Within the mandala of the zodiac and the planets’ essential dignities throughout, I’ve always found it especially beautiful that Jupiter is traditionally exalted in Cancer.

Jupiter, whose 11.8-year orbit around the Sun gives it about a year in each sign, entered Cancer on June 9th and immediately found itself on the difficult end of a constraining square from Saturn at 1° Aries, whose restrictive gridlock effectively postponed much sense of jovian affirmation until recent solstitial and new moon times perhaps.

Even through the solstice, when daylight reached its fullest once again and began the slow fade, Jupiter’s square to Neptune at 2° Aries brought an iridescent if not tempestuous fog to earthly climates.  Headlines all the more hellfire… Mars at the anaretic (29°) degree of Leo squaring Uranus at 29° in Taurus the same, the Blade and the Breaker in standoff across all evening news, veiling what spills from torn bodies in the wake of human greed and disdain.

Jupiter, the Greater Benefic, Holst’s ‘Bringer of Jollity’ — that planet which expands, inflates, blesses, elevates, unites… yet whose largeness of vision also risks the philosophical firebrand, the self-unaware tyrant running roughshod over all with a kind of miracle-hungry mania… would of course be so well received in the Moon’s home, floating to the surface, suspended in reflective light.

Cancer is the sign of ultimate receptivity to the Logos, its ruler in the Moon still disseminating the light of the Sun when our star disappears below the horizon… a perfect mirror in its fullness, from eclipses to the nature of Earth’s equator.  In the Moon’s home sign of Cancer, Jupiter’s abundant gifts are witnessed and nurtured, its performances conjuring gentle smiles as from an eternal mother, watching the greatness she has incubated, reminding of the matrix in which all of this floats.  Her, a microcosm of the dark matter and ancestral memory holding the signals that bind us.

Gifts validated, a gestalt cradled… the Moon and Jupiter bear two very different types of gravitation, dispensing fortune at different rhythms, holding one another in the cosmic womb.  The Moon weaves the tides, myriad natural and bodily cycles… Jupiter, for thousands of years consider that which showers blessings, has been confirmed by science to protect earth from asteroids and space debris.

And that’s just How Life Works™ — where empiricism and meaning-making can’t be disentangled from some delightful dance, or segregated like foods on a tv dinner tray.  I’ve long been delighted by that strong parallel between the astronomical Jupiter and astrological Jupiter as it were, first reading and realizing this in 2010… and yet such things are rife throughout the mythopoetry of the planets and their temples.

Cancer provides a fertile environment for Jupiter’s principles of growth, cohesion and abundance, and one can read much about the ease of endowment those born with this placement seem to receive in one arena or another — as well as what all stand to reap from it by transit!

And yet just as a planet in a difficult sign can provoke the friction needed for unconventional, even exceptional growth, a classically strong placement such as Jupiter in Cancer could cause one to ironically stagnate… filled up with the suchness of potential, less motivated to express or use the gifts so profoundly given.

As a number of great astrologers have noted in recent weeks, you have to do something with it.  These moments of inspiration and good fortune must be mobilized in order to be made into the monuments they can be.  Maintaining a ‘big’ perspective, and recognizing opportunities as they arise will be key in making the most of this transit, a boon amidst this world’s turbulence.

If the Moon is a window, and Mars a knife, then Jupiter is an embrace in the air’s density, alternating in exuberance and gentleness, entering this home it inhabits through this very day of June 30th next year…

A general overview of Jupiter’s major aspects during its year in Cancer:


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June 9th, 2025 — Jupiter enters Cancer

June 15-18th, 2025 — Jupiter squares Saturn at 1° Aries

June 19-24th, 2025 —  Jupiter squares Neptune at 2° Aries

June 24th, 2025 — Jupiter Cazimi (at the Heart of the Sun) 3° Aries

August 11-13th, 2025 — Venus conjoins Jupiter at 13-14° Cancer

November 11th, 2025 — Jupiter in Cancer stations retrograde

November 26th, 2025 — Venus at 25° Scorpio trines Jupiter at 25° Cancer

March 11th, 2026 — Jupiter in Cancer stations direct

June 9-10th, 2026 — Venus conjoins Jupiter at 25° Cancer


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I will be writing much more on the passage of Jupiter through its exaltation across the weeks and months to come…

As always, swim well stargazers.

—A.B.