In mid-August, Jupiter and Uranus, the dynamic duo renowned for scientific discovery and technical innovation, begin an alignment that lasts until April 2014. Add to that mix a third “dwarf” planet, Pluto, and you have an alignment that has only occurred three times last century, in 1903–04, 1930–31 and 1934.

Throughout history, different alignments of futuristic Jupiter and innovative Uranus have coincided with pivotal scientific and technical breakthroughs. Uranus supplies the instantaneous flash of ingenious ideas; Jupiter a divine and broad futuristic vision. Cosmobiologist Reinhold Ebertin describes the combination of Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto as “an unusual striving for knowledge and understanding, a strong awareness of purpose or of objective in life, a far-seeing creative activity”.

Each previous alignment of Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto has delivered these breakthroughs. They were evident on December 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted the world’s first flight with a petrol-driven engine, giving birth to the airplane age. On the second occasion, in 1931, aviator Wiley Post became the first person to fly around the world in a single-engine plane. Finally, during the third alignment, in 1934, Yuri Gagarin, the first astronaut, was born. On all occasions Uranus and Jupiter formed a square and brought Pluto into the mix.

To better understand this advanced combination, you need to familiarise yourself with the planetary myths and historical nature of these two distant gas giants.

Uranus: The spark of creation

Ouranos comes from ancient Greek and means “the heavens or sky”. It was the name of the original Greek sky god, and partner of Gaia, or Mother Earth. One of the primordial gods, Ouranos came out of Chaos, the formless universal state. He would cover and mate with Gaia each night. They produced a progeny of 12 titans: six male and six female. But Ouranos detested the family Gaia bore him.

Uranus supplies the instantaneous flash of ingenious ideas; Jupiter a divine and broad futuristic vision.

After Ouranos cruelly imprisoned Gaia’s youngest children, she asked her sons to castrate him. It was Cronos (Saturn) who took up a flint sickle, originally fashioned by Gaia, and did the deed. From the blood of Ouranos’ testes were born the colossal Gigantes, the Erinyes (female deities of fury and vengeance) and, from the foam of the seas, Aphrodite (goddess of love).

These mythological connotations suggest that Ouranos signifies the initial spark of creation and that he lacked empathy or any sense of ongoing nurturance. It was due to this lack of compassion that his creativity (testes) was forcibly removed. The Ouranos myth symbolises the need for taking ongoing responsibility for your creations, lest your creative power be taken away.

Uranus and enlightenment

The planet Uranus was discovered around 10.30pm on Tuesday evening, March 13, 1781, by English astrologer William Herschel. From the start, it was different. Uranus had an erratic orbit and rotated on its side and in the opposite direction to Earth.

It was the first to be named directly after a Greek deity — the others are known by their Roman equivalents. The naming of Uranus preserved the order of planetary hereditary, with Mars the son of Jupiter, Jupiter the son of Saturn and Saturn the son of Uranus.

The spirit of the times when a planet comes into consciousness provides further clues to its meaning. Uranus was discovered at the height of the European intellectual movement of the 18th century, known as the Age of Enlightenment. This epoch of reason promoted science and intellectualism ahead of religion and superstition. Uranus is associated with groundbreaking and progressive thought.

Encyclopaedia of the Sciences, Arts and Crafts, publishing all the knowledge of the known world, was first printed just prior to the discovery of Uranus. This spread of knowledge to the common populace coincided with greater communal awareness, sowing the seeds of the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution. Uranus does not respect tradition, especially regarding concentrated wealth and power. It’s the planet of rebellion and insurrection.

Up, up and away

Named for the first sky god, Uranus would be expected to be associated with flight. Whether by accident or intelligent design, that theory proved correct. The year following the discovery of Uranus, a gas giant, the Montgolfier brothers launched their own gas monster: a helium-fired hot-air balloon. The contraption travelled two kilometres but was destroyed by suspicious passersby on landing.

The brothers pressed on undeterred. By September 13, 1783, an unwilling sheep, duck and rooster became the first living things sent aloft, landing safely after covering three kilometres at an altitude of 460 metres. By January 17, 1785, balloons were crossing the English Channel. Humanity has been aloft ever since and Uranus’s influence has repeatedly marked major moments in the history of flight.

Jupiter: King of kings

Jupiter is the Roman name of the Greek god Zeus, the Supreme Deity of all. Zeus’s birth was forecast by the vanquished grandfather Uranus via a warning to his son Cronos (Saturn). Just as Cronos had disposed of his father Ouranos, so the same fate would befall Cronos.

To prevent the prophesy unfolding, Cronos resorted to cannibalism, swallowing his children at birth. Wife Rhea, horrified at this, secretly hid the youngest (Zeus) in a cave to protect him. This ancient myth bears a similar theme to that of Moses concealed in the bull rushes, or Jesus hidden from Herod. Eventually, Zeus would prevail in a war against Cronos and the Titans, becoming the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon.

