Monique Pommier © 1997
Before the flame may burn as a serene light, the lamp must be sheltered in a place free from all winds. – Bhagavad Gita
Jupiter is exalted in the sign of Mars’ fall. In the polarization revealed by the exaltation of Jupiter in Cancer and the exaltation of Mars in the opposite sign, Capricorn, Titans (Mars) are opposed to Olympians and their leader Jupiter-Zeus; the Warrior caste to the Brahmin caste—the “castes” that coexist in the human being. The sons of stolen fire (Mars) are exalted in their struggle to master and emerge from the “binding worlds of form”[1] (Capricorn), while the priests of the Sun (Jupiter) descend into these worlds and find exaltation in overshadowing the forms they bring to unfold (Cancer).
It seems paradoxical that the planet of trust and faith, growth and expansion, adventure and hope, would find itself exalted in a sign of protectiveness and containment, inwardness and introversion: Cancer; the planet of truth and philosophy in a sign of sensitivity and imagination.
And again it seems, as in the case of the previous exaltations, that the paradox suggests a more comprehensive process at work in the planet, a more essential principle behind its traditional “meanings,” a deeper purpose that moves it to “mean” this or that — as means to an end.
How may the experience of Cancer be exalting for the ruler of Sagittarius — the one who “soars to the flame that gleams beyond the mind”?[2] What could be more uplifting to the seeker of light than to soar into the joy of light?
The description Rudolph Steiner gives of the moth, and of the chrysalis which, he says, “develops under Jupiter activity,”[3] offers an interesting insight into this question:
A moth flies towards the lamp and finds its death in the light. A caterpillar cannot reach the source of light, which is the Sun, in order to cast itself into it, but would like to do so. The moth casts itself into the flame in one moment, giving the whole of its moth substance over to the light… The caterpillar gradually weaves its caterpillar substance into the light, pauses at night, weaves by day, and spins and weaves a whole cocoon around itself… And now the caterpillar, which has become a chrysalis, has woven around itself, out of its own substance, the sunbeams to which it has merely given physical substance… But that this may happen, it needs the intervention of the Jupiter activity. If you look at a silkworm cocoon, you are looking at woven sunlight, but sunlight given physical form out of the substance of the silk spinning caterpillar itself. The result is an enclosed inner space…[4] [from which the butterfly will emerge].
In this tenuous phenomenon of nature, we can see how Jupiter’s elan of light toward the light, curbed by the finest substance, garnered in the lightest matter, arches its soar and folds its dashes of light around an enclosed space of gestation; how the matter thus lifted and the light captured “build a lighted house” (Cancer)[5] of metamorphosis and emergence. The hieratic Jupiter has curved its neck and wrapped its radiant countenance around the delicate gestation of a butterfly, finding its exaltation in what may be suggestive of its real purpose and work.
The Jupiterian impulse, which has its “dignity” in Sagittarius (the moth flying to its death in the light) is exalted in Cancer — in the gestation of the light-filled butterfly out of a caterpillar. Jupiter’s aspiration to the heights finds its exaltation in lighting up and inspiring the denser realms; the noble force of the lofty and the expansive (Jupiter) is exalted when it tends what is more bound and restrained and elicits motions of soaring joy and imaginations of greater skies in the self-enclosedness of lesser worlds (Cancer).
Jupiter exalted in Cancer — fostering Selfhood
This more exalted view of the Jupiter principle resonates into many spheres of Jupiterian manifestation, quickening a more vibrant and comprehensive understanding of the archetype it stands for in cosmology, mythology or spiritual history.
We can see how, for example, the great Lord of Love and Wisdom (the second Ray Jupiter conveys) who “spins” the planets and orbs their course[6], fosters indeed (Cancer), within the lighted spheres he weaves, the growth and evolving of a universe into its Self.
Or how the Zeus of Greek mythology can be the sky-God with “ample female breasts” (CA) who vaults lovingly over the earth, dispensing the light, pouring the rains and pollinating with the winds.
