Jupiter Enters Aries

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Today Jupiter enters Aries (the constellation, not the monthly “sign”) – along with a bunch of other planets: Venus & Mercury, Mars, and for a few more days, the Sun. Let’s forget about all the others, because it’s just too complicated. Let’s think about Jupiter in Aries. The first question always is “What does it mean?”

The question itself betrays a little bit of naivety on behalf of the asker – because there is not one universal meaning to Jupiter going into Aries. It means different things in different contexts for different people. So, the question soon becomes, “What does it mean to me?“

Any mass media answer is bound to be overly simplified, because how can one answer address an nearly infinite number of different individuals asking the question? Some writers try to overcome this hurdle by giving twelve different answers – one for each “sign” (and what “sign” means always depends on the writer’s definition: for some it is the month you were born, for others it is the constellation of your Moon, for others it is the constellation or “sign” that was rising when you were born, etc.)

You know what, I think that’s a pretty reasonable way to address an unsolvable dillema – so long as we remember that we are being broad. In fact, I will go a step further and use the required generic broadness to our advantage by encouraging you to individualize what I say for your own self.

Here is my suggestion for how to understand the major, simple, underlying theme of what Jupiter in Aries means for you.

First of all get your birth chart made. Have it made in a “sidereal” format (since we are talking about Jupiter going into sidereal Aries, after all). All you need to know from it is this: What is my sidereal rising sign?

Depending on what your rising sign is, Aries represents a different house for you. Here is a table to show you.

If your rising sign is…	Aries is your…
Aries	1st House
Taurus	12th House
Gemini	11th House
Cancer	10th House
Leo	9th House
Virgo	8th House
Libra	7th House
Scorpio	6th House
Sagittarius	5th House
Capricorn	4th House
Aquarius	3rd House
Pisces	2nd House

Now here is the simple key to figuring out the central theme of Jupiter in Aries for you:

Jupiter represents fortune, growth, and faith. Whatever house Aries is for you represents the main place you will obtain good fortune from by concentrating on cultivating the growth of and developing your faith in – during the duration of Jupiter’s stay in sidereal Aries. (From now till next May, 2012)

Brief examples for the 12 rising signs

I will illustrate the essential examples of what the transit means to each rising sign – but I encourage you to use my articles on the houses to fully explore and envision the themes that will bring you good fortune by your investing time and trust in them this year.

Aries Rising

Jupiter transits your 1st house – so cultivate self-growth, self-faith this year, and trust in all things visible, practical and tangible.

Taurus Rising

This is a transit of your 12th house – so cultivate trust and faith in humility, deference to others, quietness, solitude, spiritual knowledge, and “foreign” philosophies. Spend money only on truly good things.

Gemini Rising

11th house transit – so place all your trust and faith in your children, your friends, and your teachers. Concentrate your efforts on pleasing them.

Cancer Rising

10th house transit – so trust in society and play your social role with morality. Concentrate on your career.

Leo Rising

9th house transit – give your heart to religion and philosophy. Travel in search of such inspirations. Pursue “higher” education.

Virgo Rising

8th house transit – be less practical, trust the unknown, enjoy mysterious secrets that cannot be quantified rationally. Explore the mystery of life and death. Enjoy the occult. Enjoy procreation.

Libra Rising

7th house transit – learn to trust your spouse more deeply and fully. Concentrate your energies on cooperating with them. Economic transactions, commerce, will benefit this year from similar trust and attention.

Scorpio Rising

6th house transit – clean your liver – eat clean foods – no meat, less oils. Your health will skyrocket if you do. Trust in your ability to overcome your oppenents and challenges in a fair, open, moral and mutually trusting way.

Sagittarius Rising

5th house transit – study! Develop your intellect and creativity this year!

Capricorn Rising

4th house transit – work on your homelife, your private life. Trust in the ability of your domestic life to provide you firm and stable happiness as a good foundation for your life. Concentrate on your house and the family who live in it.