In many cultures, Jupiter was the planet of royalty. The Romans dubbed him Optimus Maximus. This massive planet, which could easily contain all the others in the solar system and more, was also the pre-eminent god of Babylon, the birthplace of astrology.

Politically, the radical Jupiter-Uranus energy aligning with Pluto will bring revolutions to fruition.

Babylonian stargazers recognised Jupiter as the greater benefic and built a multi-storey tower in his honour. Their ancient tablets state that if an eclipse occurred with Marduk (Jupiter) it would be beneficial to the king, whose name would subsequently be honoured far and wide.

The first lawmaker of the Babylonian empire, King Hammurabi, nominated Marduk as the king planet. Cross-culturally, Jupiter has a connection with law, and the word justice is a derivative of his name. Even oriental astrologers refer to him as the Imperial Magistrate.

Today, Jupiter is associated with self-expansion, confidence and the thirst for higher knowledge, often via a religion or philosophy. Jupiter’s keywords are abundance, generosity, magnanimity and joy. When future-orientated Jupiter is strong, opportunity opens like a parting of the waves. When Jupiter combines with Uranus, breakthroughs are sudden and dynamic. Studying their cycles shows exactly when this happens.

Jupiter-Uranus patterns

The study of cycles is essential to fully comprehend how history synchs with the cosmic dance of the planets. Jupiter circles the Sun once every 12 years, while Uranus takes approximately 84 years to do the same. 12 goes into 84 seven times. Thus, every seventh cycle of Jupiter coincides with one cycle of Uranus in virtually same area of the sky. This is the larger cycle.

Transport was an area of human advancement that felt the ingenious Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1886. That year, horse-drawn carts in Great Britain, Austria-Hungary, Germany and France carried 900 million passengers alone. But the global model of transport was to change dramatically from July 3, 1886, when Karl Benz unveiled the first successful gasoline-propelled vehicle.

Mechanised transport would revolutionise the world technically, economically and culturally. But just how rapidly it would transform travel, making faster and longer trips possible, was barely conceivable at the beginning of the longer cycle. By the end it was dramatically obvious.

The first long-distance day trip covered a mere 106 kilometres on August 5, 1888. It was wonderfully impressive for the time, but something that can now be achieved within an hour’s freeway driving.

By 1969, Uranus had completed one full orbit and Jupiter came to join it in the same area of the sky they’d occupied back in 1886. The exact day was July 20, 1969, a day on which Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

Humanity had progressed from a 100-kilometre Sunday jaunt to a 390,000-kilometre adventure into outer space. This is the kind of fantastic technical advance the longer Jupiter-Uranus cycle regularly produces.

Galileo, Kepler and the gods of the sky

The mythology of Jupiter and Uranus connects them both with the sky. Therefore, it would be expected that their significant conjunctions would emphasise the exploration of the heavens and flight. The discovery of new planets and star systems changed forever with the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction of 1609. On August 25 of that year, Galileo Galilei, the father of observational astronomy, gave a demonstration of his newly discovered telescope.

These primitive early models, with a magnification of eight or nine, became a source of income for Galileo, who sold them to merchant travellers and sailors. On January 7, 1610, he was able to make out pin spots of light while observing Jupiter. Over the successive nights he noticed they moved rapidly and even disappeared behind the planet. These spots were the four Moons of Jupiter: Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Io, commonly known as the Galilean Satellites.

Galileo also observed the phases of Venus with his telescope and quickly realised that the long-held Ptolemaic view of the heavens was untenable. Although a prisoner of the Catholic Church due to his heretical views, the great scientist continued his stellar work, noting nebulas and dense star clusters in the Milky Way. He even unwittingly discovered Neptune, but simply regarded it as a dim star.

The study of cycles is essential to fully comprehend how history synchs with the cosmic dance of the planets.

While Galileo was to forever change the way humans viewed the sky, further north in Europe, the man credited as the greatest astronomer of all, Johannes Kepler, had cracked the astronomical Rubik’s Cube. The German mathematical genius had calculated the true laws of planetary motion. In 1609, Kepler shared his discoveries with the world with the publication of Astronomia Nova. Together, under the auspicious influence of a Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, Galileo and Kepler had made the greatest astronomical advances of the previous 2000 years.

In 1609, the Jupiter-Uranus union took place at 11 degrees of the information sign Gemini on the famous fixed star, Rigel. The legend of this star, the sixth brightest, is one that brings knowledge to others. While Galileo and Kepler were two of the giants of the scientific world, astrologers look to Jupiter and Uranus as their heavenly representatives.

Three hundred and sixty is a magic number in astrology, as it is the number of degrees in a horoscope — the definitive astrological cycle. Add 360 to 1609 and we come to 1969, a cycle that took humanity from peering through a telescope at the Moon’s craters to human footsteps within them. Both events occurred at a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, the most potent planetary alignment. But you don’t have to wait that long for these two planets to influence each other, nor even 84 years. Jupiter and Uranus connect more frequently through a shorter “synodic” cycle.

