Jupiter’s Curse

The curse intensifies:

The subject of the ongoing affliction to Jupiter might be slightly overwrought by now, but there has been a significant development this past month which is important to mention.

When Mars moved into Virgo on August 19th, it not only initiated a full curse of Pisces, which I went into last month, but it also intensified the already existing affliction to Jupiter —who has been under the duress of both Saturn and Rahu since the beginning of this year. This is a little bit like kicking someone when they’re already down, with Mars being the sharp foot.

Jupiter now has the influence of all of the malefic planets in the zodiac on it. This makes it completely cursed, and is difficult because Jupiter is basically the connective tissue of the zodiac, which holds everything together. He does this by making sure things are in their right place, through the space element which he rules, and by remaining positive and optimistic even in the face of adversity. When he is heavily afflicted he may struggle both to be positive and to be the cohesive influence that he is meant to be. Many things can fall apart and everything can feel more challenging than usual.

When a planet is afflicted, the element which it rules is compromised. The element is actually the way it distributes its karma, so when afflicted it will show itself by making the areas of life heavily impacted by that element more challenging. Because the space element is what tends to keep the basic harmony in life, its deterioration causes things to clash more than usual. The buffer bewteen you and the world can feel a little thinner, and your internal head space can be more cluttered and negative. There is an overall compressive effect to this transit, which means that many people are not getting the breathing space they need and may be more reactive or depressed as a result. Afflicted space element in the body can show up as more tension in muscles and between joints.

The task here is to dig a little deeper for hope and inspiration, find micro moments of rest and be on watch for the things, activities, conversations which give you a sense of spaciousness, and work on cultivating an inner sense of spaciousness in compressing external conditions—something which many forms of meditation train the practitioner to do. You can also work with sound, which modifies space, by either eliminated unwanted and unpleasant noise, or introducing pleasant and spacious sounds (spiritual music, nature sounds, etc). Hold tightly to the deepest roots of your inherent optimism—that way even if the branches get broken new growth is possible once conditions improve.

Mars will move on to Libra on October 4th, but this will actually be a continuation of Jupiter’s curse, only this time with the 7th house aspect of Mars which is actually more direct. This will make it more obvious where the difficulty is coming from in your life, which can be helpful in removing or reducing it.

Jupiter is not outside of the gaze of Mars until November 15th. If you already feel at your limit of compressive forces in your life then I suggest developing some personal practices now to protect your sense of spaciousness. With a transit like this, generally changing external circumstances to improve the situation will not make much of a dent, since the disturbance in space has to show up somewhere. But there is no limit to what you can do in terms of freeing your internal environment from the burdens that have made their way in there.