Jupiter Stations

This photo - taken in infrared and overlaid with the blue tones from XMM-Newton

X-ray camera - is of the Orion Nebula. The constellation Orion is the home of

Rigel, a star which since time immemorial has represented our ability to

learn, our duty to teach, and the standing we reach or fail to rise to

because of an inability to learn that we are part of the greater

universe and a contributor to it, not apart from it or excused from 

participation with the greater 'clouds' of nuance, emotion and need

...most of all to learn better.

(photo credit: AAAS-Science (Spizer).  Nov 2007

Thursday, October 4th is the 2012 date for Jupiter going retrograde. The actual event takes place at 1:16 in the afternoon UT/+0 time.

There’s a nice kind of ‘touch’ to this occurring on a Thursday since Thursday is traditionally Jupiter’s day. SUN-day is the day of the Sun, MO(o)N-day is the day of the Moon, SAT-urday is Saturn’s day and the rest of the week is a Mars Tuesday, Mercury having a ‘Woten’ Wednesday (those into Germanic gods will know that one), Thursday being Jovian or Jupiter’s day and Friday being Venus’ day.

I’ll explain how they got to be that sometime – or you can just look it up online.

Personally, I’ve always liked Thursdays. Growing up, my (second set) of parents decided that to minimize discussion (think: debate) we each could choose one television program and call that our own. During that hour (or half hour, depending) the rest of the family would have to hush up and resist pushing their agenda…which for my family, took something of an effort.

Anyway, Thursday was my day, the appointed hour was 8 p.m. and the television program was Star Trek. Love or hate the show, at least you now have some insight into my wee quest to stake a claim in this life.

So back to Jupiter. Jupiter is currently transiting Gemini, indicating that life is awash with the opportunity to dissipate our talent or choose to hone in on a plan to get us where we want or need to go. Jupiter is prone to excesses – particularly of the verbal kind – during its transit of Gemini, but that doesn’t mean we have the right to hurt, harm, denigrate, ignore or otherwise compromise ourselves through disrespect of others.

But we may. And this tendency, this concept, this question of whether we will or won’t give ourselves permission to fail our own standards or rise to meet life’s challenges – that’s very Jupiterian.

Yet even if we do fail…even if we go totally kaput until Jupiter-in-Gemini, there is hope because there’s a rationale behind it. Sometimes life has to show us what a problem is, or force us to see and acknowledge that there is indeed a problem before we…ever-stubborn members of the human race that we are…before we will deal with it.

Jupiter in Gemini is a very good time to get to know your own mind. It’s an excellent time to expand on your mental abilities and for freeing yourself up from assumptions or presumptions, habits or misalignments which are causing you trouble in your life.

For instance…I have a friend who is very highly placed in his field. A couple of years ago, evidently this person decided to ‘specialize’ in one particular area within their field of expertise. Unfortunately, as happens in life and in commerce, the world didn’t read their memo: since that time, jobs in their arena of specialization have become fewer and farther between.

So far this person has been trying to squeeze into one of those few remaining jobs instead of realizing that life is saying ‘no, you have a very capable brain – use it!’ and starting to learn anew. And though this is but one person, I hear a lot of stories and I recognize that a lot of us are going through variations on this theme.

Learning anew, learning better, giving up old ways and figuring out how to grow in your abilities – these are all positive uses of Jupiter in Gemini. Pretense, acting out, giving yourself license to treat others as ‘less than’ or lie – those are all examples of negative uses of Jupiter in Gemini.

(Jupiter being expansive by nature, there are a lot more things which could go on the list here. But these are a handful of all the high-and-low points.)
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Jupiter's Rings in False Color by Voyager 2

(photo credit: NASA-JPL)

Considering this station is at sixteen Gemini, we know the ‘expressive mode’ of Jupiter of late…and particularly now, during the station, is emotional. Evocative. Even fractious or fervent. From conviction (right or wrong) to debate prone (right or wrong) to refusing to take a stance (right or wrong) the whole aura of conversation of late has been emotional.