The 14-year synodic cycle

A synodic cycle is one in which a faster body laps a slower-moving body. The monthly New Moons are synodic cycles between the faster-moving Moon and the slower-moving Sun. As Jupiter moves seven times faster than Uranus, it will join and then move past Uranus approximately every 14 years. These conjunctions or unions of Jupiter and Uranus produce years of notable scientific breakthroughs.

 

Examining the same subject of technology and transport, and breaking the 84-year cycle into each union of Jupiter and Uranus, provides a fascinating developmental study.

1886 — Karl Benz invents the Motorwagen.

1900 — The first automobile show in the US opens in Madison Square Garden. The first electric bus operates in New York.

1914 — Henry Ford announces minimum wage of $5 and an eight-hour workday for the mass production of the Model T Ford. It’s ranked as the world’s most influential vehicle of the 20th century.

1927-28 — The first transatlantic flight from New York to Paris by Charles Lindbergh marked the beginning of international air travel. Note: at this point the full 84-year cycle has reached its halfway point and is providing clear signs of its overall meaning.

1941 — The aerial attack on Pearl Harbour brings thunder and lightning from the skies and the battle for control of the airways will dominate WWII. It will also lead to accelerated and extensive aeronautic research in rocket technology. The first British jet debuts.

1954 — The first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus, is launched in the USA, commissioned by the Navy. The Boeing 707 makes its debut and becomes the standard jet airliner. John Travolta still pilots one.

1968/69 — US astronauts orbit to the dark side of the Moon for the first time as Jupiter and Uranus make the first of three conjunctions. On the day of the final conjunction, Neil Armstrong walks on the Moon. The Boeing 747, also known as the jumbo jet and set to become the new international standard, takes to the skies.

 

Separating the longer cycle into each conjunction reveals a clear pattern of advancing technology toward a crowning final achievement. You can see how humankind has advanced from the original individual motorised transport of the car to mass global air flights and onto the conquering of space. The pattern continues.

Subsequent meetings of Jupiter and Uranus brought further achievements in aeronautics. The following conjunction in 1983 saw Pioneer 10 become the first manmade object to depart the entire solar system. Australian Dick Smith became the first man to fly around the world in a helicopter. However, flight is just one area of technological advancement, as the two planets correspond with many more.

Hello, Dolly

In February of 1997, days after an exact Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, scientists announced the sensational and controversial news that they had cloned a sheep. Dolly was the first cloned mammal (yes, humans are mammals, too) and lived for six years. She was named after singer Dolly Parton, as the cloning came via a mammary cell.

On May 20, 2010, as the most recent conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus loomed, The Scientist magazine announced the creation of a fully functional synthetic genome. The research, which had commenced at the previous Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, was declared a “methodological tour de force”. Biology had gone synthetic and humankind had finally created artificial life.

For the consumer market, however, it was something far more immediate that captured the attention of the masses. Steve Jobs, a visionary genius (who was born with a Jupiter-Uranus conjunction at the hub of his horoscope), announced the iPad. Here was a communications and multimedia tablet that would forever revolutionise the computer world. Apple has since become the first trillion-dollar company.

Meanwhile, in the research halls of CERN, there was a major breakthrough in particle physics: the study of the fundamental constituents of matter. For a brief sixth of a second, Switzerland scientists trapped the mysterious antimatter. Flight didn’t miss out either, as the world’s first 24-hour flight in a solar-power plan took place on July 8, 2010.

Beyond 2013

What might you expect as these two planets move into their advancing square, between the middle of 2013 and May of 2014? The Jupiter-Uranus square usually builds on what has taken place at the previous conjunction (June 2010). The 2013/2014 square occurs with Pluto in attendance, as it did in 1903, 1930–31 and 1934.

Politically, the radical Jupiter-Uranus energy aligning with Pluto will bring revolutions to fruition. Oppressed countries with autocratic leaders will feel this more than others, as whole governments and constitutions are overthrown. Even advanced nations will experience the seeds of civil rights change, just as they did in the mid-60s. The field of economics will be revamped due to the failures in the system.

The race for control of the skies will accelerate, leading to landmark achievements in aeronautics and aviation. The particle physics world will likely take further steps down the road of teleportation — itself a word that first appeared during a previous Jupiter-Uranus-Pluto meeting in 1931. Significant breakthroughs were made in the teleportation area, also using optical fibre, during the past two Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions of 1997 and 2010.

Hang onto your Large Hadron Collider as humanity comes face to face with the Big Bang. Scientists will be smashing sub-atomic particles together faster and harder than ever before. The questions of life and the universe will be given new answers while far in outer space Jupiter, Uranus and Pluto synch for the announcement of the latest great technological awakening.