Jupiter in Capricorn, in Aquarius and conjunct Neptune

Jupiter is traditionally the Greater Benefic, the planet more than any other which signifies expansion and good fortune. Jupiter spent 2008 in Capricorn and what happened? The world banking system, a Capricornian institution if there ever was one, nearly collapsed, precipitating a recession across the world. So maybe astrology doesn’t work. I’m going to proceed on the basis that it does work, and see if I can find Jupiter’s presence over the last year.

What the banking crisis is beginning to bring about is a fundamental re-think of our beliefs (Jupiter) about how to govern an economy. Yes, beliefs, not ideas. Money has a tendency to become a religion governed by dogma, and this was certainly so while Jupiter was in Sagittarius in 2007, along with Pluto at the end of the sign. It is the free-market dogma that has taken a battering, and it was because it was a dogma that governments were slower to act than they might have been, taking the view that markets need to be left to sort themselves out. Why they should think this I do not know. All areas of society need regulating, and carrying this out is one of the main functions of government. Not to do so is negligent, but it is the sort of negligence in this case that you find in religions, like the Christian scientists who won’t allow life-saving blood transfusions for their children.

So Jupiter’s passage through Capricorn has heralded the start of a new type of belief about the economy, in which more regulation (Capricorn) will be necessary.

Jupiter also concerns the kind of laws we have, and again we are moving from the laissez-faire Sagittarian economic laws to pragmatic Capricornian laws.

Given the seriousness of the economic crisis that we are still going through, you could argue that without Jupiter’s presence it could have been a lot worse. For some weeks in the autumn we really were on the edge of global meltdown, we were staring into the abyss. Jupiter, you could argue, gave our leaders the collective self-belief that it could be sorted, that it needn’t be like the 1930s.

When Pluto first entered Capricorn on 25 Jan 2008, it was in a stellium with Venus at 1.52 Capricorn and Jupiter at 8.36 Capricorn. That is actually quite nice. In Nov 2007 I wrote :

“So will there be something like the Wall St Crash of 1929? After all, we have a Cardinal Uranus-Pluto square coming up, which is what we had then. I don’t reckon we will. The deity presiding over all this is Pluto, who is just about to make his move from Sagittarius to Capricorn. Now Sagittarius certainly can be about scams and bubbles, particularly when Jupiter is hanging about as he is now. We had the first Sagittarian bubble in 2000 – the dot.com bubble – and the present bubble is partly a result of that, Bill Clinton and others having told the American Public to spend their way out of the dot.com hangover.

But Capricorn is not about crashes, which are just as unrealistic as bubbles. Capricorn can be about recessions, in the sense of a well-earned hangover, but that’ll be as far as it goes.

If we look at the chart for the moment that Pluto enters Capricorn at the end of Jan 2008, we see a stellium of Pluto at 0 Capricorn, Venus at 2 Capricorn and Jupiter at 8 Capricorn. So a restraint (Capricorn) on monetary (Venus) excess (Jupiter) is certainly a theme of Pluto’s 15 year transit through Capricorn, but so is an expansion (Jupiter) of wealth (Venus/Pluto) on solid foundations (Capricorn). Initially, however, we will be dealing with the end of the party. In New York, Pluto enters Capricorn within 1/4 of a degree of the IC (see Chart), so it will be a very powerful Ingress for Wall St.


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No doubt it will be painful, but it could be worse. If we head over to some traditional astrology, Pluto will be trine to the ruler of Capricorn (Saturn) and opposite to the exaltation ruler of Capricorn (Mars). So it fundamentally looks quite nice. We just have to come down to earth and do a few years basic housekeeping.”

I’ve probably got as jittery as everyone else over the last year. But I think I should have had more faith in the astrology. It was saying all along yes there will be a correction, a hangover as Pluto enters Capricorn, even a dramatic one as Saturn and Uranus square up, and Uranus approaches a square with Pluto. But Jupiter and Venus are also there, the Greater and Lesser Benefics. And Jupiter in particular gave us the collective self-belief at this crucial juncture that we could pull back from the abyss.

Barack Obama has Saturn in Capricorn conjunct Jupiter in Aquarius, both in the 12th House. This is a great placement for a ruler (Saturn/Jupiter) of the collective in the widest sense (12th), who is both traditional (Capricorn) and forward looking (Aquarius). As transiting Jupiter approached Obama's Saturn in the weeks after the election in November, he was called upon to play an unusually active role for a President-elect in dealing with the economic crisis, which was then still critically urgent.


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Now, as his inauguration approaches, he is having a Jupiter Return. This suggests a President who is oriented towards the future (Aquarius), who believes (Jupiter) in democratic collective action (Aquarius), and who has faith (Jupiter) in new technology (Aquarius). At the same time, he is grounded in the lessons of the past (Saturn in Capricorn), as shown by his intensive study of the careers of previous Presidents.

Obama’s Jupiter Return also shows the faith (Jupiter) that the collective (Aquarius/also US Moon in Aquarius) has in him. And, you could say, the faith that he has in the American people, which his past as a community organiser shows to be real.

It is today that Jupiter enters Aquarius. He only spends a year in any one sign, so his effect is more catalytic than deeply transformational. In Sagittarius, he helped bring the economic bubble to a head. In Capricorn he helped catalyse a different way of thinking about the economy. In Aquarius, his influence has already started through Barack Obama – his belief in empowering groups of people to bring about change, and in inventing our way out of the energy and climate crisis.

From May through to December there will be a Jupiter-Neptune conjunction. Both Jupiter and Neptune point to higher worlds and imaginative realities. It is a time for both artistic flowerings and imaginative excess. Under the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Sagittarius of 1971, we arguably saw the beginning of the Progressive Rock movement, notable for both its experimentation and its excess. It was also the beginning of the Age of the Gurus, which arguably reached its peak under the next conjunction in 1984 in Sag/Cap with Osho and his 93 Rolls Royces.

This year’s conjunction will be square to the Scorpio MC of Mr Obama and conjunct the US Moon (the people). This suggests that one of the big themes of this conjunction will be the American public’s faith in their President. There has been excess already, and this eventually tends to produce its opposite, as we saw in the UK with Tony Blair. People feel betrayed when an admired leader makes the mistakes that everyone else makes, and as they begin to see the hubris that is hard to avoid in a successful leader. This is also reflected in the ongoing opposition from Pluto to Obama’s natal Venus (popularity) in Cancer. He will probably have a hard landing after Jupiter-Neptune ends in December 2009, for Pluto in Capricorn, unlike Pluto in Sagittarius, is not a time for sustained hero-worship of political leaders. It is more a time when leaders have to earn popularity and respect. In a year’s time he is likely to be rigorously judged on the outcomes of his economic policies, and maybe judged too harshly where his policies have not succeeded.

I have a natal Jupiter-Neptune conjunction in Scorpio that is Nodal. This year’s conjunction will conjoin my Sun. At last I will discover my Divine Mission! I’m sort of half-joking and half not.