Aquarius Rising

3rd house transit – trust your ambitions, work on expressing yourself through words and sounds. Have faith in your ability to achieve your inner desires. Concentrate on these this year, and you will find fortune.

Pisces Rising

2nd house transit – Concentrate on nurtition. Concentrate on financial stability. Put all your trust and attention into the things which truly support your practical life: your family, your food, your assets, your wisdom.

A note about this transit from the Moon

You can do the same thing but from the perspective of your Moon. This will tell you a different story – the story of what will be on your mind this year (now through next may). Look at your sidereal birth chart and find the sign that the Moon is in. Then look up that sign in the table I wrote out earlier, to figure out what house Aries represents from your Moon. Then you can consider the themes of whatever that house is and understand what will be the underlying theme of what occupies your mind – i.e. what your will desire fortune from – for the duration of Jupiter’s stay in Aries.

I hope you all enjoy this post, and that Sri Hari blesses you to derive good personal guidance from it. Please bless me with stability and happiness for my family this year, and with the sincere and ardent desire to be a source of pleasure for the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Thank you,

Vic DiCara (Vraja Kishor das)

www.vicdicara.com <- please come and request a reading!

Ancient Prayer to Jupiter from Rg Veda

This is an excerpt from a book I am writing called Making Peace with your Planets. It is my translation of a prayer from the worlds most ancient surviving book, the Rg Veda (2.23). The founder of ancient astrology recommends this prayer as the best meditation for forming a peaceful and prosperous relationship with the astrological planet Jupiter.

We call to the master of the planets, the wisest of the wise, the most famous master of religion, the master of priests! Hear us! Help us! Sit with us now.

Deathless Lord of the Vastness [Jupiter], the gods learn from you how to participate in holy ceremonies. As the light of the Sun creates the rays of the Moon, you create all religion. Chase away the gloom and hatred. Mount your chariot, which destroys foes, slays demons, frees the needy and finds the light.

You preserve humanity by leading us with your wisdom. One who admires you finds no grief. Those who hate you receive wise punishment which evolves their opinions to higher levels.

Sorrow, distress, foes, fears, weaknesses and seductions flee from the person you guard. You guard us with wisdom and show us the path, so we sing to you now. Bring to ruin any traps set for us. Protect us from the evil, arrogant rapists who attack without just cause. Turn them from our path, and lead us instead to heavenly places.

Protect our bodies from harm. With your affection comfort us. Protect the gods and strike down the demons so that the unworthy do not obtain rewards. Grant us the wealth that all men want. Make our enemies destitute.

Let us be under your wing, and not fall under the rule of wicked men of guile. Against the fierce passions of wild lust you are unyieldingly strong. You make us victorious in taming these consuming vices. If even the strongest of them tries to kill us, he will be humiliated by your protection over us, for we strive to do no wrong.

The Lord of Vastness [Jupiter] overthrows the wicked who try to injure the just. With a sword of fire he burns the demons who scorn righteousness and morality.

Give to the wicked what the wicked deserve, and to the just and wise give what is excellent, beautiful, resplendent and proper! Do not let us become like they who are greedy for blessings and wealth undeserved, and have no righteous motivations!

The Great Architect brought you to life to put down the greedy and uphold the moral. Your power can split mountains and flood the world. Please receive this song, and protect our children.

Loud may we say it, with voices like heros before a large audience: “that which the righteous love is a true blessing!”

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

© 2010 Vic DiCara, All Rights Reserved

What is “Exaltation”? Why is Jupiter Exalted in Cancer?

First things first. What is “exaltation” anyway?

Background: What is a Sign? What is a Planet?

Here is the metaphor that will help you make sense of the whole thing: The whole starry sky is a wilderness of energy. Wilderness is a wild area uninhabited by people. But in the wilderness there are places that people do occupy. Those are the “developed” areas. In the starry sky, there is similarly a specific area that is is inhabited by “people” – it is called the “Zodiac” – the “people” inhabiting this band of stars are the planets.

