Jupiter Direct

Jupiter and two of its moons, Europa and Callisto as photographed

by the Cassini spacecraft

(photo credit NASA JPL, December 2000)

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Jupiter stands for growth - and all that we do, growing in our own abilities, to achieve that growth.

That said, Jupiter is also all about excess. So in one sense, Jupiter is about learning what we can do ... and on the other, it’s about all those not-so-nice things which happen when we go beyond the limit.

After all, that’s learning too, right?

In going direct at 12 Leo, Jupiter is speaking to days ahead and a chance - the opportunity - to broaden our regard. And in that, it also stands for what we are going to learn or end up teaching ourselves about the difference between enjoying we have and are and going through whatever it takes to recognize what the difference (or differences) are between the pluses of our life (specified as pluses - our ‘fortunate existence,’ being the way one astrologer put it) and what life is like for others of differing fortunes.

Or to put it another way, this is the Jupiter Principle - the ability and opportunity to expand what we know and experience on every level being applied to Leo, which is to say, specifically to the degree 12 Leo, which simply by placement (as part of the middle ten degrees of some sign) we know to be all about how we feel ... and our about ‘things Leo.’

And what is Leo all about? On a mundane level, Leo is about doing things we like to do. Or which we want to see ourselves learning how to do, learning how to be - and (of course) being a ‘winner’ at in the long run. (Probably preferably a short term long run, but that’s just par for the course.) Leo is all about developing our Self in a more-or-less ‘applied’ way - it’s not about ‘who am I?’ so much as ‘what am I capable of doing?’.

Leo degrees embrace a breadth of latitude - Leo energies are famously all about wanting to do our things our way (and please don’t tell me that I’m wrong) ... against which we should always remember that Leo energies are energies which are not-yet-mature or matured. Some take this ‘there’s still more to learn’ as a wonderful thing, celebrating how they’re not obsolete and haven’t yet met their limit - and others are just offended that the world doesn’t, hasn’t and evidently isn’t peachy keen about the idea of having to acknowledge each and every one of anyone’s Leo opinions as regally and universally correct.

There’s an air of nobility about Leos and the attitudes and aptitudes we see associated with Leo degrees in any chart, and wherever we see Leo in the chart, that’s the area of life where we’re going to see much charm, much talent and much dynamism on display and being utilized, if intermittently at best -just like the lion on the veldt which sleeps the better part of its day, Leo degrees do require some down time.

And maybe for you, this ‘on/off’ or ‘work/relax’ rhythm is something you have learned about ...or something you need to learn about. Or maybe you’re been through a lot over these past months and are now determined to use your time or abilities more knowingly or effectively, that last term being one of the bugaboos on Leo’s list.

And why would ‘effectively’ be something Leo degrees (in particular) end up teaching us about?

Jupiter Direct (glyph chart)

April 8, 2015 - 16:58 (4:58 pm) UT/+0 - Aries Wheel (Location Not Specific)

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Jupiter Direct (text chart)

April 8, 2015 - 16 58 (4 58 pm) UT +0 - Aries Wheel (Location Not Specific)

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That would be because Leo is the zodiac’s fixed fire sign, which means any (and every) Leo degree describes something which describes somewhere in our personality or habit patterns where we may well tend to get stuck on some personal, internal idea (image, vision) of how things should be, how they should work, or what they should look-sound-act like when they’re ‘right’ ... which is where Leo positives - the individual ability to see, create, adapt, conquer and protect meets up with the Aquarian themes of  accepting/rejection, hiring/firing, rewarding/costing, empowering against halting ... as those terms apply particularly to Leo’s desire to come up with, create or learn how to use/utilize whatever will conquer the challenge.

If that seems vague to you, think of it in simplistic real world terms: if you’re a parent, your job is not just to have the Leo fun and privilege of raising your children (which just for the ‘fun’ of it includes sleepless nights and various forms of grief, sass and teenage sulkery) ... but also to teach them enough about being a person that they are then able to survive and thrive in an impersonal Aquarian world. Or maybe you’re an inventor. Is your invention truly successful just because you’ve (Leo) invented it? Or is it successful only once it gets out there doing what its designed to do for (Aquarius) various people, individually and/or collectively?

