Where are we headed?
A look at the human and technological implications of Uranus in Gemini, which begins in 2025. The world in seven years will not be recognizable. Will people?
Dear Friend and Reader:
On the last night of working on The AWA, my eBook accompanying your 2025 The Awakening readings, I took up the matter of Uranus entering Gemini. Typical of Uranus, this took me by surprise. I didn’t think it was so close at hand.
The book is available now, with any purchase of The Awakening.
The transition begins over the summer and extends into the spring of 2026 — though the way these things work, we are already under its influence. As with technological advances, attitudes and values change ahead of major transits.
The illustration above is alternative cover art for The Awakening. I wondered what I was getting at in this image, and I would now say: Uranus in Gemini. That is the convergence point we are rapidly approaching.
Astrology is the study of how humans interrelate with their rapidly changing environments. And we are about to get a lot of change, faster than ever. Gemini is the study of how we think and how we talk to one another. It is the sign of the idioglossia, the secret language of twins. And with Uranus, there’s a big one blowin’ in.
And Why Should You Care?
What is the future of humanity? And why should you care? After all, it doesn’t care much about you.
Those are the questions of both Pluto in Aquarius (which fully engages next week, till 2043-44) and also Uranus in Gemini. I’ve said much about Pluto…this article will offer a little about Uranus changing signs — the planet of revolutions, technology advances and shocking news.
Both will have profound influence on what we think of as the social realm: how we respond to one another, whether in one-to-one situations (Gemini) and group situations (Aquarius). If you think you’ve seen a lot of change over the course of your lifetime or in the past 10 years, my sense is that the world, driven by technology, will be unrecognizable by the end of Uranus in Gemini in 2032-33.
Case in point, just a little taste: as I am writing this article Thursday afternoon, I have learned that The Onion — a satire website, which started in 1988 as an ad sheet in Madison, Wisconsin — won the bidding for Alex Jones’ InfoWars on Nov. 14, purchasing the title in a bankruptcy proceeding. The funds, we are told, will go to families of kids allegedly killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting, who won a libel suit against Jones.
Some New Point of Decision Every Day
Often without realizing it, we reach some new point of decision every day where we make a bet on the future of our species. Then there are the very great junctures where we branch one way or the other and plunge into the uncertainty.
They all seem to involve the advent of some new feature in the technology environment, which is always embraced as the coolest Christmas gift ever. It’s never clear what we are choosing and how it will reshape our lives.
And then once our lives are reshaped, the question is not “what did that thing do to us” but rather, “Why is the world so insane? When did that happen? How is this total absurdity being accepted as normal?”
People look around at the stunning instability of society and the incomprehensible behavior of those around them, and do not notice the one thing we all have in common. We are all wired, wi-fi’d, bluetoothed and 5G’ed in a monstrous inescapable tether.
Transhuman is a Household Word
Humans — that is, our behaviors, attitudes and values that make us human — are shaped in realtime by exposure to our technology environment. We are now surrounded by the robot; we are swallowed; it is in us and we are in it. Resistance was indeed futile. Nothing like this has ever happened before, so totally and so fast.
And humanity is fast becoming like the robot, and living for the robot. It is merging with us; the term “transhuman” is now a household word.
It all started with your computer-generated telephone bill in the 1950s, or so it seemed. A full decade earlier, the Nazis were keeping track of concentration camp inmates using computing devices supplied by IBM. The Allies were trying to break the Nazi code using the Bombe, an early analog computer designed by Alan Turing.
That was in 1941, with Uranus in the last degrees of Taurus (where it is today). Then came the conjunction of Saturn and Uranus in the last degree of Taurus on May 3, 1942. From that moment on, there was no turning back. Modern computer science was born and accelerated radically during Uranus in Gemini. But who knew?
Your New World of Right Now
In the first edition of National Geographic after World War II, the magazine published a 25-page feature called “Your New World of Tomorrow.”
It listed all of the marvelous technological advances that would soon enter the marketplace and infrastructure of society. These included kitchen matches that would light after being soaked in water for hours, the vacuum tube (which would transform music but that is not mentioned), electron microscopes, the “electric eye,” lots and lots of airports and also jet airplanes, fast, luxurious trains, the atom smasher and so on. (The transistor does not come along till 1947.)
But unknown to people at the time, one thing was missing from their feature: computers, which were in an advanced state of development by late 1945, and had been directly involved in the Allied victory over Germany and Japan just months earlier. They were not a consideration in Your New World.
Was this intentional concealment? Is it possible that Nat Geo, the great cartographer of humanity, did not know these things were on the map? Or did they assume that this was a little too much for people to know? Maybe they were left off because there was no concept of the extent to which they would influence society, and were expected to remain perpetually behind the scenes like sewer pipes.
And maybe — possibly — it’s a property of computing devices to blend in and go unnoticed until you trip over one.
This is Not About Devices, It’s About People
It’s tempting to think that this discussion is about devices, and not the human condition. We like to think that digital devices are becoming more like us. The truth is that we are becoming more like them far more rapidly.
It’s not just the strange way you have to speak to Siri so it understands you. It’s not just learning your way around an environment where many people still find email confusing. It’s not just about getting used to “breaking news” happening every 12 seconds.
It’s about thinking algorithmically. It’s about treating people (such as the person in front of you, or such as yourself) as a data input device. It’s about ghosting people, and deleting them, and thinking you can swipe left or swipe right at a social event.
And it’s about thinking that a computer can diagnose you with a disease that you don’t feel and don’t know you have and for which you are exhibiting no symptoms — and convince enough people to shut down society.
Aries, Gemini, Aquarius
And now the three signs most closely associated with human experience — Aries, Gemini and Aquarius — are describing vast, immeasurable changes to the human experience. Take a look at the photo above. Did anyone see that coming when the iPhone was released in 2007? Or was it just some cool new thing?
And what happens when we experience a century of technological progress in just a few years?
Aries, the sign of self, self-concept, and personal initiative, is about to get lit up by two rare conjunctions happening simultaneously. The digital influence here affects every person’s awareness of what a human being is, and how we relate to our bodies.
Gemini is the sign of one-to-one dynamics, and that is already being transformed by newly arrived Sedna (with Jupiter now warming up the territory for Uranus). This is about every conversation that anyone could possibly have. It’s about how intimate partners relate to one another (Gemini is The Lovers as well as The Brothers).
And Aquarius, where Pluto arrives next week to stay for 20 years next week, is about the total technology environment, social patterns and group dynamics. This influences every family, every organization and the distribution of all information to all people.
Will there be baby farms? Will we be allowed to look at one another walking down the street? Will sex be legal?
Where are we headed, and what do these things say about your relationship to existence, and the people around you? How can you adapt with maximum creativity and minimal harm?
That is the theme of The Awakening.
With love,
Your faithful astrologer and student of media studies,
and WHY are we in this handbasket?
Hi Eric, another great article. I’ve been in Melbourne seeing some clients so out of my routine which is good because I get to see things from a different perspective. I’ve had some wonderful deep conversations and then in direct contrast I took an Uber back to my accommodation and the driver was in what I’m going to call zeros and ones mode. He couldn’t think outside of the route the app was telling him despite it being inefficient and therefore wasting his time.
He was so stuck in ‘the app says’ I realised I couldn’t get through to him. My question is can you get through to people when they’re in that mode or are they tripping balls and best let be?