Hopefully you’ve chosen your words well. Hopefully you’ve held the reins on what you’ve said and done. Hopefully you’ve made good and productive choices which hold positive and forward potential for you.

Chance are though…you’ve had your moments, as has everybody else.

Sixteen Gemini is not noted as one of Gemini’s strongest degrees. To understand this station, therefore, we look to the ruler of Gemini (astrologers rule: when in doubt, delineate!) and we find that as Jupiter moves into this station on October 2nd, Mercury is at 25 Libra…but that by the time Jupiter’s station effect tapers off (October 6-7), Mercury will have moved on into Scorpio.

The date of that Mercury Scorpio ingress is October 5th. And if I say that Saturn also enters Scorpio on October 5th, you’ll understand that the whole of this period is…well, pretty outstanding. It will start with a fervency with regards to relating to others and how we relate to them and what we mean to them and whether we can get along or find common ground with them…and it will end with a realization that reality is reality. Some of us will definitely be of the ‘life sucks’ opinion…some of us will be of the ‘okay, I really just need to make this work’ opinion…and some of us will be of the ‘I never want to talk-trust-deal with anybody ever again’ (implication: about that or on that level ever again) mood.

(And yes, there will be a separate blog post on the Saturn-Mercury event.)

So this is a turning point in many ways and at many levels. For some of us, circumstances may beleaguer us or disappoint us just so that in the long run, we learn the lesson and stop futzing around. For some of us, cherished plans will come to fruition now only to leave us standing there scratching our heads (or whatever) thinking …now I have to WHAT?

Jupiter in Gemini – oddly – seems to make us think thinks are simple when they’re not. It also tends to make us think simple things are hard. Shakespeare put it well: …’"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141)

Underlings? Yes – to that which is there for us to learn. The greatest problem presented by Jupiter in Gemini is thinking we’re All That AND The Kitchen Sink.

We’re not. There’s always more to learn, more to do, more we can do. The easy thing is to focus on our Self and our lives. But very shortly (read: when Jupiter reaches Cancer in June 2013) we’re going to realize that life is not just about us or what we like, what we want to do – life is supposed to have purpose, a purpose which we belong to and participate in, but which encompasses far, far beyond our individuality.

Having said more than necessary there (how Jupiter in Gemini of me, right?) we return to the crux of the station:

The above is a picture of a grand trine in air. Air being…well, airy (duh!) this is something of an image of what’s currently in progress or process. Far from being the ‘lovely things’ pop astrology would have them be, grand trines are notoriously difficult to break out of. I know several people with grand trines in their natal charts who haven’t long struggled with trying to get out of their way. The ‘ongoing energy’ typified by the trine can be life continuing to provide you with something good – yes. But it can also be life continuing to hand you difficulties.

Here we have Jupiter conjunct Cubewano (and maybe a dwarf planet?) Chaos. The designation ‘Cubewano’ refers to an object which orbits in the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune without being affected by Neptune’s rather grand, amazingly encompassing field of magnetic resonance. Pluto, Ixion, Huya and a handful of other objects we know (or are getting to know) are all controlled by Neptune. And thus, astrologically, their effects all include that Neptunian ‘ideal versus emotional disaster’ quality.

With Cubewanos, there is no such effect. How they manage it, I haven’t a clue, since some of them orbit in the same realm as objects which are subject to Neptune’s control.

Don’t ask – I didn’t design this solar system. But it is an interesting phenomenon, and one which asks us questions about immunity physical, psychological, emotional, and maybe even spiritual.

As for ‘Chaos,’ the Cubewano is named for the Greek god Chaos, not the post Roman (post poet Ovid) meaning of messiness and disorder. The original meaning of Chaos was ‘an endless void filled with potential and possibility.’ Chaos was a good thing, something to be inspired by and to draw from. Could you get ‘lost’ in its endless possibilities? Yes. And with Cubewano Chaos currently transiting Gemini, that defines some of our challenges: we need to not get overloaded, overwhelmed. We do need to keep ourselves on track and not dissipate our promise as people or our opportunities in this life by going across our mental line.

