Jupiter Enters Gemini Conjunct the South Node and Things Are About to Get (More) Complicated

Jupiter in Gemini - June 11, 2012 to June 25, 2013

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, entered Gemini yesterday for its one-year stay in the sign. Jupiter spends one year in each of the 12 signs, making one full pass through the zodiac every 12 years.

Because of its size, Jupiter is the planet associated with all things big. It is a planet considered to have an enlarging influence on everything it touches and relates to expansion, luck, benefits, cosmic grace, and the broadening of horizons. The activities and themes related to the house where Gemini falls in your natal chart will be ripe for expansion this year - this is where the Jupiterian spotlight falls for the next 12 months.

Jupiter is considered to have a philosophical bent, relating to things such as meaning, truth, and wisdom gathered through direct experiences in the big, wide world. Through its association with Sagittarius, the sign it rules, and the 9th house, the house naturally ruled by Sagittarius, Jupiter can have some connection to travel, happy-go-lucky adventures, culture, higher education, gypsy life, fortune telling, foreign lands, wilderness, randy centaurs, and wild, Dionysian parties in the middle of ancient forests.

Jupiter also relates to hedonism and detrimental overindulgence in sex, food, drink or any other arena, recklessness, gambling, financial overextension, overstepping boundaries, "too much, too fast," relying on luck over hard work and planning, dogma, pedantry, and being a bit of a fly-by-night candy-ass.

It's the Las Vegas of planets.

Though it is overarchingly associated by astrologers with luck, beneficial events, and good will flowing freely to us from the universe, when we say Jupiter enlarges everything it touches, this can also mean the enlarging and expansion of unpleasant characteristics and events and their consequences.

As Jupiter in Taurus crossed back and forth over the natal South Node of New Age huckster James Arthur Ray in 2011, for example, his excessive focus on related South Node exploits (money, material wealth, "manifesting abundance") and the resulting abuses of his Scorpio North Node - leading to the deaths of at least three people and the injury of dozens - coincided with his trial for three counts of negligent homicide and a resulting guilty verdict.

The lucky part of Jupiter in Taurus' influence in James Ray's life meant he was sentenced to only two years in prison, rather than the nine years for which prosecutors were hoping.

Jupiter can certainly kick up what appear to be lucky breaks, but it can also put a spotlight on areas of weakness, excess, or past recklessness that are then blown up into major issues.

As part of this, Jupiter conjunct the South Node could be referred to as the James Ray Effect, and the James Ray Effect is a distinct possibility from now through the end of July as transiting Jupiter crosses the South Node in Gemini.

If we've been hitting our marks with the North Node since it entered Sagittarius in March 2011, quietly banking on our own ancient, cultural wisdom and guiding truth rather than on the streams of diversionary (and often insane) information coming from society and media, Jupiter crossing the South Node can bring soulful benefit or at least no major flare ups.

If, on the other hand, we've been too far in the Gemini South Node with excessive gossip, two-faced talking of crap, intellectual laziness, and superficial perceptions, succumbing to information/media/social media/cell phone/instant message addictions, maintaining social acceptability over what is morally or philosophically correct, and focusing too heavily on the local society and personal status within it to the detriment of broader context, this pass by Jupiter could create some spicy events or circumstances that force us out into our own personal truth wilderness, outside society's dictates.

Jupiter entering Gemini is complicated. It's complicated for a few reasons.

Jupiter is in the sign of its detriment in Gemini, meaning it is not an easy or flowing placement for this planet. Jupiter does best in broad-minded, freedom-loving, philosophically-oriented Sagittarius, the polar opposite of chatty Gemini, which is more at home with news, daily conversation, and local neighbourhood goings-on.

There is a feeling of contraction and concentration with this placement - things Jupiter is not too keen on experiencing. Jupiter in Gemini is the wild and randy centaur, drunk on the heady experience of life, culture, and opulent living, forced into the confines of local society: hoofs clickety-clacking through crosswalks, standing in line at banks, ordering espresso at the local coffee shop rather than loping through magnificent wilderness around the globe.

This is part of the thematic flavour for the next 12 months - a slightly more irritated, slightly less jovial Jupiter.