We see also with a new vividness the descent of the great teachers of humanity, attentively inclined over the growth of humankind’s consciousness and tending the unfolding sun of selfhood. The majestic figure of Melchisedech, for instance, the “priest (Jup) of the most high God,” descends towards Abraham to present him with the bread and the wine (CA) – the gifts of the incarnated Sun – along the same path taken later by the Christ, as he descended towards the ultimate bestowal of spiritualized bread and wine: his flesh and blood.
In the same gesture of exalted Jupiter do the Wise Men bend with their gifts to the incarnating Christ Being. Star men, they bear witness to the starry heavens bestowing their cosmic gift to the earth, now pregnant with the solar light of its very soul.
Jupiter, “The Throne of Brahma,”[7] is exalted in the manger (CA) — the inconspicuous throne within the stables of the human psyche, where the divine soul is born among the domesticated animals of the tamed instinctual nature. The divine teacher is made flesh, and in the prophetic symbol of the manger, already offers himself as divine food, solar light and grace for the self-enclosed caterpillar of humanity. In deed – in the deed of this event – Jupiter is exalted in Cancer.
Would the Jupiterian “Wise Men” have been exalted in the collective memory, had they not come from their far away kingdom (also the 9th house of higher knowledge, home of Jupiter) to the small town of Bethlehem (The 4th house of bread, the house of CA)?
The presence of number nine in the zodiacal connections of Jupiter also resonates with the gestational power and function of Jupiter suggested by Cancer (Nine being the number of gestation and birth— a nine months process). Cancer is nine months away from the liberation of Pisces, whose ancient ruler is Jupiter, while Sagittarius is the ninth sign from the beginning of a zodiacal cycle. The mythological Jupiter abundantly illustrates this gestational role in his tireless “overshadowing” and procreations of demi-gods.
In the blunt mineral language of the physical body, the hardened threads of light of the rib cage (CA) protect the bountiful beating of the heart.
Jupiter rules the etheric heart center[8], the macrocosmic sphere within the human microcosm. “The etheric heart, Steiner explains, is a concentration of the whole cosmic sphere we brought with us as an ether form, a faithful image of the cosmos.[9] It is the sphere through which, in turn, the microcosmic passes into the macrocosmic… By the constant coming together in the etheric heart of the essence of the universe and of all that man does in the world, the opportunity is given throughout human life for human actions to be instilled into the essence of the images of the cosmos.”[10] The heart is the sphere in which the inner life and activity of a human caterpillar contribute to prepare the colors and unfold the wings of the cosmos-in-becoming. There lies in this fostering (CA) of universal becoming the exalted function of the heart (Jupiter).
Interesting in this contemplation of the exaltation of Jupiter is the association of the planet with the “auric envelope” (H. Blavatsky[11]). While it resonates with the image of the chrysalis, this indication also expands Jupiter’s rulership of the heart centre to that of the etheric life in general—a fact the astrologer intuitively experiences in the presence of a strongly Jupiterian person. Indeed, “the heart is the center of life.”[12]
The connection of Jupiter with the etheric life is reflected in the physical organ traditionally ruled by Jupiter: the liver. Physiologically, the liver stores nutrients to be distributed in response to the needs of the body: it is a “house of bread” (CA). The liver is often what needs to be sustained by a Jupiter remedy [13] when the etheric life is depleted or overtaxed by the astral activity of the solar plexus. The image of Prometheus suggests how the liver is eaten up by the “fire” of the personal “self.” The etheric heart – the etheric nature in general – is taxed by imbalances between the neuro-sensorial and metabolic poles of human activity (the poles of spirit and body, thinking and doing). The rhythmic life of the heart sustains the delicate balance of these poles as it “weaves sunbeams with physical substance”—“Rhythm is life.”
Psychologically, the envelope of the self points to the “persona”— the general energy “feel” and presentation of a person hinted at by the placement of Jupiter by sign. The exaltation in Cancer suggests that the persona is uplifted when it nurtures the growth of the Self within it. Jupiter is exalted when it fosters the unfolding of heart energy by opening its space of inclusive understanding to solar plexus matters—so that the “flower” (the heart) may be delivered from the “mud.” To weave instinctual and emotional lunar matters with the light of the soul/sun (reflected in the etheric heart) is the exalted task of Jupiter in the human nature.
