March 5, 2022

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The Sun Conjunct Jupiter in Pisces: or Jupiter Cazimi, Many Ways

By

Alexander Baker

The Sun Conjunct Jupiter in Pisces: or Jupiter Cazimi, Many Ways

Just as the astronomical Jupiter’s electromagnetic field protects Earth and the inner planets from asteroids, the hurtling affronts of celestial bodies fragmented, so the astrological Jupiter has since ancient times been considered the ‘greater benefic’ — our solar system’s ‘highest’ octave of planetary plenitude, known for showering blessings… a living symbol of wisdom, joy, expansion and good fortune.

Yet aggrandizement, arrogance and excess can be backdrafts of these blessings, with the physical Jupiter — as if to mirror its the most generous of deities — sometimes sending space debris on a crash course towards the inner planets.  These are natural shadows that keep company to knowledge and the illusion of ownership.

Indeed, when the ‘big planet’ transits the degree of a planet in one’s natal chart, it can dial things up to the point of hyper-saturated overflow — a boon or a bane depending on what energy or arena of one’s life is being turned to 11.  You are not your chart, but the chart is a soul snapshot that moves ongoing with planetary transits to its notes and narratives.  The astronomical and astrological Jupiter are interwoven, as polymaths of yore might have perceived — the ‘constellative quality of the archetype’ binding physical vessels, qualities, events to the spirits that seem to inhabit them.

Jupiter, Gustav Holst’s ‘bringer of jollity’ whose ~11.8 year orbit puts it in each sign for about a year, entered its nocturnal home of Pisces on December 28th as many will know.  In contrast to its diurnal home of Sagittarius, Jove, preeminent principle of optimism, giving, acceptance, and dissemination of wisdom… is comfortable, nurtured, boundless within the matrix of the mutable water sign.  Jupiter’s light moves well in the watery expanses associated with Pisces, a slice of the ecliptic, a temple of the sky favorable to the abundant energies conferred by the ‘king of Olympian gods.’

In present skies, the Sun is conjunct Jupiter, where the big planet is ‘cazimi’ or consumed in the Sun’s rays as of this (Saturday) morning, exact just after Jupiter’s hour.  This might weaken the benefic in ways, and yet blessings still shower down.  There’s a lot that can happen to us right now, narrative-wise, and a sense of great possibility where one directs conscious energy and action.

This cazimi is the rebirth of Jupiter’s synodic cycle, a purification of its principle qualities — and one might look to the Pisces-ruled house of the birth chart, natal location of its ruler Jupe, and so on for clues as to where blessings might emerge… if these watery graces have not already been lighting your spirit amidst the tumults of our external world.

Jupiter, Jove, the Greek ‘Zeus’ and the Norse ‘Thor’, is also Marduk, “the one born of the Sun, enrolled to battle and quell chaos” as Fr. Sean O’Laoire writes.  A jovian hope seems to permeate western discourse surrounding current threats of war — losses of such magnitude ever an abstraction until they are made a visceral reality once again.

Some of Jupiter’s ‘new age’ expressions can show up in toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, and oneness narratives that risk erasing the particularity of a cultural lineage or a legitimate suffering that comes to shape the soul.  The jovian principles of elevation and superiority manifest in yet another way of late, as one might reflect on how the plight of a European country comes to take center stage when Black and brown nations are plundered on the daily — with tweets from white Americans acting as though the inhabitants of North America have never seen war on their own soil.  Of which ‘they’ do you speak?

And of course, the apocalyptic eye fetishizes wherever a finger seems closest to the nuclear pulse, especially in a time of heavy Pluto.

Mercury’s homes of Gemini and Virgo, which naturally oppose Jupiter’s traditional homes of Sagittarius and Pisces, have an affinity for poking holes in jovian bravado, like a divine heckler waiting to pull the rug out from under inflated egos.  Add Venus’ and Mars’ conjunctions to Pluto — fading a bit with the relational planets’ ingress into Aquarius on March 6th — and one might picture Ukrainians in the most live-tweeted war to date, draped in blue and gold, middle-fingers upturned at Russian infantry, dancing atop tanks, TikToks and live reels of one civilian carrying a landmine off-road and into a wood, cigarette dangling from his lips.

Provoking this, the “largeness of vision, pride, arrogance, aggrandizement, extravagance; fecundity, fortune, and providence” that Richard Tarnas writes of in regard to Jupiter — it shows up many places in the human psyche and on the world stage.  Vladimir Putin is spoken of as a narcissist, a plutocrat steeped in narratives from the media brain-drill, and one might see it through the valence Jupiter’s unconscious tyranny  — the violence of a vision when wielded by one who is convinced of it, the scorched earth that comes of running roughshod over anything that does not bind to its false singularity.

Pisces, one of the mutable ‘two-parted’ signs in the Fish, might be associated with the diversity of inner psyche — but that too, like its host Jupiter, can be sympathetic to oneness narratives and the drama of that which deviates from these.  How, like an ocean of past aeons, yet whose folklore might tell of it having no memory, do present conflicts ‘center stage’ in the world overshadow the reality of ongoing massacres elsewhere?

This same all-absorbing, amniotic home of Jupiter, might be just as well conducive to the collapsing of multiple voices into one singular politic, one cresting moment that dissolves voices before crashing back into the multiplicity that it both receives and masks.

The other day in a powerful writing, Stephanie Warner (of Dark Moon Astrology and Chani App) made apt mention, “Fiona Hill, writing for Politico, brought up the point that war isn’t so much isolated set-pieces, as waves, inexorable waves, that peak and trough — every major conflict ending in an open question that will be answered, given time.

In late December, I'd confided in Warner about the slightly ominous feeling I had, despite Jupiter's gentle ingress into Piscean waters — out of two years in Saturn's homes and co-present their host. It's been a strata mutually perceived, and one we've revisited since while watching the outer planet cocktail simmer on the world stage.

The more uncompromising light of Jupiter, the all-unifying in law, religion, notions of truth, justice, fairness, knowledge, wisdom — these are undergoing a purification and beginning a new cycle.  We have hope of this, at the very least, and the power to love what’s left.

Jupiter in Pisces is ~

* both acceptance and delusion

* the capacity to hold grief, as much as to hold hope or joy

* just as much the myopic hyper-faith, as it is the grace which receives truth across many different waters

* the impulse to make greater wholes, by which one narrative of suffering might be elevated above the reality of another particular, equally heart-full narrative of loss

* the diffuse waters by which all of these views are valid, interconnected in the web of soul-making that our visions and losses bring us

* the romanticization of suffering, as escape or as fuel for art

As I wrote in late December, art begs to be made, even when the world is crumbling, and that includes every contour of your life as you continue living it.

Rejoice in connection, seek with a cup at once empty and overflowing, forgive yourself endlessly, out-love your shadow, out-tender your own cynicism.  Drink deeply the dark as things fall apart, and watch the intimacy of your relationship with the world be renewed.  Don’t guilt yourself for every spiritual masochism; they’re dress rehearsal for your next peak moment of non-duality.

—A.B.


[ image: "Kometenbuch' c. 1587 in Northeast France, illustrator unknown ]

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