Jupiter: ‘Great Benefic’ or the Joker in the Pack?

Jupiter, known in Greek myth as Zeus, king of the gods, has been perceived for centuries as the ‘Great Benefic’, and many astrologers assume that this planet will always herald good fortune, opportunities for betterment, and material and emotional rewards. Sometimes this interpretation is entirely valid. At other times it isn’t, as anyone tracking the 2020 transit of Jupiter conjuncting Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn might have observed. Hopes that the pandemic would soon be over were dashed as cases of Covid-19 began to spike again and move into a second wave, while virulently partisan politics, conspiracy theories, and burgeoning fear and rage generated destructive divides between individuals, families, communities, and nations. When Jupiter transits in aspect to natal planets, the same contradictory picture emerges. Sometimes great opportunities arise. Sometimes the transit coincides with the collapse of relationships, financial hardship, the onset of serious illness, and even death. Sometimes both extremes occur at once. And in natal charts, Jupiter aspects are not always benign in the accepted sense. Take, for example, the natal Moon-Jupiter conjunction in Adolf Hitler’s natal chart, or the Sun trine Jupiter in Donald Trump’s. What does Jupiter really symbolise? These three seminars explore the enigmatic, paradoxical, and unpredictable Jupiter in the hope of finding a clearer understanding of this tricky and magical planet.

Jupiter Part 3: The One with the Thunderbolts

‘When Jupiter and Saturn meet,
What a crop of mummy wheat!’
– William Butler Yeats

The third seminar of this series will explore the cycles of Jupiter in terms of the collective psyche, not only through its twelve-year transit through the zodiacal signs, but also through its cyclical conjunctions with Saturn, Chiron, and the outer planets. We will focus particularly on the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of December 2020 in Aquarius, the meaning of these conjunctions as described in older astrological literature, and the inauguration of a twenty-year period in which the meaning of the conjunction gradually unfolds in both the individual horoscope and the movements and shifts of the collective. Finally, we will examine the symbolism of this conjunction as the beginning of a Great Mutation: the first conjunction in the element of air (with only one exception) for two centuries, and the first Great Mutation from earth to air in 800 years, the last one having occurred in 1225.

This part is also available in a bundle with the other 2 parts to rent on this platform.