Jupiter in Gemini's conjunction to the South Node from now through the end of July (exact July 2) increases the complication of this placement and indicates a strongly "fated" period of time. The connections being made at this time are soul-charged and purposeful. Events have a "meant to be" quality.

My sweet firecracker of a Sagittarius Sun Grandma died unexpectedly yesterday (born December 13, 1919), and she was giving her daughters hell right up to the end.

With the luck of a Jupiter-ruled Sun in Sadge, she lived independently, was mentally sharp, and died suddenly at an advanced age without suffering. She was a true Sagittarius Sun in that she loved visiting, sharing stories, playing cards, and hitting the slots on gambling trips whenever she got the opportunity. She was a fiery personality in a small package, and she brought energy, interest, and warmth to the world and to the people around her. She'll be dearly missed.

Interesting is the astrological timing. She died almost exactly 12 years after my Grandpa - one full Jupiter cycle. My Grandpa died July 1, 2000, the day after Jupiter entered Gemini, as it was on the zero degree. My Grandma died around 3 p.m. yesterday, just after Jupiter ingressed Gemini and was, once again, on the zero degree.

She and my Grandpa were married June 5, 1943 after a late spring blizzard. This means, of course, that their anniversary has just passed, marked by this year's very special Venus Transit in Gemini. The day prior to the Venus Transit, a Sagittarius Full Moon eclipse was loosely conjunct her Sun.

The day before she died, she found my Grandpa's wedding band in her apartment and put it on her finger.

She visited some of her friends and called all her children just to check in. She wanted someone to pick some rhubarb for her at the farm.

This is a lady, a Pluto in Cancer lady, who lived through the Great Depression as part of a working class farm family. Her mother died young after giving birth to seven children, and my Grandma had to leave her home and family as a teenager to "work out" as domestic and farm help in other households.

The suffering and devastation people experienced during the Great Depression and World War II never completely left her, as it hasn't left most of that generation. Many Pluto in Cancers are leaving Earth now, and as an anchoring generation is released, the rapid energetic changes we are experiencing increase exponentially.

The last series of Uranus-Pluto squares occurred during that 1930s Great Depression. She passed just before the first of the seven Uranus in Aries - Pluto in Capricorn squares on June 24. She didn't need to do that one twice.

My Grandma's Sagittarius Sun falls exactly on my Pallas Athene - the female warrior - and I'm honoured and grateful to have her fight, her feistiness, and her willingness to stand up for what's right running through my blood.

With Jupiter's move from Taurus to Gemini, we move from a beneficial stabilizing influence in fixed earth to a more highly-charged, changeable effect in mutable air. Here, our minds, our words, our perspectives, our conversation skills, our local societies, our siblings, and our networks bring us fortune. We move from feet firmly on the ground in Taurus to movement, change, and sometimes chaos of the mind in Gemini. Jupiter is no longer acting as the anchor that it was while transiting Taurus, and things have officially come unmoored in certain respects, bringing both excitement and anxiety.

Jupiter's dispositor planet - the planet most strongly influencing its related developments and themes - has now shifted from Venus to Mercury.

Looking at the position of Mercury at the time of Jupiter's ingress shows us where our minds are going to be during the year-long transit of Gemini. Mercury in Cancer was forming a square to Uranus in Aries and an opposition to Pluto in Capricorn - a cardinal t-square - at the time of Jupiter's ingress.

Uranus and Pluto are just about to form the first of seven exact squares, again, last experienced in the 1930s during the Great Depression. We are going through huge, clashing shifts on this planet under a great deal of pressure, both manufactured and natural, and the position of Mercury at this time, as dispositor of Jupiter, indicates this will be a primary theme. This is what is on our minds.

Waves of job losses since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 have not been addressed. In Canada, there is an acute housing shortage across many provinces with sky-high real estate costs and rents. People are paying inflated mortgages that are being hedged by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Company. The cost of living and working has been inflated to the point of ridiculousness. And the industries paying employees the most money are generally doing the most damage to people and to environments.

