[This is an updated version of an article first published in early 2010]
[Scroll down for analysis of the Jupiter-Saturn cycle]
At the time of writing this update, Jan '11, Jupiter has just left Pisces and moved into Aries, making this a retrospective look at Jupiter in Pisces...How was it for you?
Jupiter signifies the principle of growth, expansion, faith, wisdom, higher learning and reward. In Pisces, Jupiter symbolises growth through idealism and the expansion of spirit, wisdom from the higher realms, faith through connecting with the ephemeral and intangible and reward through creative involvements, healing energies and acts of compassion.
Sensitive types may have found that their emotional, material and psychic boundaries were more fluid and more porous during Jupiter’s time in Pisces, as they opened up to the vibes, energies and feelings of those around them. If you were affected, it was a good time to brush up on your psychic protection techniques, to guard against absorbing negative vibes. William Bloom’s book on the subject is my personal favourite. It's never too late to start. Even though Jupiter has now left Pisces, don't forget that Neptune will be entering Pisces in 2011. Also, don’t forget that others are also sensitive to your ‘stuff’ so check in with yourself now and again to ensure that you are projecting positive vibes.
Jupiter raced through Pisces, entering Aries on 6 June 2010, then turned Retrograde in July 2010, re-entering Pisces in early September before turning direct at 23 degrees of Pisces in mid November. Jupiter then settled into Aries from January 2011.
Jupiter was very busy in Pisces and is busy in Aries too. From the spring of 2010 through to the spring of 2011, Jupiter forms a series of opposition aspects with Saturn, marking the halfway point of the current 20 year Jupiter-Saturn cycle.
The Jupiter-Saturn Cycle
The Jupiter-Saturn cycle is reliably reflected in world economic cycles. Starting with the conjunction, the first 10 years of the cycle (the waxing phase) represents a period of growth, expansion, risk taking and extravagance.
We began the current cycle in 2000, with Jupiter and Saturn conjoining in materialistic, luxury loving Taurus. As we rang in the new millennium, the economy was in a state of low inflation, high output and low unemployment, with government assurance that the boom-bust economy was over for good. They were wrong. The stock market had soared, but in 2000 share prices fell dramatically when the dot-com bubble burst. But the lessons weren’t learned and a largely unregulated economy recovered quickly and started to grow unbounded as we collectively discovered easy credit and bought into the idea that we could have everything we wanted and now. The jet-set lifestyles of the rich and famous suddenly felt within easy reach, with many ordinary mortals becoming rich and famous in their own right thanks to the ascent of reality television. The huge rise in house prices turned many of the baby boomer generation into property millionaires, with the younger generation and others who had previously found it difficult to get credit, given easy access to huge mortgages. It couldn’t last though and the collapse of the property bubble in 2007 and the subprime mortgage scandal made credit harder to get, forcing many businesses into receivership and many families out of their homes when they couldn't keep up repayments. Many more individuals were cutting up their credit cards and facing up to debts resulting from the extravagance of their easy credit lifestyles. The truth about the credit crunch was revealed in late 2008 with the collapse of a number of the world’s best known financial institutions, with most of the rest receiving tax-payer funded bailouts to keep them in business.
So, where are we now? While the recession has officially ended (although there is still some debate about that, depending on how you define recession) many economic commentators acknowledged that significant risks remained for the world economy in 2010 and remain through 2011. This of course is the period of the oppositions of this Jupiter-Saturn cycle, with the opposition representing a crisis point in the cycle
The first opposition was in May ’10 with Jupiter in Pisces and Saturn retrograde in Virgo. In the UK, this coincided with a general election and with no overall winner, a Con-Dem coalition was formed, warning that savage cuts to public spending and services were on their way. This opposition coincided with the waning squares of the current Saturn-Pluto and Jupiter-Pluto cycles in cardinal signs and the last of the ongoing Saturn-Uranus oppositions, in Libra and Aries. With all of this action occurring around the very public Aries point (the first degree of the cardinal signs), there was no hiding, it was time to face grim reality. All of these measurements represent crisis points in their own right, so it’s not surprising that these collected measurements - a cardinal t square - have been dubbed by many astrologers as the ‘cardinal climax’.
By the time of the second opposition in August 2010, the UK government were preparing to announce their promised savage cuts to public services and public spending, with resultant mass job losses (see, politicians do sometimes keep their promises). Meanwhile, the City and Wall Street ‘masters of the universe’ proclaimed business as usual and continued to award themselves huge bonuses, after a bumper couple of years benefiting from low interest rates, quantitative easing and financial restructurings caused by the recession. Politicians on both sides of the pond seem powerless or unwilling to do anything about it. Meanwhile, unemployment is growing, especially amongst young people, but even the educated, professional classes are joining the dole queues in increasing numbers. Those in work are facing pay freezes, a rising cost of living, higher taxation and the promise of rising inflation to come, which will drive up costs even more but will not promise a rise in pay (unless you're an executive fat cat). While we may have all felt richer during the naughties, we are now discovering that the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever, particularly evident in the split between the now suddenly struggling professional middle classes and some of their old university roommates, who ‘got lucky’ and joined the new ranks of the super-rich.
But, as the upcoming Pluto-Uranus squares predict, the masses are stirring and we are seeing fury from the general public who are taking to the streets in huge numbers, such as the student protests in the UK. In other countries too...a people's revolt in Tunisia ousted the government and now the people are marching again against the interim government and demanding democratic elections. There have been general strikes and protests against austerity measures in Greece, with similar scenarios across other countries in the Eurozone. Meanwhile other economies continue to grow, with China on track to be the world's biggest economy by 2024.
After Jupiter and Saturn make their last opposition in March 2011, we enter the second half of the cycle, the waning half, historically marked by retraction, caution and withdrawal.
We shall have to wait and see what happens next, but let’s hope that Jupiter in Pisces has done a good job of paving the way for Neptune’s ingress into Pisces in Spring 2011, ushering in a new era of compassion, healing and philanthropy and does not merely offer us the opportunity to continue to bury our head in the sand about the state of our world and its financial structures.
With love and blessings,
Mandi
http://www.mandilockley.com/
Astrology research: Mundane Astrology by Michael Baigent, Nicholas Campion and Charles Harvey
Additional research: Wikipedia
Finally, here is the link to the Disasters Emergency Committee website, if you would like to make a donation to the Haiti Earthquake Appeal: http://www.dec.org.uk/