Leo fails and falls down when and where we do not take both halves of this ‘equation’ into account. As we see with every sign, Leo has a ‘darker’ or ‘weaker’ side to its sign, which in Leo’s case is an arrogance which tends to manifest as either requiring that everyone see things your way ... or which, in failing to see how everyone else thinks or in terms of what is needed fails to fit in with the greater (Aquarian) system of life, operations, organization(s), etcetera.

Plus there’s always a touch of ‘clutch.’ All four fixed  signs have particular ‘habits’ when it comes to trying to hold things in place (which tends to be thought/spoken of as ‘holding things together’) - that’s the fixed nature. And in Leo, a fiery sign which like all three fire signs deals in inspiring visions, the thing they try to ‘hold’ onto (or keep intact) is their idea: the vision.

Wherever Leo appears in your chart, that’s the area of life where you will tend to ‘see’ things in terms of their potential: what they could be. This is no judgment on whether such a vision is right or wrong or useful versus useful - this is just about where such issues will tend to appear in your life (and unless the house cusp with Leo on it is 0 Leo, some of those Leo degrees fall in the prior house, a point many of us tend to forget!). To this we then add the degree of the station - 12 Leo - which, in being a degree between 10 and 19 (i.e., a degree in Leo’s second decanate) adds a note of fervency to the mix.

Or maybe you’d just prefer insistent. That could work too, as Leo’s ‘fixed’ quality combined with its power of ‘inner vision’ will tend to create moments where one side of the conversation is saying ‘this is the way - I KNOW this is the right way!’ while the other side of the conversation is saying things akin to ‘prove it,’ ‘did you fall off of some turnip truck?’ and that statement that irritates so thoroughly in Leo situations, ‘you must be dreaming!’ (which is probably particularly irritating because it would seem to be accusing Leo energy of being Leo energy!).

And with this station occurring with Jupiter sextile the lunar North Node/trine its South Node while being (separately) in trine to an Aries conglomeration of Mercury, Uranus and Psyche there are going to be opinions and positions being expressed ... and worth expressing. After all, just because people don’t understand a (Leo-driven) vision/idea doesn’t mean it’s bad, wrong or otherwise unworkable.

However ... let’s be real: there’s a LOT of energy which is going to go into speaking one’s (Mercury-Psyche) mind simply for the (Uranus-Mercury) sake of speaking one’s mind. Jupiter is also on station for each and everyone, so while for some the ‘let’s look at what’s possible’ means something good, to others it’s going to mean something bad.

And let’s not forget - we’re talking about Jupiter here. So that would be very, very good - or possibly evil, awful and doomsday-ish.

Jupiter magnifies. And in this instance, it’s representing the energies in our life which are doing that magnifying or expanding of our reach, understanding, our capacity, our necessity - and even our need to know or learn better. Sometimes our Jupiter moments make us feel empowered ... and sometimes they come about through our feeling helpless or over-matched against something ‘so big’ or ‘so powerful’ or against which (or in the light of which) we are caused, made or inspired to pit ourselves - learning more about that Self in the process.

Sometimes we learn how powerful we are, and what we are truly capable of doing. And yet ... if Jupiter is known for any ill, it’s known for the sorry mess we create by overdoing, over-speaking, going overboard (literally or figuratively!) ... or otherwise feeling so driven to expand, make some move or jump to some conclusion, assumption or answer that we go right past the sensible and necessary, setting off such  avalanches of activity, input and reaction that we end up learning the boundaries we trampled in our Jupiter-themed haste to get out there and make things happen (for right or wrong) our way.

And let us not forget: this Jupiter station is occurring only a couple of days after a lunar eclipse (see previous post) ...which is another indication of our being all ‘stirred up’ with much about what is really changing in our lives, as represented by the 29 Pisces solar eclipse which occurred on March 20th.

Few of us are owning our real issues in public at the moment. But at this time, and as we move forward, we are going to be becoming more and more aware of what is (or has been) affected by matters and things which are affected by issues which mirror our eclipse. (You know, the eclipse which has exposed something about our Self to that Self which we don’t want to look at, never mind discuss with others?)

-link to post-

Solar Eclipse Scheat:

Flight against Insight 

Yet life being life, it isn’t like we should expect that those ‘hidden’ things (which may be perfectly visible to others even though WE don’t want to see any part of it!) ... we should expect them - or at least aspects of that which they affect - to come up through whatever we do as we move ahead now.

