Hello everyone and welcome,

I’d thought I’d take this time to talk about the transit of Jupiter through Cancer, which started on last Thursday the 27th of June and will finish on the 17th July 2014.

Jupiter is a huge planet physically and energetically, 30 times the mass of the earth and the only planet to give off more energy than it receives from the Sun, with its surface a constant flux of storms. Its gravitational pull is so big it reaches as far as the earth, one that is said to have protected our planet from the worst of meteorite  collisions by deflecting their approaches.

Named after the ruler of Mt Olympus who’s other name is Zeus, he was considered the ruler of heaven, the son of Saturn and grandson of the sky god Uranus, a dubious lineage of male figures who castrated or overthrew their fathers. There’s a warning here that not all is love and light with Jupiter, although he is considered to be the planet of good fortune, good karma, benevolent events, expansion, growth and the deliverer of grace.

In India he is most represented by the beloved elephant god of grace and wisdom, Ganesh (who I feel is a much better fit with his light side. The Romans loved Jupiter as the King of Heaven and projected much of their excessive macho onto the planet along with restless womanising and a tendency towards arrogance and hubris. In some ways he was just a naughty boy/ randy adolescent)

Anyhow, Jupiter going through Cancer is a welcome transit at this time of radical and deep changes on every level you can name, with all its accompanying stresses and opportunities. Jupiter through Gemini this last year had its fair share of great influences, punctuated by the series of eclipses that occurred in the sign but one of its downsides was that Jupiter also exaggerated the Gemini tendency to be excessively cerebral, mercurial and trickster-ish. While he supported us in lots of ways in terms of handling the radical learning curves of the last year, he also added to its chaos.

Jupiter in Cancer is a mellower transit as he trawls through the slower, emotional waters of the Crab. As a rule of thumb he expands whatever he touches and so all the classic Cancerian traits get a mostly healthy boost, including the love and appreciation of family and community, the desire to nourish and protect, the need to value our feelings, emotional selves and the personal and sacred feminine. (as I’m writing this, a small crab-like sand coloured spider has magically appeared, abseiling from somewhere onto my computer screen!)

In this most maternal of signs, the King of Heaven joins with the realm of the mothers.

Despite his Roman reputation for uber-masculinity, Jupiter is also the sign of the benevolent father, who guides, nurtures and mentors the child’s growth and so there a great uniting of the masculine and feminine parenting models. In inner child therapy, he is the good masculine inner parent, who acts with intelligence, awareness and sensitivity to the needs of the inner child. It is parenting that secures an ongoing connection with ones feelings while freeing the child to grow and go into the world with trust and faith.

Jupiter isn’t as radical in his urges for change and freedom as his grandfather Uranus but shares the same urges. While he is generally a good influence on our emotional lives, he will also seek to liberate us from family and/or emotional patterning that is overly protective and hinders one’s emotional freedom. In one of the hero’s journey myths our hero is attacked by huge crabs who are the servants of the mother, who would rather kill than allow him to become separate from her.

As he is beginning his journey through Cancer, he is joined with the Black Moon, a representative of the Dark Mother and the sacred feminine, an extraordinary energy healed, full of Shakti but one that is heavily distorted in many family systems. Jupiter will bring these distortions to light, while supporting the flushing of the nastier toxins in line with the same purification urges of the Great Mother. This is a profound connection psycho-spiritually as its links the sky gods with the deep sacred feminine, allows for greater upper and lower chakra integration and brings greater awareness of the gifts and the processes initiated by the re-emerging sacred feminine.

The trademark symptoms of thwarted Jupiter though are restlessness and the feeling that there must be more than a narrowly confined world or worldview. He will also exaggerate whatever claustrophobic patterning exists so that it’s in our faces, to bring it into full awareness and more often than not, provide some kind of experience of grace that blasts us into a space of liberation from it. The same applies to trans-generational influences or when the excessive influence of the feminine has overpowered one’s masculinity.

Spiritually Jupiter is also an expansive influence and in Indian astrology he is considered the planet of the guru, as the grace-bestowing power of god. In Cancer then there is a convergence of the sky gods with the sacred feminine, of upper and lower chakras, a joining the grace, wisdom and intelligence of both. The shadow side of this is spiritual arrogance or ego, for taking the benevolent experiences of life for granted or wasting the good fortune by letting its fruit spill out indiscriminately.

Karmically, he is a deliverer of good karma, in the old texts “good fortune”, great opportunities, expanded horizons, good luck, all of which arrives seemingly unearnt, at least not in this lifetime. He is a positive interventionism aspect of the sacred and yet seen more closely is connected with an unconscious, sometimes conscious, intuition that puts you in the right place at the right time.

And even when we have to experience the shittier aspects of our karma or when we’re tied to a Pluto/Uranus square (like this month!) good Jupiter transits lessen the body blows and ensure that we get the learning required by the experience. Whether “good or bad” he makes sure that we benefit from the hidden grace of the event.

Emotionally, Jupiter expands whatever is going on for us on this level and is great advocate of emotional expression. He challenges the tendency of wounded or over-protected Cancer to defend, repress or implode its feelings; is a great ally for releasing old pain, grief, anger, whatever emotion you can name. With Jupiter around any form of Moon energy, all our feelings get either expanded or inflated, something that has the potential for going over the top but brilliant for any expressive healing process.

When working well, he expresses as joy, happiness, those experiences of expansive well-being, where you feel at home in the world, that everything is as it should be, where you can go into the world trusting in its essential benevolence and with faith that things will work out for the better.

Have a positively moon-filled time.

With love and blessings, Daniel