Ask Christine Astrology

Jupiter’s been slowing down for the past week or so, preparing to turn retrograde on May 9th. (To correct a common astrological misunderstanding: the change from direct to retrograde motion isn’t instantaneous, like flipping a switch. It’s gradual. I always see people saying things like “Saturn just turned direct today and I feel so much better.” Okay, but it took its time getting there and it’s still moving extremely slowly, like trying to maneuver an 18-wheeler around a hairpin turn. You don’t just slam it into reverse while driving and hope for the best.)

The horary charts I’ve worked on lately all seem to pick up the Jupiter in Capricorn / Mars in Cancer opposition. It’s ugly. Jupiter is a very naughty Jupiter in Capricorn, the sign of its fall. Mars is just as mean in Cancer (and I’m still trying to understand whether and how its being in triplicity takes the edge off the fall). And they adore each other! Jupiter is in the exaltation of Mars, Mars is in the exaltation of Jupiter. So each one is a thug, palling around with another thug it thinks is the bee’s knees. The opposition shows that whatever they do won’t last, or will be utterly regrettable. For all they adore each other, their priorities, shown by the Cancer/Capricorn opposition, are completely at odds.

Just as Jupiter reaches its station around 22 Capricorn 22 on May 9th, Mars finally breaks the opposition/exaltation cycle a few hours later. Mars enters Leo sometime on May 9th. That’s when it finally drops its misguided hero worship of that nasty Jupiter. Mars will still be in Jupiter’s triplicity in night charts, so you will still see some charts where it’s friendly toward Jupiter, but it’s not that same sense of “ooh, my darling Jupiter can do no wrong (crash!).”

How might a Jupiter station in Capricorn feel? Jupiter, expansion. Capricorn, knees. Severely swollen joints, literally or metaphorically, would be my first guess. Richard Saunders in The Astrological Judgement and Practice of Physick states that “Jupiter in the last 18 degrees of Capricorn is [extremely] cold and dry… ingendring diseases of thin Melancholy, corrupting the blood, and Melancholy having the dominion, causing Diseases in the Throat, and swelling in the Jaws and Glandules.” (What’s a glandule? A gland, but smaller.)