Jupiter

Meaning

Jupiter is the largest planet, more massive than all the others put together. It takes almost twelve years to go round the zodiac, so it spends about a year in each sign, and it turns retrograde for some four months in every thirteen.

It stands for growth, confidence, generosity and belief: the urge to widen one’s world through learning, travel, faith or law, and the trust that the world will meet that urge halfway. In a chart it often shows where things come more easily, and where they can grow too large.

Tradition calls it the greater benefic, the planet that most readily brings help and opportunity, and places it in the day sect. It rules Sagittarius and Pisces and is exalted in Cancer; its detriment is Gemini and Virgo, its fall Capricorn. Modern astrologers give Pisces to Neptune and keep Jupiter for Sagittarius. It signified judges, clergy and scholars, and wealth and good fortune.

Its gifts are optimism, humour, generosity and a sense of meaning. Its difficulties are excess, overconfidence, preaching, and promises larger than the time there is to keep them.

In practice

• Jupiter returns to its birth place about every twelve years, near ages 12, 24, 36, 48 and 60, often read as the start of a new cycle of growth.
• Its house shows where opportunity and generosity tend to flow: in the 9th, study, travel and belief; in the 11th, friends and allies, the house where it was said to rejoice.
• Its transits to a birth chart last a few weeks to a few months and are read as times of expansion, sometimes of excess.
• Retrograde for about four months in every thirteen; nearly a third of people are born with it, often read as beliefs built from experience rather than borrowed.

Across traditions

• Chinese astronomy calls it 木星 Mùxīng, the Wood star. Its older name, Suìxīng, the Year Star, comes from its twelve-year round, which served to count the years and is tied to the Chinese calendar’s twelve-year cycle.
• Indian astrology names it Brihaspati or Guru, teacher of the gods, and exalts it in Cancer.
• Human Design makes Jupiter one’s own law: its gate shows the principle that protects and rewards someone who lives by it.

Origin and history

In Babylon the planet belonged to Marduk, the city’s chief god. Greece called it Phaethon, “the radiant one”, and gave it to Zeus; Rome gave it to Jupiter, whose day, dies Iovis, became the French jeudi. Ptolemy calls Jupiter temperate, warming and moistening, a planet of increase, and Vettius Valens ties it to honours, friendships and plenty. In January 1610 Galileo saw four moons circling it through his telescope, which he announced in his Sidereus nuncius. Its metal in tradition is tin.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune takes Jupiter from the Swiss Ephemeris (DE441): its apparent position seen from the centre of the Earth, in the tropical zodiac. It is marked retrograde when its daily motion runs backwards, stationary within about five days of a station, and swift or slow against its mean motion of about 5′ a day. It is in sect in a day chart, and its dignities are scored in Lilly’s points.

Because Jupiter moves slowly and turns back each year, a transit of it to a birth chart is often exact three times; the calendar dates each pass and shows the whole span during which it stays within a degree.

Correspondences