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Career Opportunity: Guitarist Wanted
1958 and 1959 marked an important shift in the young George Harrisons's life. The teenaged Harrison made two very important and radical breaks at this time and started one illustrious collaboration. In these years, Harrison dropped out of school, quit his apprenticeship in electrical engineering, and became the guitarist with the Beatles.
During this time, Uranus was conjoining Harrison's natal Midheaven. (see chart)
The Midheaven represents a point of aspiration, career calling, and, as astrologer Rob Hand refers to it, "is a point of maximum externalization of the self...it represents the social world, farthest removed from the personal and intimate life." (4) With Uranus transiting the Midheaven, a tremendous liberation of the innate potential of Harrison's highest public calling was set in motion. In a fashion that is typical of Uranus's transits, Harrison's shifts at this point in his life were quick and decisive, with Harrison making not a traditional or cautious move, but a radical, quantum leap into foreign territory that held no security or assured outcome
Not only does transiting Uranus liberate unknown, latent potentials, but it also has a highly creative—if not electrifying—effect on the area of the birth chart that it is stimulating. Transiting Uranus can be simultaneously turbulent, anxiety-provoking, chaotic, and alarming as it can be exhilarating and exciting, producing new and necessary revitalization in one's life. Transiting Uranus would conjoin Harrison's Midheaven and stay in his Tenth House—the house of vocation, public exposure, and social recognition—from 1958 through 1965, the height of Beatlemania. The electrifying, creative, and turbulent nature of transiting Uranus parallels Harrison's experience with the Beatles at this time, as he would take center stage in front of the world. George recalls the performances of the early Beatles as the best of their career. The band cohered as a unit by playing nearly eight hour sets in Germany, fueled by "uppers" given to them by club owners. Tight, stirring, and frenzied, these performances were the "mania"—a word fitting for a Uranus transit if there ever was one—for George and the Beatles before Beatlemania gave a diluted version of this rush to the world.
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