Jupiter

What Jupiter is in you

Jupiter is growth. It shows me where your life wants to get bigger, what you believe about the world, how you learn the large lessons, and where good fortune tends to find you without much effort on your part. It also covers travel, study, teaching and faith, in whatever form faith takes for you.

The old books call Jupiter the greater benefic, the big friendly planet. Most of that is fair. Jupiter's sign tells me what a person has faith in, and faith is a stronger engine than most people give it credit for.

Jupiter also overdoes. The same planet that brings the luck brings the second helping, the promise you cannot keep and the plan three sizes too big. When I see a strong Jupiter I ask where the person says yes too easily.

The cycle, the retrograde and the return

Jupiter takes about twelve years to go round the Sun, so it spends about a year in each sign. That makes Jupiter a shared weather. Nearly everyone born in the same twelve months carries the same Jupiter sign, which is one reason a school year can have a flavour of its own.

For about four months of every year Jupiter appears to run backwards. That is apparent motion, an effect of Earth and Jupiter moving at different speeds, and it means roughly three people in ten are born with Jupiter retrograde. In the sky, a Jupiter retrograde is nothing like the drama people attach to Mercury. It turns growth inward for a few months and asks what you actually believe rather than what you were told to.

Every twelve years Jupiter comes back to where it sat when you were born. That is the Jupiter return, at about 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72 and 84. In my experience it opens a door, and the door is usually the one you had been standing next to for a while without trying the handle. The Transits and Retrogrades page covers the return properly.

Because Jupiter changes sign only once a year, most people can be sure of theirs from the date alone. If you were born within a few days of a sign change, check the chart.

The signs Jupiter rules

Jupiter rules Sagittarius, and before Neptune was found in 1846 it ruled Pisces as well, so I call it the traditional ruler of Pisces. In Sagittarius it is Jupiter on the road: the horizon, the big question, the long dinner about the meaning of things. In Pisces it is Jupiter in the deep water: compassion, imagination, the feeling that something larger is holding you.

The old books say Jupiter is exalted, at its best, in Cancer, and uncomfortable in Gemini and Virgo, the signs opposite its own, which they call its detriment. They put its fall in Capricorn. I take these as weather notes rather than verdicts. A Capricorn Jupiter grows more slowly than a Sagittarius one, and what it builds stays built.

Jupiter through the signs

In Aries, Jupiter grows by going first. Your luck arrives when you move, never when you wait, and the opportunities that change your life are the ones you chased. The shadow is recklessness, the venture started without the homework and the money put where a slower Jupiter would have looked twice. The gift is optimism in action, and the trail of friends who tried something bold because you went first.

In Taurus, Jupiter grows by staying. Your luck compounds. The investments, skills and relationships that change your life are the ones you kept turning up to long enough for them to mature. The shadow is comfort turning into a cage, and gathering more than any life needs as if the gathering were the point. The gift is building things that outlast the hurried, and a table where everyone is well fed.

In Gemini, Jupiter grows through conversation. The remark at a party, the book you picked up, the stranger at the airport: these are where your luck lives. You believe in ideas, and you stay curious at seventy in a world where most people stopped at thirty. The shadow is a hundred books half read and a dozen courses abandoned at unit three. The gift is a mind that keeps learning for a lifetime.

In Cancer, Jupiter is exalted. You grow through feeling and through the people who wanted good things for you. In your presence people relax and tell you things they have told nobody. The shadow is feeling everyone's feelings for them, rescuing people from lessons they needed, and a nostalgia that makes the past more precious than the present. The gift is emotional safety, one of the rarest things anyone can offer a room.

In Leo, Jupiter grows by being seen. Your luck comes when you are on the stage, at the head of the table or in front of the class, and a Leo Jupiter that hides goes hungry. You believe each person has a particular light and that false modesty is a loss to everyone. The shadow is needing the applause, and plans scaled bigger than the results. The gift is warming whatever room you walk into.

In Virgo, Jupiter grows through skill. Your luck comes because you have become good at something people need. You believe work done well has dignity, and shoddy work offends you. You can tell what is working from what only looks like it. The shadow is never releasing anything because it is never good enough, and losing the whole in the detail. The gift is being the person who can be trusted with the important thing.

In Libra, Jupiter grows through other people. Partners, collaborators and the right person at the right time are where your luck lives, and on your own you go hungry. You believe in fairness and good faith. The shadow is weighing until the choice is made for you, and keeping the peace at the cost of the thing that needed saying. The gift is finding the frame in which two sides can both move forward.

In Scorpio, Jupiter grows through depth. Your luck arrives disguised as a crisis, a loss or a truth you could not look away from. You can go where others will not, and people bring you the thing they have told no one else. The shadow is finding only the grim real, as if daylight were a lesser truth, and using what you see against them. The gift is holding hard material without flinching.

In Sagittarius, Jupiter is at home. You grow through meaning, through the big questions and through places that stretched your frame. You believe the game is worth playing, and that faith has been tested and mostly proved right. Travel develops you like nothing else. The shadow is excess, in spending, eating, drinking and promising, and a philosophy that hardens into preaching. The gift is grounded optimism that holds up in the hard seasons.

In Capricorn, Jupiter grows through discipline. The old books call this Jupiter in its fall because Saturn's sign keeps the big planet on a short rope. Your luck arrives as the return on years of turning up, and never as a windfall. The shadow is a view of life as hardship to be managed, and an inability to stop and enjoy what you built. The gift is that what you put up stays up.

In Aquarius, Jupiter grows through ideas and movements. Your luck comes through networks of independent minds and causes you joined before the mainstream noticed them. You believe in progress and you are allergic to fatalism. The shadow is caring for humanity while staying cool towards the humans in your kitchen, and preferring to think about change rather than do the work of it. The gift is thinking at the level of the whole system.

In Pisces, Jupiter is in its traditional home, the sign it ruled before Neptune. You grow through compassion and through openness to what is larger than the thinking mind. Your luck comes through dreams, coincidence and the right person appearing when they were needed. The shadow is escape, into fantasy or a bottle, and giving without limit until you are drained and nobody is helped. The gift is compassion people can feel the difference of.

Across the traditions

In the tarot, Jupiter belongs to The Wheel of Fortune, card 10 of the Major Arcana, which turns whether or not you are ready. Jupiter rules Sagittarius and is the traditional ruler of Pisces, and the Sagittarius and Pisces pages take each of those signs further. The Vedic Astrology section, when it opens, will give the sidereal view of Jupiter, where the sign positions differ from the ones used here. The links beside this page take you to all of them.

Where in your life does good luck seem to find you without being asked? That is probably where your Jupiter sits.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.

Related pages
Chesed, Mercy