So that is part two of the metaphor: (1) The stars are places, some wild, but the ones in the zodiac are cultivated and developed, civilized places. (2) The planets are people.

The planets always move. In astrology this is actually what makes them different from “stars.” As they move through the 12 areas of the Zodiac, the “12 signs,” they are just like people traveling through different countries. Each person has a unique personality – and so does each planet. Each person has a purpose, and so does each planet.

Each planet has a primary mission in your life – a primary role to play in the development of humanity and human beings like you and me.

What is an “Exaltation Sign”?

Remember the metaphor: the signs are places. What are places? I mean, how do places affect people? Because, that is what we are really interested in. We want to know how the signs affect the planets, and to understand this, we just need to ask ourselves how places affect people.

Places affect people by providing resources!

Different places provide different resources. Bars, for example, give good resources for getting drunk and finding cheap sex. Schools, supposedly at least, provide very different resources. If you are a person who wants to study and learn, you will be a little bit “debilitated” if circumstances have you constantly in bars. Bars are not places that provide the resources you need for the mission you want to accomplish. But you would be “exalted” if you were instead in a place that is a classroom in a very good school! That place would provide fantastic resources for your mission.

Now you can easily understand why certain zodiac signs make some planets “exalted” and other planets “debilitated.” To state it explicitly, “exaltation signs” are places in the zodiac which give a specific planet the ideal resources to accomplish its primary goal. “Debilitation sign” are exactly the opposite – the are the signs with the resources that actually frustrate and hamper the planet’s main goal.

Why is Jupiter Exalted in Cancer

Because Jupiter is a person, and Cancer is the place which gives Jupiter the best resources to fulfill his primary mission. Why Cancer? First you have to get to know the person named “Jupiter.”

In a nutshel, Jupiter’s mission is to help you expand your horizons, grow and become bigger and better – so that you can achieve true happiness and eventually enlightenment.  You can break Jupiter’s mission down into two components: (1) happiness leading to self-realization / enlightenment. (2) growth and expansion.

Because Jupiter is interested in promoting emotional happiness and eventual self-realization he does very well in any sign created by the water element. [You might want to learn the role the elements play in creating the signs] The Water element provides resources that are reflective and thus encourage self-knowing in a non-rigid, fluid, emotional and intuitive way. And thus the water element leads from self-knowing to emotional happiness to eventual self-realization and enlightenment.

Obviously, water is a great resource for Jupiter, then – because his mission to to help you achieve happiness which results in the enlightenment of self-realization!

There are three signs made from the element of water: Cancer, Scorpio, and Pisces. Why is Cancer the sign set aside as being “exalting” for Jupiter? Why not Scorpio or Pisces?

To answer this understand that the signs are made not only from “elements” like earth, water, fire and air – but also from “modes” like Cardinal, Fixed, and Dual. [You might also want to  learn about the modes of the zodiac signs.] In a nutshell, the Cardinal mode help things expand and grow (reaching out to the four “cardinal” directions). The Fixed mode helps things become strong and solid. The Dual mode helps things become more open to possibilities.

Cancer is the cardinal water sign. Scorpio the fixed water sign. Pisces is the dual water sign.

All three of them are water, so they are all really nice places for Jupiter, they give Jupiter good resources to bring about happiness and enlightenment. But the fixed nature of Scorpio puts a limit on the other aspect of Jupiter’s prime mission: to grow, enlarge, and expand! So Scorpio is a great sign for Jupiter, but is not the “exaltation sign” of Jupiter, because it gives resources that frustrate Jupiter’s goal of expansion.

How about Pisces? Pisces is dual which makes one open to possibilities. This is really good for jupiter too. Pisces is a fantastic sign for Jupiter to occupy. But Cancer is his exaltation sign, not Pisces. Why?

Although Pisces is great, Cancer is even better, because Cancer is cardinal. The cardinal energy is an ideal resource for Jupiter to use in the pursuit of his mission of expansion and growth! So Cancer is the sign with the best resources for all the aspects of Jupiter’s mission.