Here’s a simple way to think of TNO Chaos: to reach beyond our grasp. Don’t go there! When we try and exceed our current ‘design parameters’ we inevitably undermine ourselves.

Chaos has been moving along at about the rate of one degree a year. But it’s speeding up. It’s at 16 degrees of Gemini now and will enter Cancer on July 20, 2022.
So this is our last year of Jupiter and Chaos in Gemini….at least for this Chaos round of the zodiac – and seeing how Chaos has a 309.1 year orbital cycle, you could perhaps understand why the current need to understand (Jupiter) the ‘Chaos’ situation is so important at this time.

And that leads us right back to how we view Jupiter and Chaos – as an opportunity to learn and grow…or as an invitation to disarray and difficulty. Even if those difficulties end up exposing our vulnerabilities and unresolved hurts – things we can possibly grow through or at least heal to some degree via  acknowledgement – still, difficult is difficult!

But yes, this would be the time and this station would seem to be the place where good and bad, all hits the mental fan. With Rigel – the image of the teacher (and thus our ability to be a teacher in this world and to continuously be a student throughout our life) conjunct Jupiter and Chaos, this is the major nexus of this moment.

From Libra, the Sun is trine Jupiter and conjunct Hebe. And Hebe (the immortal servant) bears witness to all we have, sustaining us throughout our triumphs and foibles of this moment so that we can learn.

But then we come to Medea and Haumea. Dwarf planet Haumea is named for a Hawaiian goddess – a shapeshifter who takes others forms so that she can get what she wants, even from her own children. This is not a pretty thought, especially when we see Haumea positioned with Medea, the embodiment of what we love SO much that we end up destroying our own dreams.
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All of this is in Libra – the sign of relationships and how we relate. And the connector between Medea-Haumea and the Sun is Hebe. So we are given to understand that it is how well we “serve” (act) with others which raises or undermines us in this moment.
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  Here we see Medea looking down upon the children she would soon

kill out of a desire to prove to Jason (he of the Argonauts) that she

loved him. As an astrological point, Medea is particularly poignant

in its ability to speak to those things in life - our 'creations' - which

we may possibly see come to death because of our own desire to

love...or even to be seen as loving.

(painting dated 1868, artist: Henri Klagmann (1842-1871)

Again, the object is Chaos, Jupiter and Rigel oriented. This is about learning to make better choices when it comes to who we interact with, how we interact with them, the standards of behavior and performance we hold for ourselves and in general, whether we are making choices which are useful or even positive.

That last – the implied question there – comes from the idea that the last point in this grand trine station is Damocles. Damocles is the precept that everything looks easy until you try it…coupled to the idea that nothing is as simple as it seems (hearing a bit of the Jupiter in Gemini vibe being challenged?) and that there are responsibilities and perils we never really realize until we’re put in the ‘hot seat.’

At this time, not even those who are most skilled in avoiding hot seats will be able to avoid them. In fact, those who have taken the Jupiter-in-Gemini position of arrogance and ‘I can do as I please and no, I don’t have to care, I don’t have to try and I don’t even need to listen to you’ are most likely to end up with toasty buns. (And I don’t mean cinnamon – or hot cross!)

For those who have been working hard and choosing with care, you may have your own prices to pay based on your own Medea-Haumea issues. Yes, it’s hard to draw the line sometimes, and sometimes the giving nature simply must learn that giving is not always the answer.

It all comes back to Jupiter, Chaos, Rigel in Gemini.

It all comes back to whether we try, whether we are willing to learn anew, and whether we are inclined to recognize not just that we’re not on this earth alone, but that the benefit of all really does include…and is not just limited to…us.
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