That would be part of how Jupiter works ... not to mention rather typical of any planetary station. Some of the effects, of course, are dictated by how closely Jupiter’s 12 Leo ‘turnabout’ aspects your chart ...

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... and of course there are differences in how each type of aspect functions. Sextiles, for instance, are often referred to as ‘options’ or ‘opportunities’ simply because these are things which come up in life which we may see and choose to walk by without another thought. They don’t necessarily represent good or bad, just the fact that there will be an opinion, and how we will that time make some choice even if that choice is to simply say ‘no’ and walk on by.

Against that, conjunctions tend to be so immediate that we don’t even have time or enough ‘space’ (mental or otherwise) to think through or get perspective on things. And sometimes we don’t want to! 

After all, why spoil the wonderful day or good time with all sorts of carefully dried and dusted analysis?

More to the point, conjunctions represent times when something is what we’re ‘about’ at the moment - as opposed to squares, which in testing our sense of proportion often cause us to wish we could be anywhere but where we are in the moment of our given struggle. Where conjunctions ask us who we are, who we are being and what we are doing (or going to do/not do, be or not be) while asking us to keep our heads on and not overstep our Self (or sensible boundaries), squares challenge us to keep things in balance, generally calling for a focus on methods and nuances of balance which are inconvenient and sometimes uncertainty-provoking at their best.

The general ‘rule’ with squares is that we will tend to favor one thing or one approach, and it’s that very favoring of one thing (the being imbalanced in our approach) which ends up defeating us - which differs from oppositions.

How so? Well, in spite of the common cries of square-haters (there are a lot of them), squares do have some benefits, one being how squares give us ‘wiggle room’ (and often a chance to ‘re-balance’ and save our day (because that's how we learn to master 'squared' dynamics), oppositions ‘confront’ us with things which (generally) are impossible to escape without at least admitting their existence - which is often just what we've been doing which prompts the opposition and/or confrontation (however you want to think about it).

Trines, on the other hand, are a bit more like conjunctions ... and oppositions ... in how they tend to feel ‘inevitable,’ though the trine - an energetic about things 'in process most often refers to coming into (or to) a situation with something already under way. And that ‘ongoing status quo’ tends not to change with a trine ... although since Jupiter is 'taking a turn,' so may what comes (or becomes) of said process under way.


And that’s something worth thinking about when we’re talking about Jupiter stations. For the past few months (since early December, when Jupiter went retrograde) growth - growth of the good as well as growth of the problematic - has been greatly internal or internalized. In other words, on the metaphysical level, whatever happened during this time will have affected us internally, and either in the Leo 'parts' of our life or through Leo sorts of means - all of which would have begun back at the December 2014 Jupiter station.

You know, when it went into retrograde.

- link to post-

Jupiter stations at a Gemini Full Moon

  
And now, as Jupiter goes direct, most of our reasons for doing what we do will come from external sources. We’ll listen more ... and (yes,) we’ll talk more, even if that means we’re talking about the strikingly obvious need to listen - which sounds funny, but isn’t all that unlikely, particularly around the time of Jupiter’s station as Jupiter is going through its station while in sextile to the North Node - sounding the horn about some sextile ‘opportunity’ which we (North Node in Libra) should do or consider with regards to others or in terms of others, but which we’re not likely to be all that enthusiastic about. As with all nodal indications, the ‘should’ (North Node) asks us to bite the bullet and do all those uncomfortable things like not ‘going along to get along’ (as the old expression goes).

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A North Node in Libra asks us to do the unpopular but correct thing - which being that this North Node is being affected by ongoing (trine) energy of a mental and singularly Self-revealing kind represents a time when we recognize our abilities - or confront our Self - through an expanding list of ideas which may be different and valuable, different merely for the sake of being different, or reactionary for any of a number of informational reasons. What this is likely to mean in real time and your everyday life depends on where Jupiter is in your chart natally ... and where it’s station falls.

But wherever it falls, that’s where you will learn something about yourself during these days. The issue is not what others think, and its not about making our Self ‘feel better’ about who we are or aren’t. Rather it’s about understanding our potential and where we tend not to understand or believe in that Self.

