Uranus in Gemini and Our Freedom of Expression
By Frank C. Clifford
We live in challenging times when freedom of speech is under threat, important books are being banned and discussions and divergent voices are being shut down. As astrologers, we should take this very seriously. We are, after all, keepers of a great wisdom tradition and – as we are currently situated beyond the perimeters of science and academia – we are most vulnerable to attempts to shut down our work.
The prevailing phrase heard across media is ‘cancel culture’ – a reflection perhaps of the current sign positions of the three outer planets. Uranus in Taurus (2018–26) has seen seismic shifts in technology that have changed the face of money and commerce, but it’s also coincided with a greater resistance to ideological change, a stubborn attachment to our ideas and a hair-trigger response to those who oppose them.
Pluto in Capricorn (2008–24) has seen power shifts and changes in hierarchies (even though dinosaurs still roam the corridors of power), yet it has witnessed the world become progressively more conservative, judgemental and punishing.
And Neptune in Pisces (2011–26) has reminded us of the importance of inclusivity, but has also seen blurred definitions and a fashion for victimhood or victimisation steering the helm of social interaction. There’s also been a search for labels that paint a picture of (but don’t exactly define) our feelings of suffering.
Labels are for filing and for clothes, not people
If Uranus is the planet that rouses us – sometimes with a rude awakening – then Neptune drifts and dreams and sends us into the arms of Morpheus. Neptune in Pisces has seen essence overwhelm form, and feeling overwhelm reason. If Uranus declares that ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’, Neptune responds: ‘Everything is a spectrum, and definitions are fluid, malleable.’ Belief and image have become the new, reigning realities.
If Uranus resists labels, we now have fascinating Neptunian terms like ‘gaslighting’, ‘ghosting’, ‘virtue-signalling’ and feeling ‘blindsided’. And extreme labels run amok on social media as we attack people for their different views: if I don’t like you, you’re a sociopath, fascist or narcissist. You’re toxic!
Blurring facts and assigning labels can result in the shutting down of dialogue; the chance to learn where others are coming from will be missed. Uranus moving into the reason-driven and debate-loving sign of Gemini (from July to November 2025, and then from April 2026) will herald an urgent need to address these trends.
Getting triggered
Nowadays you need a trigger alert to tell people that you’re going to show a trigger alert! Children and vulnerable adults need protection, we can all agree on that, but the current climate caters to over-zealous souls who are looking for someone to blame for feeling a lack of agency in their lives (‘agency’ is another buzzword).
On social media, there’s false outrage or unleashed anger followed by the hashtag ‘Be kind.’ We see gut reactions replace considered responses. The result can be cancellation, which is Uranian in nature, of course. My Gemini dad used to have a phrase, ‘If you don’t like me, then leave me alone.’ (And sometimes we did!) Uranus was the handle of his bucket chart.
So, some of us stay quiet for fear of being cancelled for expressing what we think, while others among us try to modify our behaviour to act in accordance with what people expect. As astrologers, we know that either is a route to depression and an inauthentic existence. It goes against the Solar principle in the chart, and against the whole horoscope, really.
Learning from the provocateurs
It’s easy to spot the few truly Uranian spirits among us – just look at the people who provoke us the most. Uranians challenge us to see the world from different viewpoints. It may feel provocative (Uranus) to suggest this, but we shouldn’t shy away from listening to the Uranians who elicit a visceral reaction. As an astrological opposite to the Sun, Uranus can wake up our Solar journey of self-exploration and self-definition by showing us who we are and who we’re not, what we stand for and what we don’t.
Many of the following appear to have been fuelled with Promethean Fire as Uranus has been waking up the Taurus and Scorpio areas of their charts: Ben Shapiro (ASC; Mars), Germaine Greer (Moon and IC; Mars and MC), Salman Rushdie (ASC and Mars; Jupiter), Jordan Peterson (Mars, ASC), Megyn Kelly (Saturn; Sun, Venus, and Jupiter), Donald Trump (MC; IC), Andrew Tate (DSC; ASC, Mercury, and Venus), Alex Jones (Mars), Natalie Wynn (DSC; ASC), Kellie-Jay Keen (Venus). Harrison Butker’s speech to Benedictine College in May 2024 is another Uranian example to view if you wish (natally, he has the Sun opposite Uranus). Depending on your current viewpoint, some of these Uranians may disturb, wake up or inspire.
