Jupiter in Astrology: Patterns of Expansion

Photo at TailspinT; creative commons license

I’m a pattern junkie–I love seeing how things repeat and give clues to the next thing in the cycle.  In astrology, one of the signposts of major expansion for me is whenever Jupiter is conjunct my planets.   As usual, I’ll show what I mean by example.

In my birth chart, all my “personal” planets, Chiron, and my Ascendant are packed into a narrow two slices of my astrological pie.  I have a stellium in my twelfth house Aquarius (a stellium means a bunch of planets in one sign, in this case the Moon, Saturn, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter) and then my Ascendant, Chiron, Sun and Venus scattered through my first house Pisces.  Whenever an outer planet crosses this astro-terrain, it usually has a long-term effect and it’s a constant punch, punch, punch, punch as it conjuncts my inner or personal planets, which make up my personality and, ironically, oppose most of my outer, generational planets.  Yeah, no wonder I’m such a misfit!

Right now, Neptune is half-way through my personal planets, and my spirituality and idealism have been emphasized during this time.  Over the past decade, Uranus has been dancing with my personal planets and is now finishing its once-in-a-lifetime dance with Venus before it gives me a break from all the major excitement, shake-ups, and breakups of the last decade.

Today,  Jupiter entered the sign of Aquarius.  It stays in a sign for about a year, so it takes 12 years to circle back to this spot.  When Jupiter is an influence on personal planets, it tends to expand, escalate, and exhilarate, so as it approaches the first of my slew of planets in Aquarius and Pisces, it’s rather exciting for me to see how it plays out over the next two years as it transits Aquarius and then Pisces.

The fun thing about getting older is that you get to see patterns in your own life and how certain influences are at play. When I look back to the 80’s, to the first time in my adult life that Jupiter made this transit, it was a significant time of expansion.  Though I’d been in a relationship for five years, it was during this time that I finally married, bought a house, enrolled in grad school, started a new career.  It was a sense of life opening up.

The second time in my adult life that I saw this transit, I made a major career move toward the end of transit, expanded my small business to begin my own publishing company,  sold my second and third commercial novels in a completely different field, expanded into the unknown territory of ebooks/downloads in a time when authors just didn’t do that,  broke out of the confines of my back injury, and converted to a new religion.

Naturally, there were other planets influencing the events of those years,  but in looking back at my adult life thus far, those time periods held the most expansion for me, particuarly in the areas of business, partnerships,  and ideas.   I can feel certain areas of my life gearing up for expansion over the next two years, though I don’t yet know how it will manifest. That will unfold amazingly, I’m sure.

The good news for all you who are so terrified of the current economy?  During those periods of personal expansion, things were often very uncertain and shaky, including some big changes in my career field that I knew would mean things couldn’t stay the same.  But they came out just fine, like a natural progression that I would otherwise have avoided.

If you’d like to see how Jupiter in Aquarius affects you, I recommend you run your own free chart (natal and tranits version) at astro.com.   If Jupiter is conjunct one of your personal planets–or soon to be–then think back on what was going on in your life  12 years ago and see if you see the echo of that now.

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