Jupiter Direct

San Francisco's famous fog shadows the Golden Gate Bridge in northern California 

(photo credit: Brocken Inaglory, 2006)

Any time Jupiter stations, the status quo changes in the direction of more. We generally learn something…and even if it’s what we don’t want to know, generally just the exercise of listening…or looking beyond what you had seen up until now – literally (in physical life) or in your mind - is useful.

There’s a quality to Jupiterian energetics which asks…and which empowers us…even tumbles us into those states or situations which render us at least somewhat more permeable than we were before we started.

Jupiter’s trademark effects aren’t ‘strict’ except in their drive to perceive beyond the norm, so it’s no wonder that the concept of ‘excess’ is as familiar and Jupiterian as ‘growth’ or ‘expansion’ or ‘learning’ or ‘trial’…that last either being a trial of the personal/emotional type or ‘trial’ as in a legal procedure.

They’re both Jupiterian.

When Jupiter goes retrograde (as it did last time spare days after the November 2013 Scorpio solar eclipse) things which happen in the world or in our world in the ‘all around us’ sort of sense…then Jupiter’s turn to retrograde indicates how things which are externally generated (the ‘external’ part paralleling a planet’s direct/forward motion)…how those things are then taken in and taken under internal consideration during the planet’s ensuing retrograde.

In this case that would be last November until now – or more specifically, until March 6th at 10:43 a.m. (UT/+0 time). At that point, Jupiter will go direct at 10 degrees of Cancer, a zodiacal position which is defined as being emotional, experiential and either formative or involved with some internal emotional mind set we are, or which we need to be taking a look at.

Thought of as a degree which embraces both our human and humanitarian nature, with Jupiter at 10 Cancer there is an opportunity ‘expand upon’ something…or to go beyond where you have gone up until now. This is a degree which enhances life…yet with many a deep vulnerability feeling (Sun-Chiron-Pisces) stirred, we’re likely to resort to questions and questioning whether we ‘should’ or ‘have to’ rather than act except where we understand whatever the greater stakes may be.

At some level and in some way, we are not alone in our problems. Challenges of the moment not only require that we understand the ‘other side’ of whatever argument, question or debate is engaging us directly…but also some notion, some interest or need or position we’d otherwise think of as a ‘third party.’

It all seems to be focusing on us…each and every one…with all of the above also applying – and reviving – life’s ongoing call to change not ‘them’ but our Self.

It’s that Pluto-Uranus-Jupiter t-square we’ve spoken of now and again (and again). We are at a place in time, in history, in metaphysical shifts which only happen once every two thousand years or so where the old ‘power structure’ and old methods of ‘generating,’ ‘maintaining’ and ‘disseminating’ power are all being changed – and that’s a universal shift. It applies to humans and individual lives and family debates on the direction any given person should be going as surely as it applies to nations, trades and beliefs.

It’s just that this process isn’t easy – ever. And it isn’t fun. All the troubles…the violence, the debates over who has what right to what and whose ‘right’ is utterly wrong – it’s all about our resistance to change. We all want the same thing – Jupiter sitting in the Cancerian ‘solution’ position of our current (and ongoing) rather epic t-square says we all want to have a decent and decently secure life. We all want to be who we are and enjoy what we enjoy.

So what’s the real issue? Change. The idea that they have to change bothers some individuals just as the idea that we have to change how we see ourselves as individuals and members of a race and denizens on a planet bothers us.

The breakthroughs we seek are to be found or set into motion internally. The impetus for needing to seek those notions or breakthroughs and the pressure which will drive us past our limit to resist them? That’s external. And universal…which may suggest that one off-beat ‘universalist’ manifestation of the current Mars retrograde in Libra (Libra being a sign of relating and relationships) is a ‘pulling back’ on all parties – all the way around.

It’s just that some of us continue to project and “blame them” while many, if not most of us are attending to working on our Self – either the ‘inner’ self or that Self which exists ‘inside’ the bounds of our personal life (however that is organized) such that we are dealing with whatever it is which will allow us to move forward come mid-May (i.e., after Mars goes direct). 

There’s likely to be a deal of taking things too personally about now. Going ‘over the top’ is likely too. Both such traits are to be expected most of all in people who a.) don’t have enough to do, b.) have a spotty understanding of the truth, or c.) who are focused only on what they want to see rather on that which would work best and for the duration…which if you’re into human economics equals the choice between ‘at the least expense to all’ and/or ‘at the least cost to me.’

