Is Uranus called 'rahu'

Answer 1

It is noteworthy that ancient Hindu astronomers and astrologers imagined and envisioned two invisible moving objects in the sky apart from the seven visible ones (Sun, Moon, and the five visible planets). Those two invisible objects they called Rahu and Ketu. May be they had some cue about the existence of Uranus and Neptune, large planets being too far away to be seen by the naked eye.

Later on, they decided to identify those two with the nodes of the moon, the virtual points that result in eclipses when the moon crosses them, while imagining those eclipses resulting form the sun or the moon's being engulfed by an invisible celestial serpent figuring the moon's orbit. Ancient astronomers were always also astrologers, and vice-versa, as were also most medical doctors : in their view of the universe, no celestial body could exist without having a correspondence in the human body and therefore in human actions.

The peculiar thing is that Hindu astrologers of yore ascribed to Rahu and Ketu practically the same astrological meanings as the modern anglo-saxon astrologers would ascribe to Uranus and Ketu at the time of their discovery : Rahu was made into a significator of various sudden calamities and also of modernistic and short-lived fashions, psychic manipulation and magic of all kinds, whereas Ketu was supposed to influence beings towards the opposite direction, nostalgia, contemplative life and passive-making arts such as music and theatre. Later on in history, new-found Uranus was made into a significators of quite the same calamities that were then happening on the onset of the modern era, such as revolutions, and also of modern fashions and inventions, and Neptune, for it having been discovered at a time turning tables and spiritualism was in vogue, a significator of altered states and works of art resulting from psychic over-receptiveness, as well of revivals of past arts resulting form anti-modern nostalgia.

Hindu astrologers of today, when presented with the western astrological theories about Uranus and Neptune, generally dismiss these two distant planets as insignificant and redundant, because they already have Rahu and Ketu to signify practically the same things, and the few of them who consider their existence in a sky chart just take them to be weaker, more distant reflections of Rahu and Ketu.

Answer 2

No, Uranus is not called 'rahu'. Rahu is a term from Hindu Astrology that refers to the ascending lunar node, while Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun in our solar system.