In Roman mythology a Genius was a guardian spirit that protected an individual throughout his or her life.  Every living person was endowed with a specific genius to whom yearly offerings were  made, generally on the person's birthday.  In addition to the individual's genius there were genii who protected tribes, towns, places, and the Roman state.  A particularly important genius was the Genius Populi Romani, guardian of Rome.  The accomplishments of an individual were often attributed to his or her genius.

Very few people ever reach the status of "genius".  There are many factors that prevent people from using their full genius potential.  Mainly it is fear which comes in many shapes, forms, and sizes.  Fear infiltrates, paralyzes and destroys; it oozes into the deepest core of the human potential, freezes all creativity and then expands out into every thought and action.

How then may we establish an intuitive link with the Universal Mind to realize our full genius and potential? 

Within the concepts and tenets of Astrology, the sign and house position of the archetype Uranus and its interaction with Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto symbolizes an individual's unique gift of genius and his/her soul's purpose in the present incarnation. It is the outer planets that correlate to major individual and collective changes.  Uranus can induce fracturing.  Pluto induces polarization.  Neptune can induce extremes, including fanaticism, deceptions or illusions passed off as truth, or unity in sameness versus unity in diversity.  When these dynamics combine at the same time, you have groups of people challenging any other group that is not sharing their moral imperative.  

Understanding Uranus - (Ruler of Aquarius)

Uranus constitutes one of the most confusing of all planetary archetypes which are the instinctual forces operating autonomously in the depths of the human psyche. They function in the psyche in much the same way as our instincts function in the body.  We cannot see these archetypal forces, but we experience them in our dreams, visions, and waking thoughts where they appear as images.  Although the specific form these images take may vary from culture to culture and from person to person - their essential characters are universal.  

Uranus was discovered in 1781 during the French and American Revolution.  Since then, It has been the symbol of freedom, independence, and a revolutionary of rebellious nature.  It does not conform within our structured solar system orbiting on its belly at a  90 degree angle from the way everything else in  the solar system behaves.  Those born with Uranus in prominence possessed an incredible futuristic and inventive spirit . . . Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Ram Dass, Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer . . . to name but a few.  These Uranian/Promethean types have contributed significantly to the evolutionary process of life on earth.  

In ancient Greece, Ouranos (Uranus) was the original sky father, the first child of Gaia or Mother Earth when she emerged from the primordial chaos.  He became her mate and the two of them gave birth to a number of monstrous beings, including the one-eyed Cyclopes.  Finally, they gave birth to the first family of gods which ruled over humankind, the seven Titans and their sister-spouses, the Titanesses.  But Ouranos became a tyrant.  Gaia was enraged and persuaded Cronus (Saturn), youngest of the titans, to castrate him with a sickle.  The seed of the  dying sky father spilled forth upon the earth and produced the terrifying goddesses of vengeance called the Furies, but it also produced Aphrodite (Venus), the beautiful goddess of love.  Uranus, then, is the essential force of creation.

Saturn correlates to all the conditioning patterns in your life, including the conditioning patterns of society and family, the expectations of people in your life, and the conditioning patterns relative to all the prior lives that you bring into this life.  Uranus is forever trying to shatter, revolutionize, liberate, or break free from these patterns;  the goal being to arrive at your own unique and essential nature (genius).  Wherever your natal Uranus is placed in the birth chart  is where the de-conditioning process can be worked upon throughout your life in your own unique way.   Every Uranus transit presents an opportunity relative to the house or planets being transited to break away from the conditions that have denied your creative expression.  However, most people (70 - 75 percent) resist this Uranian de-conditioning impulse although most of us come into this life with an intrinsic sense of individual and social purpose.  Saturn will define the rules necessary to actualize and establish an individual/social purpose. 

We must try to determine why any person has chosen a particular birth pattern in the first place and consider it from an evolutionary or karmic point of view.  Whatever the prior life background has been that has brought the individual into the current life will determine why and how any symbol will manifest.  There isn't any fixed or pat meaning that will always manifest in the same way in all cases.

Wherever Uranus is positioned in the horoscope is where the individual must personally work with the Uranian archetype. It is where the de-conditioning process of Saturn can be worked upon in your own unique way.  That which manifests through the right brain is that part in all of us that is plugged into the totality of manifested Creation.  The manifested or projected Creation is Uranus.  It is right brain which is said to be intuitive, conceptual, and abstract whereas left brain is said to be linear, rational, and empirical.  