Uranian contradictions
We can also understand Uranus through the premise that it is contradictory in nature. In essence, the Uranian is keen on encouraging a fraternity of like-minded souls, and it fights to win progress for the group … but the Uranian doesn’t want to mix with the hoi polloi. It loves humanity but, at worst, can’t stand people. It is democratic in spirit but autocratic in method. On paper, to the Uranian, all of us are equal but in reality … some are more equal than others. The Uranian spirit is seen in Article 11 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights:
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.
Once absolute, there is now an amendment to this Article that exercising these rights carries ‘special duties and responsibilities’ and may ‘be subject to certain restrictions’. Libel, slander, pornography, incitement and the prevention of harm to others are often used to justify limitations on freedom of speech. Now, the ‘offence principle’ is being used to shut down speakers on college campuses and rallies. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (adopted during the French Revolution) comes with a warning:
Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
The shadow side of Uranus is intolerance – and some Uranians are proudly intolerant of intolerance (which still means they’re intolerant). As one newly-elected South American leader once declared: ‘I open this country up to democracy. And anyone who is against that, I will jail, I will crush!’
As a mouthpiece for extremists or fanatics, Uranus is brutal in its allegiance to an ideology that it believes will promise a better future, and equally hardline in its nonattachment to individual suffering while it attempts to realise this goal. In other words, the long-term cause and ultimate goal are more important than the casualties along the way. Uranus fights for everyone’s right to have their say, but cuts off those who don’t support the mission 100%.
The Uranian is highly independent, but we mustn’t confuse that with being individual. Those in the grip of a Uranian vision often think they are being truly individualistic, but as Liz Greene writes in The Art of Stealing Fire (recently republished by Wessex):
The very act of rebelling against something means that one is in some way deeply bound up with, and subtly dominated by, the very thing one is fighting. This is not an expression of individuality, because that comes from within.
Dr. Greene adds:
When [Uranus] takes possession of the individual ego it reflects a particular kind of madness which involves a global vision of perfect order… Uranus can also be exceedingly destructive because it is so disconnected from living human reality.
Uranus in Taurus: ideological earthquakes
Right now we’re in the final throes of Uranus in Taurus and, as we know, the natures of planet and sign don’t easily mix. At worst, Uranus can be fixated on ideologies that insist on a quantum leap of change. Taurus is fixated on holding on to what it possesses and is averse to imposed change.
Uranus travelling through Taurus has seen a tendency to react with stubborn resistance to any objections to our ideas and convictions. Opposition to how we think has made us embattled and defensive – and has only served to prove how right we really were all along!
Fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
– Bernard Russell
It’s easy to forget that life is full of uncertainty. And in fact, this is often the reason we become so intent on being certain: we’re anxious about all that is no longer certain.
The transit of Uranus through Taurus has also had a Venusian tone: the battle (once again) for the right for women to have reproductive control over their bodies; the fight for trans-rights; the divisions in the Covid and climate change camps; fighting for women’s spaces and sports. The incongruities of Uranus moving through Taurus are startling. We’re seeing how many people are tuning in to their Venusian sides or celebrating the gifts of womanhood, and yet we are still living in deeply misogynistic times.
One symbol of Uranus in Taurus is an earthquake – a major division into two, clear-cut sides. You’re either on our side or you’re over there! Either with us or against us. When Uranus moves into Gemini, we may still be divided (it’s the sign of duality and division), but there’s an opportunity to see the other point of view – the alternative – and to jump back and forth between both sides. There’ll be flexibility, a needed separation from Taurean attachment; a conversation rather than a stubborn stalemate where dialogue grinds to a standstill.
Gemini doesn’t have morality on its mind, but it does like to doubt, debate and discuss – and this is essential for learning and communicating knowledge. As the saying goes, ‘To disagree intelligently, you need to understand profoundly.’ We must always take responsibility for our words, but we don’t need to (and perhaps shouldn’t) take responsibility for how someone interprets them.
Gemini can entertain two opposing ideas and stay interested in the connections, similarities and differences between each. It can see your side but not necessarily commit to it. Gemini replies ‘perhaps’ and ‘maybe’. It can play gracefully with ideas and not take them too personally.
Discovering Uranus in Gemini
The discovery of Uranus – at 24° Gemini in 1781 – shattered the seven-planet foundation that astrology had been built upon. It was a shock from which some astrologers have never recovered! And interestingly, this coincided with a period of decline in astrology and a rise in mechanistic science. It was also a time of championing human reasoning, human rights, human welfare and humanist goals. In Gemini, it was also a cosmic signpost of a dawning of new, collective ideas, individual autonomy and an evolution of consciousness. Back then, the human race was recognising the right we have to question life, our environment and our place in the universe. It began a new era of freedom of thought. Very Uranus in Gemini.