And why ... or maybe more to the point, why we are ‘stuck’ in whatever less-than-wonderful patterns or habits we’re stuck in. 

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In keeping with Jupiter’s Leo station, its highly likely that we’ve taken some want and made it into a need.

And then we add in the idea of that ‘easiest thing to do’ (or the preferred thing to do) - that South Node in Aries - is in a grand trine with Saturn/Moon in Sagittarius and Juno in Leo. On one hand that points to some who may have abstracted needs, turning them into the celebration of some abstract idea instead of dealing with something which in reality is really broken, delaying all chances to fix anything until the defensiveness behind the desire (emotional need) to abstract - a desire which centers not in others or the world but in what we are or aren’t  willing to learn about our Self gets resolved.

If it gets resolved, that is.

Of course there are those who will come into this Jupiter station with some sort of accomplishment or grand opportunity in the works. Their challenges going forward are really no different than the person who comes into this time feeling like things are totally awry.

But they will probably have learned one very important lesson - that being about the kind of Self-discipline which is really about what kind of Self we choose to be.

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Currently transiting Leo, Juno will catch up to and conjunct Jupiter during the period of May 14-18, and at that time it is entirely likely that there will be a shifting or recalibrating of personal dynamics and approaches in light of all which happens now.

As for the rest of life, with Jupiter going direct we are embarking on just over nine months of exploration, education and growth as Jupiter won’t be going back into retrograde mode until January 2016. Some of what we end up doing during that time will be a natural process of building on what we’ve already accomplished or worked out how to do - and some of it will be our capitalizing on what we learned about our Self while Jupiter was in retrograde. In returning to the degree it went retrograde in last December as of July 6th, Jupiter will complete its 2014-2015 cycle and metaphysically move us all into a new period of growth - but until July, we’re all still working on projects, efforts and (whether we know it or not) lessons about who we are and aren’t, who we should be - and never even think about being.

One more note here: as discussed Jupiter stations are astrologically famous for things we love to think are good, but which in reality are not just an ‘overstep’ but detrimental to our truest aims, goals and truths. Because of the eclipses (which is to say, the proximity of Jupiter’s station to those eclipses) even as a lot of good gets done, a lot of problems may well be being incited precisely because we’re feeling sort of ‘golden,' and we're taking more risks at the moment - some of which go over some line which ordinarily we would be sober-of-perspective enough to recognize the danger(s) of.

Part of what goes wrong now has to do with everyone (that’s the BIG everyone!) is emotionally sensitized at the moment - not just because of the lunar eclipse, but because of something far bigger and far more ugly: our desire not to be (or get) caught up in the inevitable disgorging of ills ... in this case, self-denied if long-harbored ills ... which are now being raised as part of the recent eclipse, and which are going to continue oozing out like some particularly distasteful infection.

Our feelings got us into whatever is wrong here. And it's to remember: we don’t WANT to know the part of all these ills which aren't holding on to or quite possibly in favor of - even though we are - that being one of the most essential parts of our Jovian, learning life.

Jupiter - among other things - is the primary or "in door" ruler of Pisces. In that role, Jupiter opens the door for us to learn, but not about 'things.' No, in Pisces Jupiter represents our emotional lessons - and those lessons we need to learn ... truly for our own good ... about who we are in spite of the fact we have been hoping we were something different.

And yes, usually something or someone better. Wherever we see a connection between Jupiter and Pisces playing out on the metaphysical field, we have to conclude that life is attempting to teach us about the difference between who we would like to think we are - and who we're really being. Where we think we know more about life or our Self than we actually do, Jupiter represents that tendency we will have at such Jupiter/Pisces times (as we're going through now, seeing as we've just had a 29 Pisces solar eclipse) to become involved in - usually quite knowingly - something where we go in thinking we're just fine and where we come out knowing we've been living in our own little emotional pond, either without sufficient information to inform our Self about who we are (or are acting like) - or without having taken into account who others are and how they feel.

And yet ... as bad as such moments may feel, the truth is they're also part of our Jupiter education, an education which will always end up teaching us not just those things we want to learn, but how we need to learn many things we don't especially like as only by seeing errors can we ever hope to correct them ... and how that breadth of understanding - the understanding of light and dark as two edges of a single sword - is an indispensable part of all intrinsic ... and human ... life processes.
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