Steiner’s association of Jupiter with prana, the etheric and the liver, combined with the traditional correspondence between the astral/emotional nature and the Cancer-ruled stomach and solar plexus, confirms this perspective.
The exalted work of Jupiter— integrative unfolding
In Jupiter’s sphere of light, spirit endlessly bestows itself upon matter and matter assimilates light and grows in refinement. Light densifies, matter lightens.
This dual influence of Jupiter fosters the unfolding and metamorphosis of forms at the heart of evolution. What kindles the unfolding is the Jupiterian force of attraction and inclusiveness, union and fusion. Jupiter fuses into the second Ray of Love and Wisdom it conveys relationship to divinity (growth) and relationship to form (bestowal). A. Bailey says about Jupiter, “Love as relationship to divinity (9) and wisdom as relationship to form (6) lie behind the soul’s intent.”[14] This integrative power is well exemplified when the spiraling down of spirit (6—half of the Cancer sign) and the spiraling up of matter (9—the other half of Cancer) conspire into the sunlight substance of a chrysalis, the health and expanding consciousness of a balanced human-being or the centralized stillness of a world-matrix (CA).
In A. Bailey’s words, Jupiter, “the force which brings all together”[15], the force which “brings the two qualities into synthetic interplay,” is exalted in the sign in which “the synthesis of the final relation [of spirit, soul and form], its linking or essential unity takes place first of all” [16].
The old Commentary describes the process as follows:
Those who are demanding to be saved have cried aloud. Their voices penetrate into the formless world and there evoke response.
Those who, in distant aeons have pledged themselves to save and serve respond. Their cry … penetrates into the dark places within the world of form.
And thus a vortex is established and kept alive by that constant dual sound. And then a touch is made, and for a space and during a time, the two are one – the Saving Souls and the units to be served.
Slowly the vision of the Saving One becomes a light which guides the Crying Ones into the place of light. [17]
From form (the Moon – exoteric ruler of Cancer) to formlessness (Neptune – its esoteric ruler), Jupiter is the luminous guide, the loving gardener of all growth, the dispenser of the light and warmth that tend the lesser lives. He is that which he tends: the growth of consciousness from self-protection to Self-bestowing, from instinctual identification with the separate unit (Moon) to soulful resonance with the whole and redemptive, comprehensive vision (Neptune).
Jupiter embraces receiving and giving in the inclusive light of joy and gratitude, where the Gods and their creations exchange their gifts in mutual exaltation.
The function of Jupiter in the light of Cancer: to sustain a sphere of becoming
Jupiter’s exaltation in Cancer opens the way to a more complete understanding of the themes and meanings traditionally associated with the planet: philosophy, religion, faith, beliefs, teaching, higher knowledge.
When we understand how Jupiter brings together and relates the microcosmic units with the greater Lives enveloping them, we grasp in a new way how it presides over religion (lat: religere, to link, bind, tie). It offers participation in timeless events and universal states of being, and fosters ceremonials that inspire and ennoble the human experience. It provides a sacred space of identification with some divine representative (Jupiter) whose integrality of being graces human incoherencies with coherence, existential voids with compassionate presence; whose breadth of wisdom and vision heals doubts and guilt with benevolent truth, and instills universal trust in isolated aspirations. The religious experience fuses human faith with divine grace, conceptual representations with divine revelation; it inspires noble feelings and healing imaginations. And within the golden [18] vault of ceremonials meant to transfuse human existence with the life of a God, the pain of separateness dissipates (Neptune dissolves Moon), and the heart experiences the pulse of a greater life.
…The caterpillar, which has become a chrysalis, has woven around itself, out of its own substance, the sunbeams to which it has merely given physical substance … But that this may happen, it needs the intervention of the Jupiter activity. [19]
Jupiter’s soul energy weaves a sphere of mindful sustenance in which we, as individuals and groups, dwell and grow. Jupiter lives in the spheres that nurture our growth by enveloping us in cohesive mindsets, outlooks, hopes and representations—representation being a particular formation of substantiated light (the light of the mind). Individually and collectively, Jupiter weaves “that in which we live and move and have our being.”