Ownership

You also can learn something important about the difference between Pisces and Cancer by considering a third important ingredient of a zodiac sign. Zodiac signs have four important ingredients:

(1) Elemental nature

(2) Mode of operation

(3) Planetary ruler

(4) Natural house order

Jupiter owns Pisces, and the Moon owns Cancer. This is another reason why Cancer is an even better place for Jupiter than Pisces. Huh? That sounds backwards? No, there is a very important lesson to learn here! You may be as great as a planet, but you never achieve your zenith of potential except in partnership with other people. It is in cooperation with the energies of other people that we can rise to greater heights than we can on our own. And this is yet another factor making Cancer, not Pisces, the exaltation sign of Jupiter.

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

© 2010 Vic DiCara, All Rights Reserved

Party with the Planets: Jupiter

When we get up to leave Saturn there is no one around us. Venus is tending to  others and Mercury has disappeared mingling into the crowd. None of the other party-goers are looking in Saturn’s direction, of course. So we sort of aimlessly meander back out into the front room.

Mercury is back in this room. And he enthusiastically waves to us and comes over to share a few more witty and poetic jokes. But oddly he does not offer to help us meet the rest of the planets. So I guess this is where I come in. I walk you over to meet the other planet in the front room.

He is a large man, tall, thick and wide – sturdy and handsome with a strong and broad chest. His complexion is light and fair, and his hair lightening from brown and even a little bit blonde. He is the first planet you have met who looks you straight in the eye all the time – with soft brown eyes. It is the honest, straightforward glance of a man with no reason to hide anything or play any games.

“I’m sorry I did not introduce myself earlier,” he says in a voice so deep, powerful and resonant that the very floor seems to vibrate with it’s baritone. “You were with Mercury and I did not want to interrupt. I am Jupiter.”

Jupiter! You are actually meeting Jupiter!

And you would never have thought that the guru of all the planets would be so modest as to apologize for something like this. Even Jupiter’s clothes radiate modesty. He wears only a simple saffron-yellowed cloth wrapped around his waist, and another draped around his wide shoulders, which display perfect posture. Neither garment has any frill or print.

“It is an honor to meet you,” You manage to say. “Please don’t apologize.”

“Yes, please don’t!” I chime in. Jupiter seems to bringing out the delicate manners even in us!

Jupiter smiles. “What do you think of the people you have met thus far?” He inquires.

“It is a fantastic opportunity!” You express.

“Ah! It is exciting to meet important people, isn’t it! Such an opportunity to grow! What have you learned from those you have met tonight?”

Now it dawns on you. This really is Jupiter. Always delicately encouraging us to think, and to learn… to grow. He is the ideal teacher! “Well,” As speak a look of tremendous satisfaction came over Jupiter – as if your putting on your thinking cap is incredibly enjoyable for him to witness. “From Mercury I would say I learned that intelligence is all about our ability to share things, and thoughts, with other people in fascinating ways. He really enjoys talking!”

“Yes! Excellent!!!” Jupiter’s voice booms over the dim of the party with heartfelt satisfaction at the knowledge you have gained.

“And Venus,” you continue, “She is so natural. I learned that beauty is a natural thing which springs from being kind and helpful, not from just wearing jewelry or putting on makeup.”

“Indeed. She is charming,” answers Jupiter, a bit more reserved than before. “What of Saturn. Did he speak with you?”

“Yes.”

Jupiter’s thick eyebrows raised in appreciation. What did you discuss with that ancient and all-knowing creature?

“It’s strange how weak Saturn appears. How frail – but how he wound up giving me so much strength! He made me see through all the silly things that normally make me so nervous and self-conscious.”

“Yes,” Jupiter answered in firm, if somewhat distant, appreciation of Saturn. “Now, come! I will introduce you to the others.”

- Vic DiCara

www.vicdicara.com

© 2010 Vic DiCara, All Rights Reserved