Uranus in the First House or Aries:

The essential archetype within human consciousness that Aries or the 1st House correlates to is the instinct to become - become what one is as an independent entity.  It is the instinct to be free of all that may restrict, impede, or in some way stifle the development of the inherent individuality.  This archetype reflects the continual and ongoing process of self-discovery at every moment in time.  The instinct creates a consciousness that is fundamentally detached from the immediacy of the environment that it finds itself living within.  This instinct to become creates a condition of cyclic or perpetual identity crisis which manifests when the individual attempts to resist the Uranian demand for continuous reformulation and discovery of his or her essential nature.  Individuals with this placement will have the opportunity to blaze new trails in science and social reform.  They have courage, daring, initiative, and resourcefulness.  They are blunt and outspoken.  As a generation, they demand change and refuse to live in the style of their parents or preceding generations.  Impulsiveness and temper are the pitfall of this sign position.  These individuals can be explosively impulsive, politically fanatic, violent, and indiscriminate in their rejection of the past.  

Uranus in the Second House or Taurus:

This placement correlates to the instinct to survive, to establish the foundation upon which life, and the individual consciousness that microcosmically reflects in the totality of life, can survive.  Survival requires that the individual (or species) becomes aware of the resources available so that survival can be effected and of what is needed to survive.  What is needed relative to resources to effect survival determines what is valued.  A core issue impacting upon an individual or a species survival is one of self-reliance; the more self-reliance that exists - the more survival is guaranteed.   Uranus here correlates to the individual who must dive deep into him or herself to determine what unique and individual resources he or she inherently possesses in order to establish a lifestyle that reflects his or her intrinsic individuality.  He/she will have new and futuristic ideas concerning  money and resources.  However, the expression of intuitive ideas may be limited due to an attachment to material objects and to home and family.  Measured against the status quo of mainstream, the individual's value system and lifestyle will be quite different.  This is exactly how this person becomes aware of his/her inherent individuality - that which is unique and different within them and why they stand apart outside mainstream value systems.

This placement correlates with the need to become liberated from opinions.  There is clearly a difference between opinions and the inherent truth, whatever that may be - or what is thought to be true based on how one intellectually organizes his/her reality (Gemini) and an inherent truth (Sagittarius) to explain it.  The interface of the signs is that Sagittarius is the basis of metaphysical law while Gemini represents physical law.  One must learn the difference between reaction and response; when to talk and when not to.  Uranus correlates to the projected Creation while Mercury and Gemini correlate to the specific lines that this projected Creation is channeled.   This is accomplished through the accelerated production of dendrites that reflect insightful thoughts and realizations about the nature of reality that have not come before, i.e., through external scientific investigations and "discoveries" or "inventions".   These individuals are destined to be the progenitors  of  a new way of thinking.  They have brilliant, original, intuitive minds although their  thinking may be disjointed at times - even somewhat eccentric and impractical.  They will pioneer new concepts in science, literature, education, electronics, and the communication media.  They have the ability to break habitual living patterns as a result of the awareness of alternative modes of activity.                                 

This placement correlates to the instinct to liberate from all external forms of emotional security and dependency.  These individuals will feel, on a gut level, intrinsically different from their parents.  Most have come into family situations in which acknowledgement of their individuality is not given because the parents are not equipped to understand their uniqueness.  The child is thus forced to deal with self and find ways to nurture itself. As children they do not have the conceptual equipment to understand why they have been drawn to such a family situation resulting in what psychologists call "displaced emotions".  These unresolved emotions are dragged into adulthood and become the basis of subconscious projections and demands that are overtly and covertly expressed toward friends or lovers.  Until these individuals understand that a major life lesson for them is to develop inner nurturing and security, the wounds associated with the parents can be hard to heal.  They are learning to discover their own uniqueness by examining the causes of their own emotions, moods, and feelings. In doing so, they help to break up the crystallized structures of the consensus reality and quicken the evolutionary growth rate of the social systems called family, society, and civilization.  They operate planetary as "seed people".