The United States became independent when Uranus and Mars were at 8° and 21° Gemini, respectively. It will have its Uranus return from July 2027 to May 2028, and it’s likely to be acted out as a war on censorship and probably a war on guns (Mars), too. Here we have an interesting connection to that word of the moment: triggered.
The English writer John Milton was born two Uranus cycles before US independence, and his chart has Uranus at 6° Gemini on the Descendant. Milton wrote:
Give me the liberty to know, to utter,and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.
A war of the words
Gemini is concerned with the process of naming things, articulating the information and facts it discovers and delighting in staying informed and asking ‘why?’ When Uranus returns to Gemini in July 2025, we shall be faced with some hard questions:
- Are we capable of entertaining real doubt about our beliefs?
- Can we articulate our opponent’s position?
- Or will we be too quick to close down, block or cancel?
Uranus’s move into Gemini will coincide with the battle to maintain or win back freedom of speech: our right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas. This transit will be concerned with the fundamental human right to speak our mind – and that includes the right to express ourselves to those who have different opinions.
The transit will witness the fight over language and semantics. At the time of writing, Uranus has yet to change signs, but we are already seeing the battle lines being drawn between freedom of expression and the legal moves to compel or regulate speech. And if speech is regulated, who will define what’s offensive or hateful? Gemini philosopher G. K. Chesterton foresaw our Uranian times: ‘We shall soon be in a world in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure.’
We are already facing social media regulation and punishment. YouTube subtitles block out swear words. Facebook now censors certain phrases and suspends us for days.
Do we tiptoe around for fear of causing offence, or do we keep thinking, questioning and exploring? Surely, it’s our freedom to think and express that leads to advances in society and in our relationships. Uranus’s return to Gemini will coincide with the fight once again for this freedom. It will spotlight the importance of bringing back debate and fighting against censorship.
The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.
– Oscar Wilde
We’re already witnessing the banning of important books (apparently 3,000 in the US alone last year) or edited to be ‘less offensive’. Personally speaking, I don’t want people deciding what I’m allowed to read, or watering down content in case I get offended. In order to learn and to grow, I’m comfortable being more than a little offended!
Censorship and cancellation will become so threatening in the coming years that we’ll be forced to stand up and fight against both. And what happens if the authorities come after the astrology books we read and write? What are we going to do when someone decides to edit or ban Rob Hand’s Planets in Transit because it mentions prediction? Wikipedia calls astrology ‘pseudoscientific’ and has deleted many astrological pages (mine included) – what if our subject is declared a ‘falsehood’ and falls under ‘misinformation’? We book-readers and booksellers of astrology need to stay awake.
And the clocks were striking thirteen
Uranus entering Gemini in 1941
A quick glance at the flat horoscope for when Uranus first entered Gemini last time (7 August 1941) provides some clues as to last 80+ years’ obsession with identity and the power of self-expression, and the rise of the Me generation and, later, social media. Mercury conjoins Pluto in Leo, the Sun is in Leo, Mars is in Aries and there’s a Full Moon in Aquarius.
At the end of the last transit – when Uranus stood at the final degree of Gemini – George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. It was 8 June 1949 – just two days before Uranus left Gemini. Orwell wrote it during his Uranus half return (and Uranus had returned to its discovery degree of 24° Gemini).
In Orwell’s novel, speaking the truth is outlawed and the protagonist, everyman Winston Smith, begins his secret diary in defiance of the totalitarian government. It is a volume that addresses the manipulation of truth, mass surveillance and the repressive regimentation of a dystopian society. Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, called it ‘an apocalyptical codex of our worst fears’, while Dorian Lynskey (in The Ministry of Truth) called it a book ‘we turn to when truth is mutilated, language is distorted [and] power is abused’.
Uranus entering Gemini in 2025
This may give us some insight into the battles ahead as Uranus travels through Gemini from July 2025 to May 2033. In the ingress chart, Venus conjoins Uranus in Gemini and both oppose the Moon in Sagittarius, while Mars is in Virgo: the value of words and meaning, a fight to speak up for ‘The Truth’ and the need for discernment and critical thinking – in spite of systemic manipulation (Saturn conjunct Neptune).
