Jupiter in Libra: Quest for Equilibrium
On September 9, Jupiter ingresses Libra, which happens every 12 years. This is like the Great Equinox in the Sky. Jupiter can have so much emphasis that it can feel like the Sun. It's 1,200 times the size of the Earth and denser than Saturn. And it moves a lot more slowly than the Earth, taking a year to go through a sign rather than a month.
There's something in astrology called the Aries Point. The Aries Point is the great granddaddy of where cultural meets individual—the crossroads of the personal and the political. It begins at the first degree of Aries: a degree that has all the power of a planet, even when empty. then it extends to the first degree of all the other cardinal signs. That includes Libra. Jupiter in this position will expand and enlarge something about experience. It's as if the scale of everything will increase.
Or you might think of Jupiter in Virgo as having undergone an initiation of sorts, sorting out many matters of relationship, and then it enters Libra—the official sign of relationship.
Mars, Saturn and Neptune: Out of the Background
In the background of all the astrology I've described is a long, unusual aspect between Saturn (the planet of structure and of time) and Neptune (the planet of dissolving and of dreams). There is tension here between the seemingly real and the seemingly unreal.
Because Neptune is involved, the Saturn-Neptune square has had a tendency to disappear into the background of existence. It's been this silent, subtle pressure, as if leaning in on everyone's eardrums but just below the level of perception.
Between now and August 24, Mars will be passing through this square. Mars has spent all of this year in Scorpio and Sagittarius. It's been collecting the energy of one sign associated with sex and another with religion.
Saturn in Sagittarius can turn lunch in the park into some kind of heavy, religiously tainted experience; everything seems way too serious under this influence.
And now Mars is about to come along and challenge this influence, this authority. That feels like pressure, which means the pressure to change what you believe. Remember that in Sagittarius, this will exist on the level of religion; that is, taken not on faith but on unproven authority. This is the thing about religion. It's taken so seriously, with absolutely nothing to back it up. It colonizes the brain, ending any real discussion of life, death or sex.
Mars is not having any of this. As I see it, Mars is in revolutionary mode, at its most fiery, enhanced by fiery Sagittarius, and the square to volatile Neptune. This aspect, as well, will bring to the foreground much that has been hidden or that has dropped beneath the level of liminality; that is, conscious awareness.
I would rate this aspect as somewhat dangerous, with a high potential for both overreaction and creative change. It's going to be a wild week or two in the news—as if it hasn't been wild enough. Under this astrology, though, we might see things that stretch all credulity and test the definitions of known reality.
You may decide it wasn't so real after all.