The essential archetype that the 5th House or Leo correlates to is one in which the individual can creatively actualize, express, project, and establish his or her egocentric identity and purpose for the life that is being lived.  This is the  power of creativity emanating from the individualized ego.  It is the ego that is glorifying itself and which demands and requires recognition, acclaim, and positive reinforcement that it has realized itself.  The egocentric center of the personality within the 5th House or Leo is based on the composite effect of the matrix that involves the traditions and conditions of family, society, or the culture that the individual is born into, the immediacy of one's environment, and the subconscious memories that correlate to other lifetimes and other identities. There is a natural paradox causing stress and tension because of the opposing nature of the Uranian archetype (Aquarius) and the Sun (Leo).  It involves the tension to egocentrically focus upon and develop the personality to the highest possible degree and the need to simultaneously focus upon and develop a personality, ego, that is consciously linked and directed by the Source: God.  On one hand, the individual wants to be the director of his or her own play and on the other - he wants God or the group to be the director.  The solution is to define and link his egocentric sense of purpose to the social group and in doing so, he will achieve self-realization.  He must relinquish a narcissistic self-preoccupation that promotes a sense of separation or detachment from humanity and its needs and forfeit his need to be considered special, important, and the center of attraction. 

One of the archetypes that the 6th House or Virgo correlates to is the instinctual need for self-improvement.  This individual is learning new ways to analyze, organize and function.  This new way involves an inductive intellectual consciousness that would allow for an intellectual simplification through discovery of the whole shifting to and relying upon the right brain versus the left.  By doing so, the individual would be able to instantly (Uranus) relate to any fact, detail, or piece of information to the grand design of the whole - the universal.  This could be applied to whatever the individual is focused upon or interested in.  If say, the individual was oriented to computer technology, it would translate into understanding the basis, design, and concept of what the computer is in essence without getting stuck or hung up on details.  Seeing the "big picture" would allow a creative intellectual uniqueness or genius to be expressed.  There may be interest in unusual forms of healing such as sound therapy, homeopathic medicine, or spiritual healing because of  an acute awareness that mind, body and soul are all connected.  

The essential archetype that the 7th House or Libra correlates to in human consciousness is the desire to initiate or engage in a diversity of relationships to evaluate a sense of individuality through comparison and contrast to others.  There is a keen interest in how people treat each other in all kinds of relationships.  Archetypically this dynamic reflects the need to complete the self through others - intimately and otherwise.  Imperative is his need to listen to others to objectively identify the subjective reality as it exists for them.  This ability must  be developed and evolved.  Until this capacity to listen is evolved, the phenomenon of projecting his/her own subjective reality upon others will exist which then becomes the basis of subjective expectations and which results in conditional giving or loving.  In turn, this can be projected on the individual.  Because Uranus accelerates the growth potential of anything that it is linked to, it can move through many, many relationships; some very brief yet intense and intimate.  Others may be of short duration without intimacy; still others of long duration allowing the necessary growth and development of the individual.  There is a great deal of switching within his/her mode of operandi:  at times the individual is very giving and loving  - yet at other times, he/she will be very detached and unavailable to do so while still expecting through the silence in the detached behavior his/her needs to be satisfied.  Always the individual rebels against the established cultural expectations of how to be in a relationship until he/she finally learns to define his or her own unique values, lifestyle and way of relating. 

The essential archetype that the 8th House or Scorpio induces is to experience limitations:  The individual feels empowered or powerless depending on who he is, who he isn't, and who he cannot be.  The awareness of what he cannot control in his life  induces the instinct of feeling threatened.  This feeling can be projected onto anyone or anything and each projection is a reaction to the survival instinct. Death is an example of this.  His/her reactions to fear of not being in control hinders necessary growth dynamics. However, he eventually realizes that  interfacing with others not only defines the parameters of his personal limitation but also allows for a metamorphosis of those limitations by the merging with another source of power -  a person, a body of knowledge, or any symbol or phenomenon that promotes an osmosis.  The merging entities not only become one through each other, but become more that they were prior to the merging (marriage - partnerships).  Instead of resisting that which the individual feels threatened by, he can confront it and come to know the basis of the fear and grow beyond the fear.   With this placement of Uranus, the individual silently observes and monitors his/her own inner workings which  promotes an ongoing self-knowledge and deep inner self-awareness as to the nature of his own psychology.  This individual cyclically rebels against his own status-quo reality reflecting an inability to accept existing limitations for too long a time.  