Religions, philosophies, cosmologies, political and legal systems are instances of such spheres through which we entertain rapport with the larger and greater being we ultimately are. So is culture. Metaphorically, Jupiter is the atmo-sphere—the “sphere of Atma,” the world-breath—that subtly envelops and fosters the spirit of a nation, an ethnic group, a city or family, and within which, hardly aware of the chrysalis swaddling it, an entity grows. It is what the elusive word “culture” designates: the specific atmosphere of a field of human growth—from a country to an institution, from an organization to a family; an “incubator” (CA) one may be only vaguely aware of, until it is left behind. In addition to beliefs and mores, proprieties and codes, it is made of a particular source of meaningfulness or set of values exalted in silent consensus; a general style which signals belonging (CA); a certain conception of “expansion”; the sameness of an inner sky, too vast to perceive (from the sheltered-unit side of the Moon), yet as clear to envision once transcended (Neptune) or left behind as the climate and vegetation, the skies and landscapes of a place on earth one has lived in and left. It is a subtle order, composed of patterns woven as an etheric sheath around a group, preserving and maintaining its particular integrity and allowing its specific process of edification and growth.
Jupiter breathes in the shared beliefs and values, tastes and motivations that make up the aura of a (group) mind and what exudes from it. It pervades the particular weave of impulses from the past ( 9) and intuitions of the future (6 ) which “represents” its identity.
From mass-consciousness and culture (CA) to a conscious philosophy of life (Jupiter), to the spiritualization of a group’s aspirations (Neptune), Jupiter pursues its task and fulfill its joy of fostering the growth of an entity, its presence and its influence.
The “exaltation” of the teacher— to develop by envelopment
Jupiter is also known as the planet of teaching and higher knowledge. Its exaltation in Cancer suggests that the real teachings and the true gifts of wisdom are the ones assimilated and incorporated into the sentient and etheric being of the teacher. The truth of his being is the highest truth a teacher will impart, and the wisdom he infuses is the light that suffuses his being. More than an imparter of knowledge, the Jupiter-teacher is the gardener of seeds, the master of right weathers, appropriate rains and opportune droughts; one who brings the rays of love and wisdom to bear upon the seeds its exalted task is to help unfold (CA). His wisdom is to nurture appropriately the becoming of folded worlds, and “to guide and save them into the place of light” (Neptune). His guidance is round, filled with a texture of loving clarity, reminiscent of the luminous June warmth (CA), in which the fruit swell—around the seeds they have grown to nourish. The Jupiter teacher speaks the sunlit, “golden” words that penetrate the mind with germinative contents. He surrounds with the philosophical and spiritual abundance that respects gestation and triggers right contractions. He develops by envelopment. He offers the questions that may induce the coalescing of appropriate truth, and elicit a knowledge rooted in growing understanding. He aids birth. He is the “maieutikos,” the midwife (CA) Socrates saw himself to be, eager to assist spiritual delivery in his students.
The exaltation of Jupiter resonates in the words addressed by a student of Fulbertus, the founder of the School of Chartres in medieval France, to one of his fellow students after the death of their teacher he refers to as “our venerable Socrates”: “We ought not to believe that the loving thoughts with which in his goodness he enfolded us as in the womb of the mother have had an end.”[20]
The exaltation in Cancer indicates that it is the quality of sensitivity, the intuitive perception of what is needed which exalts all knowledge bestowed. If he is to fulfill his mission, the teacher must adapt to the lines of unfoldment of the student, as light and warmth do to the developing plant.
Lastly, the exaltation in Cancer suggests how incarnation in a physical form is the privileged way of expansion and growth (Jupiter) for the soul. “Jupiter and its influences indicate that the way of incarnation is the “beneficent” method of evolutionary unfoldment and that the way of love-wisdom (second ray) is the way for humanity to go.”[21] The metamorphoses of successive incarnations foster universalization of consciousness. Representations give way to Presence of Being. Complex Imaginations become the highly simple Image of God.