Riding down the rural Saskatchewan highway at night, the number of bright orange flames dotting the landscape is overwhelming - oil flares. Frenzied oil drilling in the area means more pop up every week, including on our family farm. "Oil flares are associated with benzene poisoning, a major cause of leukemia. Living in close proximity to oil flares is also associated with an increased incidence of cancers of the thyroid, bone, pancreas, and connective tissue. Oil flaring has been connected to autoimmune diseases like Multiple Sclerosis (Saskatchewan has a higher than average incidence), rheumatoid arthritis, and thyroid disease. They are also a cause of increased chemical sensitivity."

A leak in a Plains Midstream Canada oil pipeline near Sundre, Alberta on June 7 has spilled hundreds of thousands of litres (an estimated 3,000 barrels) of oil into a tributary of the Red Deer River. This has polluted the river and surrounding wetlands, threatening drinking water, recreation, and local ranchers and inhabitants, including the City of Red Deer.

The real story, though, is that there have been thousands of pipeline leaks and spills like this over the past years. According to an article in The Globe & Mail called "Cleanup of latest Alberta oil spill could take all summer" by Nathan Vanderklippe and Dawn Walton, there are 400,000 kilometres of pipeline beneath the soil in Alberta. In 2010 alone, there were 687 leaks and spills from these pipelines. Mindboggling doesn't even begin to describe where we are right now.

On top of the most recent spill, Plains Midstream is still "cleaning up" (is clean-up even possible?) a 4.5 million litre spill that happened April 29, 2011 northeast of Peace River, Alberta.

There's no escaping it. It's everywhere. It's Uranus square Pluto, and it's not going anywhere. The screws are being tightened in a highly unstable, money-manipulated world, one that is at its breaking point on multiple fronts, one increasingly losing touch with any type of soulful reality.

The graces and lucky periods related to Jupiter in Gemini arise between the cracks of these often incredibly tense and difficult times and are not necessarily sustained periods of good fortune with Jupiter in the mutable sign of its detriment.

In other words, not having bad luck is as good as having good luck during these times on the planet. The concept of who is fortunate shifts, and if your life is not in a state of acute catastrophe or peril, count your lucky stars.

Jupiter in Gemini is a contradiction in many ways, and navigating this contradiction successfully is what will bring us the experience of luck over the next year.


Jupiter in Gemini indicates:

* exaggeration (Jupiter) of information (Gemini)
* sensationalized, over-the-top (Jupiter) news and gossip (Gemini) with a focus on the most bizarre, upsetting, or inflammatory
* strong use of propaganda, with the media continuing to be used to work people into a lather, manipulating views, opinions, and daily behaviours
* ideological fervour trickling into the most seemingly mundane daily discourse
* certain charismatic, silver-tongued personalities getting "big" and swaying the masses
* new philosophies around transportation, expansion of transportation forms and pathways
* too much on people's minds - the possibility of mental overload, singed circuits, and too much information, a broadening of perspective and mental pathways
* having faith in neighbourhood and local society
* the wisdom and deep, tribal weaving of "local talk"
* drawing on cultural/ancestral wisdom to do its part, applied in local societies, guiding day-to-day life
* luck coming through siblings, speaking and writing abilities, neighbourhood connections, societies, and networks
* a more expansive time for astrology bloggers, following the constricting influence of the Gemini South Node

Jupiter in Gemini is a placement whereby we are required to listen to our own truth beyond what we are being told, beyond commonly-held perspectives and perceptions. This transit is a time to trust the wisdom of our own perceptions and perspectives, using them to light the way through some often difficult and confusing times. This is a placement that draws on the wisdom we carry within, requiring that we translate, speak, and apply it in our immediate environments.

Jupiter in Cancer - June 25, 2013 to July 16, 2014

The complications related to the transit of Jupiter through Gemini will continue, though with a different flavour, with the transit of Jupiter in Cancer. Though Jupiter will be in the sign of its exaltation at that time, indicating an infusion of cosmic benefits and assistance along the way, it will be forming cardinal Grand Crosses throughout the transit along with Uranus in Aries, Pluto in Capricorn, and the personal planets in Libra. These Grand Crosses form in August, September, and October of 2013 and in April of 2014.

For the next two years, Jupiter's movement indicates complex and complicated expansion within a period of intense, sustained pressure and backs-against-the-wall constriction.

Again, counting each and every blessing and utilizing each opportunity that comes to us to its maximum potential is a key to enjoying Jupiter's grace.