SHOCK brings success.
Shock comes-oh, oh!
Laughing words -ha, ha!
The shock terrifies for a hundred miles,
And he does not let fall the sacrificial spoon and chalice.
Thunder repeated: the image of SHOCK.
Thus in fear and trembling
The superior man sets his life in order
And examines himself.
- Hexagram 51 of the I Ching, The Arousing (Shock/Thunder), Richard Wilhelm translation
When I was a middle schooler, I got hooked on the Left Behind series, an apocalyptic fiction series imagining what happens to those left behind after the Christian rapture. It follows a pastor who had been not-so-faithful, who I just discovered was portrayed by Nicolas Cage in a 2014 film rendition. The book series was just hanging around my school library, and it was probably some of the earliest adult fiction I read as a kid. And it scared the shit out of me—growing up going to a Presbyterian Church, I really believed in the thesis behind it. I was terrified of being left behind. A couple of times, I couldn’t find my family after coming home from school, and I frantically searched around for their neatly folded clothes and shoes—a sign that they had been raptured.
During the last few weeks, we’ve seen probably the biggest resurgence of apocalyptic sentiment since 2012. There are legitimately interesting foundations behind this—namely, the potential red heifer sacrifice in Israel, which was explicitly named as a justification for Hamas’ attack on October 7th. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you might go ahead and watch this video.
During the eclipse, I thought about my experience with the Left Behind series for the first time in years—I guess I tuned into the apocalyptic spirit floating in the air. While I think we’d do best to critically interrogate the Book of Revelation and not try to literally bring about its fulfillment, there’s clearly something archetypal and substantive about the notion of Revelation or Apocalypse in our collective consciousness. I can trace it to the planet Uranus, who is associated with revolutions, upheavals, and genius. We go through mini-apocalypses regularly—the most recent one was definitely in 2020 with the Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto conjunction, and we’ll likely have another one around 2026 when Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter all form a neat aspect pattern. 2012 occurred in the middle of a Pluto-Uranus square (their conjunction occurred during the apocalypse of the 60s), and it was certainly a revolutionary era. In 2011, we had our last Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, which occurred alongside Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. This spring, we’re having another Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, which is exact on April 20th.
There are plenty of positive sides to the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. It’s a time ripe with the potential for breakthroughs and accelerated developments. There can be leaps of thought and moments where we take flight—indeed, the history of flight has a strong connection with the Jupiter-Uranus cycle. But, like the Tower card in the Tarot, these moments of radical change are often frightening and thrust upon us. Especially if we’ve had moments of sudden trauma, the threat of radical change can make us freeze. Like Mercury, I think Uranus can be a malefic in our era—there’s a distinct frizziness, overstimulation, and anxiety that we are prone to, especially via technology (which falls under Uranus’ rule), and the freedom or possibility that we experience can often go hand in hand with being unrooted, without traditional supports or safeguards. Uranus is the coldest planet in our solar system, and while they can bring out some of the most brilliant expressions of humanity, they can also abstract us away from our simple humanity.
Although Uranus was only discovered in the late 18th century (alongside the discovery of electricity and the American and French revolutionary wars), we can find traces of the archetype of Uranus in the I Ching’s Hexagram 51, quoted at the beginning of this post. This Hexagram, entitled The Arousing (Shock, Thunder), describes a proper way of navigating these moments of fear and trembling. We are admonished to maintain a sort of ritual focus, to finish what we’ve started, keeping our eye on the prize, and that doesn’t mean ignoring the potential danger but bringing our life more in order and securing our position. After the thunder leaves, we can expect laughter—tightening precedes release. That which frightens us can also bring us alive, bringing us more upright and clear-sighted.
Although Uranus is agreed upon as a contemporary ruler of Aquarius—an important sign for our era, with Pluto moving through it till 2044—what is less often thought through is that Uranus could be considered to be exalted in Scorpio. And on top of having the exactitude of the Uranus-Jupiter conjunction in the next couple of weeks, we’ll also have a Full Moon in Scorpio. Altogether, it’s likely going to be a time of great change, or at least a strong awareness of the threat of it. Like good prophecy, if we’re forewarned, we can change the shape of the outcome—the only futures we have to submit to are the biggest geopolitical zeitgeists. And just like the moment of laughter in Hexagram 51, the day after the Full Moon, Mercury will station direct.
As always, if you’re interested in exploring how all of this is playing out in your chart, please reach out for a reading!
By the way, if you appreciated the World Astrology Report video earlier, you might like his other works on the astrology of 2026. Dan interviewed me as a part of his research for his video on Ahriman, which I thought turned out really well.
And now, for the play-by-play for my paid subscribers!