This placement of Uranus accelerates the individual's need to interpret the existential phenomena of existence in metaphysical, cosmological, philosophical, or religious terms thus placing heightened stress or focus on the right brain.  Uranus brings about new concepts in religion, philosophy, and education.  These individuals have a strong desire to incorporate into religion the principles of science and the occult such as reincarnation, astrology, and mental telepathy (remote viewing).  However, an acceleration of intuitive realizations about the nature of whatever the individual is focused upon can lead to brain fatigue or stress because of the intensity of the electrical energy in the right brain, which produces these realizations.  Jupiter (Sagittarius) intuits and makes consciously available to the individual the projected Creation of Uranus.  Uranus projects through Jupiter to the existing channels of Mercury in order to make new connections or thoughts.  These are the "flashes" that you encounter when an idea or breakthrough to a problem manifests indicating dendrites being made in the thought process.  Sometimes Mercury simply cannot handle all the energy of Uranus and becomes overloaded.  

The essential archetype that the 10th House or Capricorn correlates to in human consciousness is the need to give structural cohesion and definition to the totality of what one is inwardly and outwardly.  It is the need to establish inner and outer laws, rules, customs, norms, and taboos that regulate the functioning of life itself and define the essence of anything.  Uranus correlates to the Creation that is projected outwards from its Source and the root principle of the projected Creation is Intelligence.  The projected Creation is everywhere and constitutes everything.  It manifests as a consciousness that has the capacity to being aware of itself and is expressed through time, space and the time/space laws of cause and effect that are the essence of evolution.  The individual learns the difference between the laws, conditions, rules and norms that are made by the human being and those that are intrinsic to the condition of being human.  He/she must allow for new ideas or ways of responding to life conditions instead of hanging on to old ideas or ways of response because of security.  By doing this, they will effect important changes in government and business structures.

The essential archetype that the 11th House or Aquarius correlates to in human consciousness involves to be free of all conditioning patterns that define one's sense of identity in order to discover one's essential nature.  Individually, it emphasizes the individual's sense of being very different, somehow misplaced, from the peer group that he or she grows up within.  This sense induces a social uneasiness and/or individual insecurity.  To compensate for this uneasiness and insecurity he/she will adopt the ways manifested by the peer group for acceptance.  Later he/she will seek out others that seem more like-minded.  However, he/she will become dependent on friends while still feeling quite "different".  Disruptions in friendships will occur to allow for this individual to learn how to independently define his/her own beliefs, ideas, values, and lifestyle to reflect the essence of his/her inherent individuality.  People with this placement of Uranus are open-minded and concerned with truth regardless of tradition or approval.  They have a humanitarian bent and a sense of brotherhood with people from all walks of life.  They will be instrumental in defining new social, national, and international patterns of behavior.  They avoid intimacy preferring group activities.  Their impersonal approach to marriage and romantic relationships inclines them to unconventional or bohemian attitudes regarding such relationships.

The essential archetypes that the 12th House or Pisces correlates to in human consciousness are based on the impulse to transcend and unite with the ultimate causal factor that has set in motion the phenomenon of creation through time and space.  The creative imagination is heightened as a reaction to the reality that is taking place.  This induces solutions, options, or possibilities to counteract the reality that served as the trigger for such thoughts in the first place.  This phenomenon reflects the archetype of transcendence.  Sometimes, the creative imagination is truly inspired to create real options that will work; sometimes it is inspired by illusions, delusions, or dreams that are destined to failure.  The Uranian energy will bind the collective or individual to any reality, condition, or negative consequence that the believed-in ideas or solutions created even though they don't  reflect the "promise" of the solutions themselves.  It is in the denial of total reality that the singular beliefs, ideas, solutions, dreams, or hype can take hold of the collective and/or individual mind.  This denial or rebellion creates Piscean blind spots that can led to dire consequences when the blinders come off.  This will occur when Uranus moves into Aries - 2012.  (Case in point - the fanatical ideology of Muslim terrorists).  The quest for a higher spiritual identity in the inner reaches of the mind can be manifested as an interest in yoga, meditation, and other forms of mysticism.