Orwell coined the terms ‘thoughtcrime’ and ‘doublethink’ – the process of indoctrination in which people are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality: ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ How relevant this is today in an AI world where fake news leads to continual doubt, disbelief or indifference, and lies are presented as fact.
At the same time that Nineteen Eighty-Four was published and Uranus stood at 29° Gemini, two very different events took place – both extreme manifestations of Uranus having made its way through Gemini. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was accepted by the United Nations, and a Subcommittee on Un-American Activities released a 709-page report accusing writers and entertainers of Communist sympathies.
In August 2032, Uranus arrives back at 29°55’ Gemini, its placement when Orwell’s book was published. How difficult will this battle have become? As Gemini loves playing with words and connecting ideas, I Googled ‘8:32’ and found this:
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Keeping the humour
One of the areas most under threat is comedy. The current sensitive social climate means we have to take a risk to attempt to be funny, to use humour to get people thinking, and to speak up about the ridiculousness of what happens on our way from the cradle to the grave. Humour is one of the first areas we should fight to protect during these times of censorship. And Uranus has a claim to being the planet of comedy.[1]
People without a sense of humour should not be allowed to decide what people with a sense of humour are allowed to laugh at.
– John Cleese
Uranian comedians and commentators are the ‘shock jocks’ like Howard Stern (Mercury–Uranus) and TV host Bill Maher (Sun–Moon–Uranus) and social commentators through the ages such as Oscar Wilde to Dorothy Parker (both Mercury–Uranus). Wilde knew the importance of a good Uranian surprise reversal when he quipped, ‘It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances’ and ‘I can resist everything except temptation.’
George Carlin (Uranus–MC) was another comedian intent on keeping audiences from falling asleep socially and politically. Famously, he introduced ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV’. Comedian Roseanne is highly Uranian (Aquarius rising, Mars–Uranus). When she’s not getting herself cancelled, she’s asking her audience: ‘Any impotent men here tonight? Oh I see … you can’t get your hands up either.’ A Scorpio, she has also said: ‘The fastest way to a man’s heart… is through his chest.’
A dominant Uranus is found in those who are born to cut through hypocrisy, refuse the path of compromise and speak the unspeakable. We need Uranians to wake us up from a herd mentality, and this sometimes means causing outrage. (The etymology of ‘outrage’ is ‘violent’, ‘lawless’, ‘beyond’. All very Uranian.)
Uranians have a compulsive aversion to everything obligatory, and the result is that many are cancelled by Saturn/society. But that cancellation is often reversed when times change and what was once shocking becomes mainstream. That’s something Uranian outsider Quentin Crisp knew. With natal Uranus on his MC in Capricorn, he once advised, ‘Don’t ever try to join society – that’s a mistake. Stay right where you are and wait for society to form itself around you.’ He said it another way, ‘Time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.’
Astrology’s roles and plugholes
Astrology can go down the same plughole that we see on social media: using the chart to reinforce victimhood or to excuse or cancel behaviour: I have a Saturn transit, so life is going to be hard this year. I’ll never date another Scorpio Moon. You can’t follow this astrologer because they use that house system.
When I began teaching myself astrology in the late 1980s, it was the Sun-sign columns that watered down our great subject. Now, in social media and the hunt for likes and views, we’re bombarded with astrological trivia. Every upcoming transit is advertised as ‘huge’. Every week we’re being told of a new shift in consciousness. It’s exhausting! The last intelligent media project on astrology was Rick Tarnas’s Changing of the Gods – and look how much time, effort and money that took to create.
Now, most of the time we’re exposed to the trivial side of astrology via Mercury. Words for words’ sake. Filling air time. The need to express oneself without really having something important to say. That’s a downside to Gemini, which follows Taurus. Put bluntly, after the bull comes the bullshit. There’s bound to be a lot more B.S. to come.
We can express astrology in a low-frequency energy, but arguably this doesn’t do justice to our subject. A Uranian breakthrough of freedom and change begins when we address our prejudices about signs and placements – or when we refuse to accept someone’s narrow interpretation of who we are. This is part of the journey of Uranus through Gemini. Discernment and critical thinking and a review of how we practise astrology, how we define our work and our approach – these are pivotal to how well we navigate this seven-and-a-half–year transit. I’m fond of saying this to students:
The only true debility is an astrologer’s inability to suggest something constructive to do with that placement.
