Origin 1781
Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in 1781, was the first planet found in recorded history and so the first to need a newly invented symbol, and two were proposed. The one stored here is the monogram put forward by Joseph Jerome Lalande in 1784, a globe surmounted by the initial letter of Herschel's name, offered to the discoverer in those words. The rival form, devised by J. G. Koehler and taken up by Johann Bode, combined the alchemical signs of iron and gold to stand for platinum, the metal then newly described. Both remain in use and the split is disciplinary rather than chronological: astronomers generally prefer the platinum symbol, astrologers almost universally the Herschel monogram, which is the form given here. Astrologically the planet marks sudden change, disruption, invention, revolution and the breaking of established form, a set of meanings shaped in part by the circumstances of its own unprecedented discovery.
Facts
Form
Type of SymbolAstral figure: sun, moon or planet 1 Geometric FormA circle and cross with a vertical stroke, one form incorporating the letter H. 1 Origins
Origin Period Place of OriginDiscovered in Europe (Britain); adopted into Western astrology. 2 Learn More
A Modern Planet
Uranus is the first planet discovered with a telescope, and in modern astrology it is treated as the ruler of Aquarius. It lies beyond Saturn, which for millennia marked the edge of the visible planetary order, and its discovery broke a boundary the classical glyph-making tradition had never had to cross: for the first time a planetary sign had to be invented rather than inherited from antiquity. Two rival proposals competed for decades before either stabilised.
The German astronomer Johann Gottfried Kohler suggested a symbol combining the signs for iron and gold, later refined by Johann Elert Bode, intended to represent the newly identified metal platinum, whose properties were then thought to combine those of the two older metals; this platinum glyph became the form generally preferred by astronomers.
A second, independent design instead built a monogram from a globe and an initial letter, and it was this rival sign, not the platinum symbol, that became the one most commonly used in astrological practice, a divide historians of astronomy trace to the differing needs of the two disciplines, astronomers favouring a sign tied to the discovery's chemistry, astrologers one tied to its discoverer.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Symbol Of
The symbol's own cited description identifies its glyph as that of this planet.
Sources
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