something called Arpanet into what we now call the Internet. Compact discs are released, we're going digital, say goodbye to vinyl records. The FCC authorizes Motorola to begin testing something called "cellular service". Humans "leave" the universe; Pioneer 10 becomes the first object to move out beyond our solar system.

In 1997 we create life for the first time; through cloning Dolly, a sheep is made through genetic engineering. IBM's Deep Blue defeats Gary Kasparov; for the first time a computer bests a human in a chess match. Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars; we have a roving explorer on another planet.

In 2010, we expanded our definition of "life" beyond our carbon model, finding evidence of arsenic based life forms. We crossed the threshold from manipulating life to creating it; researchers create the first totally artificial and functional genome. We stare into the mystery of creation itself, and to the abyss posed by the mirror-image of our universe; scientists capture anti-matter for the first time.

But that is not all, for Jupiter and Uranus combined together also speak to the quickening in other important aspects of our reality too, like social and cultural changes. Since Jupiter rules our principles of relationship, its conjoining with Uranus releases new forms of social and cultural phenomena and thereby creates new realities.

In 1983 the US Embassy in Lebanon is bombed and what has become the so-called war with radical Islam is said to have begun. The first woman and first African-American are launched into space as more barriers to equality fall.

In 1997 parental frustration with the decline in reading by children is thwarted by a little boy wizard name Harry Potter. The more general acknowledgement that the nations of the world need to cooperate to address our very survival is witnessed by a committee at the UN in the Kyoto Protocols on Global Warming.

And, what have we experienced in 2010? For the first time in human history, the number of humans who are in a state of starvation are matched by those who are overweight or obese, (we know that we have to do something about how we take care of our self and one another). A single individual and his website shake the foundations of institutions and governments around the world; Wikileaks lifts the veil of secrecy in military and diplomatic realities.

Truly, we will only know in retrospect how and in what ways Jupiter and Uranus moved our story along this year...but they did, and do and will always be one of the means by which we grow beyond our mere conditioning. We are not human beings....we are human becomings, and the future is in our own hands and written in the stars.