There are no mistakes in the chart; there’s no junk, either. It’s a map of beauty and perfection, reflecting each perfect, present moment. I see a horoscope as a magnet (attracting people and situations to us) and an invitation to co-create our lives. We learn from many, but we can only interpret life and horoscopes through our own lens. As the interpreter, we must recognise our bias: how we experience and see life will be how we read charts. To quote Anaïs Nin:
We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.
This is where ‘The Truth’ is replaced by ‘my truth’, which really means my opinion or feelings. Valid, but different. Astrology provides that deeply personal lens – one that reflects our perspective, our ‘truth’. And everyone has their own, equally valid lens/chart. But we can’t expect our lens to be the same as other people’s. And here, our battles in the microcosm of our astrological community are mirrored in the macrocosm of the wider world’s ideological battles.
I love what our late astrology colleague Jeff Jawer used to say: ‘Be more committed to discovery, which requires sometimes being wrong, than to control, which demands that you always be right.’ Jeff was a Taurus with a Scorpio Moon! As an Aries, I’d add: Let us also be more committed to being effective – as people and as astrological consultants.
One gift of Uranus moving into Gemini is the revelation (or reintroduction) of a kind of self-expression that is truly genuine to us. Astrologers know that there’s nothing more freeing, more alive… than being awake to yourself. Again, we hear the Sun and Uranus. Our job as messengers and consultants is to inspire each other and our clients to live authentically.
Individuals serving a greater truth in a community
We astrologers are always going to resist regulation en masse because our astrology is a reflection of our individual lens on life, and that’s part of its appeal: astrology serves as a Solar and Uranian vessel. What defines us as a community (Uranus) is a feeling of singularity (Sun) and differentness (Uranus). Astrology speaks to our sense of individuality and to us as a fellowship of individuals attempting to learn, interpret and communicate a larger truth. This is why Uranus in Gemini is so significant to our profession now.
Uranus begins its move into Gemini in July 2025, and as astrologers we have the chance to continue to be in dialogue with one another and to question what we encounter. We are being asked to stay open to a multitude of contrasting ideas, to reopen closed conversations, to find various forms of expression that uplift our great wisdom tradition and its sacred stories – and avoid constantly reducing it to cater to passing whims. The way to prevail during these times, I think, is to always aim to tell a better story.
Astrology is diverse – it has within it binary systems (we learn about night and day, yin and yang and various axes), but its application is most impactful when fluid, multifaceted and nonbinary. Charts are fundamentally unequal – some people have more air than others; some are cardinal, others are more mutable. Yet our approach needs to be all-inclusive. We must be open to divergent viewpoints, and to embracing all signs, all placements, all people. But our principal aim as consultants is to help people discover the power within to shape their lives according to who they are and what they want to be.
With censorship and the curtailment of intellectual freedom, Uranus in Gemini will urgently bring forward the need for diverse perspectives and experiences in astrology. It could be all too easy to break off into further subsections.
We will continue to have our own approaches, house systems and toolkits. Most of us are too Uranian to want ‘one school of astrology’ with laws laid down – unless these laws are our own! No truth is the whole truth, and nothing exists without an opposite.
The dichotomies inherent in both Uranus and Gemini mean that we have the opportunity to come together as a community, united in our diversity and respectful in our acceptance of contrasting ideas. We are fiercely individualistic individuals all under the same umbrella in a small community. Unity is where our strength lies. Let’s keep the conversations going.
Note
My research into the astrological significators of humour shows the importance of Mercury–Mars and Mercury–Uranus aspects, personal points in Capricorn or Aquarius, and/or a dominant Uranus. See the mini-book Humour in the Horoscope (Flare, 2015).
Chart Data & Sources
Chart Data can be found on AstroDatabank (astro.com) or other internet sources, and are rated A or AA. With examples that are not so rated, the date of birth is not in question.
Images
- Mask: Engin Akyurt on Pixabay
- Taped: Jackson Simmer on Unsplash
- Butterflies: Sigmund on Unsplash
Author:
Frank C. Clifford Frank has built an eclectic, 35-year career as the writer of a dozen books, a consultant astrologer and palmist, a publisher/editor, a researcher of birth data, and the Principal of the London School of Astrology. The LSA also has branches in China and Japan. Frank has written for The Mountain Astrologer since 2008, and in 2025 relaunched TMA as an online multi-media magazine with occasional printed special editions. In 2012, he was the youngest recipient of a lifetime honour for his contribution to astrology, and a writing award from ISAR and a Regulus nomination followed. www.londonschoolofastrology.com
Published in: The Mountain Astrologer, June 2025
© 2025 - Frank C. Clifford