Everyone will have their own version of what they know, what they don’t want to believe and whatever it is they feel is so vitally important that it must be heard and heard clearly…and yet hardly anyone is listening. There is an internal stress and feeling of loss on all sides which is distracting – to say the least.

And yet…as Jupiter goes direct…all indications are that current difficulties are neither about ‘them’ nor about our current state. Saturn (also now in retrograde) is still opposing Sedna.

- link to -

Saturn, Sedna, Ceres, Jupiter:

Manifest Gearing in Motion

And now two other items have entered this picture: at 21 Taurus (with Sedna at 23 Taurus) the Moon and Kalypso, a pairing which speaks to the need to care about others and the heartfelt desire to care about the security and families of people beyond yourself…

…all of which is set at odds by economics, many of which have us pitted against questions of self-determination in our minds. Are we strong enough to make our dream our reality…or are we just dreaming?

Another aspect of the current t-square – which is to say the ongoing pressure to get over ourselves (or some aspect of our Self) in order to have any lasting foundational success – is that at the moment of Jupiter’s station what was a t-square has become a grand square.

Grand squares picture difficult ‘balancing acts’ we need to work through. We’re up against various kinds of essential naivete – and that would be bad enough to contend with without life’s complicated demands, desires and necessities.

But life isn’t asking. Things are happening. And at some level we understand this is the time things need to happen and how we are witnessing yet another moment in earthbound history…whether that’s on the big stage (world history) or in our personal lives (our personal history) – or maybe both.

Whatever we do, we’ll be confronting the truth and the sense of our ideals, hopes, assumptions and plans…each of us learning in our own way how beyond question none of us are even vaguely perfect - and how that’s all right, simply because we’re people. The Sabian Symbol for 10 Cancer is A CLOWN CARICATURING WELL-KNOWN PERSONALITIES…an image which invites extremes of interpretation.

Maybe that’s us…maybe people will look at us and see just one facet as our whole. Or maybe we’re doing that to others?

In the original issuing of the Sabians, astrologer Marc Edmund Jones saw the ‘clowning’ around implied in this symbol as ‘the value of humor in developing objectivity and independence of mind’ – a concept that most erudite of astrologers Dane Rudhyar agreed with heartily in his book ‘An Astrological Mandala.’* In counseling the use of laughter when or where this degree becomes activated, Rudhyar sees it as a path to perspective. ‘Humor,’ he writes, ‘or irony is a powerful tool in assessing the value of sociocultural realities, and thereby in freeing oneself from glamor and prejudice.’

At an ever expanding pace we’re feeling life being brought to light, to bear not to disturb us, but to inform, prompt and direct us along the lines of more insightful…and in due time (think: July 2014) more creative and motivational direction.

One other curious note to the above configuration – Dionysus conjuncting Uranus in Aries. That’s something of a contradiction – a need to take care even as we fling caution to the wind…a tendency to fight ourselves – a conviction that we need to fight.

True or false, that which draws us draws us with potent power. And for some of us…those who stray onto the ‘false side’ (if you will), that in itself is a timely and well-timed lesson.

After all, that’s asteroid Dionysus sitting there alongside quirky Uranus – and the mythic Dionysus is none other than the child of Jupiter.

So it would seem it doesn’t really matter what path we take – except to us.

 Dionysus by Sebastiano Ricci (1695) 

All is now rooted in the need to learn – no matter how fine or bad times are – for in the end, the Jupiterian principle is one about the expanding of what we know and understand – it’s not a ‘feeling’ premise. That Jupiter is transiting Cancer speaks to the understanding of our feelngs, and many of us have learned a lot…even too much… about ourselves and others of late.

But the Jupiter part? That’s about the maintenance of truth and functional integrity. In such a moment as this, with Jupiter’s station in square to Mars retrograde by sign we’re being pushed to confront our Self.

And as we no doubt know, that tempts some to step forward and some to step back. Whatever happens now, there is a quality of ‘spreading energy’ which happens when Jupiter passes through this sign which should be quite apparent right now.

It’s a good time to reach out, providing you’re willing to know the truth.

And if you aren’t…that says something too, for Jupiter in Cancer teaches what we don’t want as often as anything else.

Whatever you learn, think it through. Something  here will give you additional proportion – proportion you will need or find useful once Mars goes direct this coming 20th of May.
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* An Astrological Mandala: The Cycle of Transformation and its 360 Symbolic Phases
   Vintage Books (New York, USA), 1974 – c. Rudhyar, Dane (1973)
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