The Exaltation in a Chart
How the exaltation of Jupiter in a chart (or its exalted presence in the chart of a person with Cancer rising) will express itself depends on the scope of a person’s psychosocial consciousness—from an identification with the protectiveness and self-absorption of the enclosed form (Moon) to a full luminosity of soul spaciousness and a beneficent influence on a community or a culture (Neptune).
If the form aspect of life dominates, and the urge to expand is centered on the personality, the Jupiter activity focuses on securing a protective and nurturing social envelope for the ego. It weaves around the person a sphere of emotional warmth and familiarity, deference and personal influence, with the secondary benefits of self-importance and self-aggrandizement. The tendency is to maintain and enlarge an emotionally comforting context and cocoon (Moon). There is an abundance of “the watery life of emotional reaction.”[22] At a socio-personal level, Jupiter in Cancer points to the cohesive energy that preserves and maintains the ties and traditions of a group. Its archetypal expression is the family patriarch or matriarch, great provider and caretaker, possibly overly absorbent and autocratic. As long as the life is centered on the form, the chrysalis may harden into an oppressive “rib-cage.”
As the soul gradually infuses and expands the consciousness, Jupiter acts increasingly as the transitive presence, the “pontifex” (lit. the bridgemaker) between the microcosm it nurtures and protects, and the macrocosmic light (Neptune) it transmits. It nourishes the forms that host the ongoing revelation of the Self. Its attractive, cohesive influence conjures up the creative, imaginative spirit within. Philosophical imagination is an active expression of exalted Jupiter—a conceptual wisdom fused with personal experience; a presentation of understanding in unifying images (MO/NE/CA/JU) that blend form and principle inspiringly.
The soul-infused personality, pervaded with the wise kindness of the Second Ray, has the potential to become the gifted moral authority of a community, a spiritual leader whose magnetic aura [23] embraces his group and serves as a vibrant container for its continuous unfoldment. Because such an individual is in sensitive “touch” with his/her group and has the capacity to hold it in his/her heart consciousness and etheric field, s/he has an inherent aptitude to foster its cohesive expansion as a group.
Both Mussolini and Gorbachev have Jupiter in Cancer in their natal chart, both emphasized by placement.[24] On one hand, we see the Italian Duce “wrapping” his exalted ego-power around the mass-consciousness of his fellow-countrymen; On the other hand, Gorbachev enveloping the “perestroika,” i.e. the “restructuring” of the old Soviet caterpillar with the golden threads of “glasnost”; tactfully nurturing the metamorphosis, circumspect with the forces and forms of the past (9) while soaring with the spirit of the future (6). Deeper than his political perception of Russia’s necessary transition was the guiding light of a spiritual aim to assist “the new world civilization taking shape in the world.” The idea of the new International Foundation for Economic, Social and Political Research – otherwise known as the Gorbachev Fund – which he inaugurated, was to get involved in the “movement towards a new civilization”[25] — to involve itself as a cocoon around the gestation of the future.
With regard to the role he has assumed as a bridge between worlds (vertically in releasing the spirit of his country; horizontally in letting “curtains” and walls dissolve between nations), it is interesting to read an article he wrote in 1992 where he expresses the deep respect and affinity that he, an “atheist” leader, feels with the pontiff of Rome. The article ends with the following: “We are in a very delicate phase of transition during which man has and must have a decisive weight on the future of societies. And everything which may serve to reinforce the consciousness of man, his spirit, is more important to-day than ever.”[26]
Nelson Mandela is another inspiring leader and protective figure of transition. Born with Jupiter conjunct the Sun rising in Cancer, we could say that he identifies (the identity which sun and ascendant represent) with the qualities, activity and purpose of exalted Jupiter, or that exalted Jupiter finds in him a special representative. Mandela’s influence has been essential in promoting the healing of separativeness (Apartheid) in South Africa, and in building a lighted house wherein the “I” of his country’s unborn Self might dwell.
