Of Jupiter, Aquarius and Me

In several hours Jupiter will be rolling into Aquarius. The last time Jupiter visited the sign and exactly conjoined my natal Sun was in February, 1997. He brought me luck then. It was the exact time when I found a new place to live. We'd spent over a year in an apartment which was uncomfortable and totally unsuitable for us, after having lost everything when our previous apartment and all possessions were destroyed by fire. I found a nice house to rent, and still clearly recall the helpful lift of spirits at that time.

During the same year though my mother was diagnosed with lung and brain cancer in June, in mid-August she died. She left me her small house on the coast. I hesitate to describe this as lucky, because my mother (and I watching her) suffered terribly, but the year brought me a house which later on became home for me and my late partner, after I retired.

Each Jupiter conjunction with one's Sun occurs amid a different set of planetary aspects to other parts of the chart. So these events can't be taken in isolation. It is of interest to note them though. My natal Jupiter is in Pisces, one of its traditional rulerships, and it lies exactly semi-sextile (30 degrees from), my natal Sun. I'm not sure whether this makes its once-a-decade visits more significant or not.

A previous Jupiter transit of Aquarius, in 1985, also brought both bad news and good news. Mid-year I was told I needed a hysterectomy. There was one exploratory hospital stay and another for the operation. The good news was that there was no cancer, only fibroids, and my operation and recovery was very easy. The surgeon called me his "star patient" due to my rapid recovery. At the time of the operation, in September Jupiter was retrograde, and within a degree of my natal Sun! Life and health improved dramatically during the rest of the year.

I can go back around another 10 years to the time when Jupiter conjoined my Sun in November 1973. I entered a national competition in the UK at that time, but cannot remember the exact date. It was one of those competitions, then so common, where the task was to make up reasons for buying such-and-such product. In this case the product was Yardley perfumes, the competiton appeared in a now defunct magazine called "Over 21" (which I'm clutching in the photograph). We received the good news that I was the winner in late January 1974, and took the prize at the end of April - two weeks' holiday, VIP accommodation with spending money, in Tangier, Morocco (North Africa). Later the same year I had a couple more, smaller, competition wins.

So..... this time around, as Jupiter pays me a visit once more, I'm keeping a very open mind. The conjunction with my Sun will be exact in the first week of February. One thing I'm feeling already is that my frozen shoulder is very slowly improving, though it's too early to say there's a Jupiter connection. I've been bothered by it for around 6 months, it ought to be due for improvement any time now.

An added attraction (?) this year is the solar eclipse on 26 January which will hit my natal Sun within 10 minutes of arc. It misses my birthday by a day. Last time this happened was in 1990, and I don't recall anything significant then, or during that year. No doubt there were some minor events which the eclipse could have triggered, but they can't have been important enough for me to commit them to memory.

I'll be keeping an astro eye open for several months on both the Jupiter and eclipse fronts, and report back, should anything remarkable occur.