The expression avant garde originated from the French term used to designate the frontlines of an army that clears unknown territory for the safety of the larger ranks. Now, the term is more applicable to the cultural pioneers who proceed boldly and courageously into new and novel forms of artistic and social expression. The avant garde of any age are the bohemians, the rebels, the experimenters and risk-takers who challenge our assumptions, disrupt status quo thinking and relating, and dissent against tired, worn, and conservative structures. More often than not, the majority of us who prefer the security of the mainstream and stand on the sidelines of life chastise, criticize, and mock those who are willing to challenge convention and push the creative envelope. However, privately we esteem the inventors, boundary-pushers, and geniuses that take the plunge into the creative unknown and liberate us into new worlds and universes. The truly Uranian individual is the hero that lives the impulse of liberation, creation, and vitality for the collective, and, although these heroes rarely get public validation, they have the inner satisfaction of knowing that they followed the impulse of their own creative spirit, their own genie.

A truly Uranian individual is a magician, a genie, a societal mutation, a member of the avant garde, and one who is intuitively in touch with the supreme intelligence and design of the universe. These free spirits and independent minds are the source of re-invigorating culture and are responsible for opening new vistas and landscapes in civilization. There is often a charismatic spark around Uranian individuals that is infectious; a fiery and electric magnetism that implies danger, wisdom, and change. To an ordered, structured, and sheltered lifestyle, a Uranian individual is akin to the serpent who shocked Adam and Eve out of their innocence and naïveté and ushered them into wisdom, awareness, and consciousness. The urge to recapitulate the original "biting of the apple" and to increase knowledge and true wisdom is not only a necessary motivation and drive, but, as astrology teaches us, is cyclical, for culturally it is imperative that we renew our civilizations through breaking boundaries and comfortable habits from time to time for the sake of growth and transcendence.

When Uranus is operative in our culture and in our personal lives, we mutate, create, and understand. The daily strain concerning the need to break free from our known world into a new one heightens; the need for learning new and invigorating ways of being impresses itself from the outer environment; the need to shake up, rebel, discover, and agitate the world around us grows; underdeveloped creativity emerges; and deep and penetrating insight into the structure of our own lives and the world around us grows exponentially. Just as variation is necessary for biological evolution and species vitality, the variation that occurs in our lives when Uranus is active is necessary for our personal growth and vivacity.