With De Klerk, he was awarded the Nobel Peace prize for his efforts to end apartheid and bring about a peaceful transition to non-racial (i.e. non-divided) democracy—a metamorphosis into a more unified national being. In 1994, the “Son of Africa, Father of a Nation“[27] was elected president of South Africa in the country’s first all-race elections. He signed a new South African constitution, the result of six years of negotiation between white and black leaders. Cautiously, well in the fostering spirit of Cancer, and perhaps “fretting that fellow-Africans might regard South Africa as a regional bully,”[28] he has been extending to the larger African Nation his role as a teacher of cohesion and a leader of peaceful transitions. More recently, his efforts have been significant in Zaire, where he convinced rebel leader Laurent Kabila to agree to talk with Zairean President Mobutu.
This transition marks a significant step of growth and maturation for Africa as a whole. In claiming and demonstrating his emancipation from the tyranny of fellow-African feeling (lesser Cancer) and his capacity (earned through years of internal peace-making) to absorb resistance to his progressive step of inclusiveness, Mandela is calling for an “African renaissance“— an era of responsible African government which would no longer seek to mask each other wrong doings in the name of African solidarity (again, a lesser side of Cancer).
The Cancer House
The subtle presence of exalted Jupiter in the atmosphere of this house suggests the golden “aura” of metamorphic potential that surrounds this area of experience.
The space of personal vulnerability and self-protectiveness, as well as empathic feeling and care this area represents in anyone’s life is a potential enclosure of privileged soul-growth, meta-morphosis and self-unfolding (from Moon to Neptune), if the intrinsic element of self-protection expands to become a magnetic source of inclusive understanding and support. This qualifies not only the experiences, but the work done in this “house” of existence. The heart seeks to beat within the lunar substance gathered and woven with light.
It is the area of experience of which one may ask: “Is it a lighted house, or it is a dark prison? If it is a lighted house, you will attract to its light and warmth all who are around you, and the magnetic pull of your soul will save many. If you are still an isolated soul, you will have to pass through the horrors of a more complete isolation and loneliness, treading alone the dark way of the soul.”[29]
The Cancer house in one’s chart is a context in which one may experience and develop the gestating and metamorphic power of love-wisdom, faith and trust; a space of potential shedding of what subtly imprisons the Self, in oneself or those in one’s care. Soul gifts and abundance are bestowed and received in this house, weaving a chrysalis around the emergence of a more authentic self-knowing and self-expression. A personal cocoon awaits to be outgrown; a spiritual cocoon awaits to be woven and nurture growth.
This house is the pool where “the spirit of God moves upon the waters”[30] (CA) and ripples them, at a moment of grace, so that whoever can “soar” to the occasion may step into a new wholeness.[31]
Jupiter in a chart
The insights into Jupiter gained from pondering its exaltation in Cancer can be brought to bear upon its placement in a chart.
The sign of Jupiter gives indications about the style of the inner teacher, the way to nurture self-growth and expand into greater soul expression. It also suggests the nature of the essential step of growth in a lifetime. It points to a certain image of the archetypal Self, a conception of the divine and the True. By house and sign, it points to the optimal path of attunement to soul wisdom, the best way to weave its gold in existential matters.
The exoteric dispositor of Jupiter indicates a specific way in which a person tends to indulge in the form side of life; the way in which the form (physical, emotional or mental) tends to be fed to serve its own ends.
The esoteric dispositor, as well as the spiritual energy of the sign, shed light on the transpersonal quality apt to increase the fusion of soul and personality; how love and wisdom tend and seek to manifest; what characterizes the “soul atmosphere” of a person; what gifts of soul and spiritual abundance the individual bestows on his environment; what quality of grace and nobility (in feeling, doing, thinking or being) facilitates, simply by surrounding other beings with its energy, a vibrant and vital unfolding from caterpillar-like patterns and thought-forms. What particular type of teacher an individual is and how he may be an inspiration for others; where his moral leadership lies.
In the light of the exaltation, we also grasp more fully how the return of Jupiter, every twelve years, to its natal position signals a new step of the spiral of soul-growth—a subcycle of soul “incarnation” (Cancer)—and how the lasting transits of Jupiter to a natal planet (when it happens to go back and forth over its degree by retrogradation) tend to magnetically draw forth and bring to light inner contents, “truths” and new potentials of the principle overshadowed – overlighted – by Jupiter.
THE FALL OF JUPITER IN CAPRICORN
Jupiter falls in the sign opposite to Cancer—Capricorn. The forces of growth retire and “freeze” in the winter; and from the former abundance of nature, a bare skeleton is preserved.
In Capricorn, the expansive spirit is limited by conformity and conservatism. The culture has lost its ferment, and maintains rigidified forms and crystallized traditions of forgotten meaning.
Wisdom is lost to academic knowledge, moral impulse to the moral law. Religion organizes the faith. Gestures are performed, devoid of true soul atmosphere. The physical world has absorbed and buried the light. By the same token however, it presents us with the most perfected of our vehicles – the physical body – while the astral body, associated with Cancer, undergoes constant transition and redemptive growth.
Materialism is the atmosphere of the day—a chrysalis of mineral gold. Economic consideration invades the vision. The sky is economic. The “growth” is monetary—the “added value.” Interestingly, Karl Marx was born with Jupiter in Capricorn, and we have witnessed worlds born of the chrysalis of his words.
Yet, if Jupiter’s expansiveness is at its weakest where structures have solidified, it is also least needed – and therefore disappears – when growth has been completed (J) and the process of fusion has allowed soul awareness to fully penetrate daily life. The Sun has dispersed the cloud formations of the psyche and pervades the atmosphere of the inner sky – Jupiter – whose eye, we are told, is the sun [32]. The personal atmosphere is transcended; all intermediaries fall away from the initiate who has completed the fusion. After the nine signs marking the steps of gestation, Capricorn – the zodiacal tenth – is “connected with the birth of the spiritual microcosm and with the death of the physical universe.”[33]
In the advanced individual, the presence of Jupiter in Capricorn suggests integrity and social responsibility. We see this broad spiritual sense of responsibility in the use of material abundance in Karl Marx’s philosophy: The unifying impulse (Jupiter) which ruled his Aquarius ascendant esoterically, most characteristically (in Capricorn) spread itself around the economic sphere of human life, which he saw as the necessary and most realistic sphere of transition towards the love and brotherhood he envisioned as the ideal atmosphere of the earth.
Paradoxically, such a move would have required for its success a more spiritualized world than the current culture, and a more evolved level of consciousness than what religion requires. Be it “the opium of the people,” religion wisely and surely begins where conscious growth needs to begin—with the astral nature. Religion refines and spiritualizes the instinctual forces of the psyche and offers channels for its aspirations, whereas ideology attempts to control and organize them. This, the Soviet Union did, petrifying the soaring breath of the hopes, visions and faith of his people in the fake expansiveness, the artificial joy and formalized (Cap) enthusiasm for the future (Jup) of the gigantic statues of its “Socialist Realistic” art. Paralyzed in the chrysalis of the state’s “truth-machine,” the growth of the Russian soul slowly froze in their smile.
It may well be, however, that it is when the physical-economic sphere (CAP), this most obscure and least mastered of the human spheres (where instinctual Mars is exalted) is gradually spiritualized and becomes reasonable – that is, capable of responding to the Reason of it all, Love – that Jupiter’s influence as we know it will truly fall, unneeded, along with the illusion of separation which the physicalness (Capricorn) of incarnation precisely allows.
The illusion of separation is a necessary condition of revelation—the revelation of spirit in forms of matter. The separateness of physicality is necessary for individual journeys to reveal the light of life, and spiritual imagination to deploy the wings of a unique “butterfly” of Being. Only by way of a physical-etheric heart can the Egoic lotus of the soul freely unfold into a perfectly singular “Imagination” of the heart of Being. Although this Imagination is destined to fall, it garners and upholds the living spirit, whose deployment into the “I” of the human soul needs the “lighted house” provided by the ever finer, more luminous and vibrant weaving of earth and heaven – of individual matters and universal spirit – symbolized in the very graph of Cancer.
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Exaltation of the Sun Exaltation of the Moon Exaltation of Mercury