On October 10th, Jupiter entered into the water sign of Scorpio, where it will stay until November 8th, 2018. The tone has shifted away from the light of polite ideas and into the shadows where passions and cravings rule. For better or worse, you are going to have to become more instinctual about people, sensing their movements with the heightened awareness of a predator.
Reflections Upon the Water
A full Jupiter cycle is twelve years. Thus, the growth and development you experience during this transit of Jupiter in Scorpio will have some correlation to what you were going through twelve years ago from October 2005 to November 2006.
If your memory is a bit muddled, remember that this was the time right before the Great Recession in the United States. The biggest movie of the year was Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Man’s Chest (a cartoon heart of darkness tale).
This was also the year that The International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded Pluto to the category of dwarf planet, an act of hubris during a Scorpionic year. And North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon, an event that certainly seems connected to the world’s major concerns at present.
With this trivia to stimulate your memory, think back upon that time and pause for some deep reflection.
If you feel like the last transit of Jupiter in Scorpio represented a time of hardship, it would be wise to acknowledge where the seeds of wisdom were planted even in the midst of that darkness. You survived that time for a reason and it is time to acknowledge that and honor whatever strength it represents in you.
Since Jupiter is the planet of wisdom and expansion, its quest into Scorpio’s realm will plunge you into some intensely cathartic experiences this year journeying through intimacy, death, and transmutation.
With Jupiter in Scorpio, the dark waters glint with hunger. Your appetites will have to be watched carefully, lest they get out of control.
Unlike Saturn transits, most people hold Jupiter transits in high regard, associating them with growth, abundance, and wisdom. The primordial dream of endless feasting lies deep within the marrow of everyone’s bones and Jupiter transits bring the joy and satisfaction of turning those mythic feasts into a reality.
But Scorpio transits represent intense periods of metamorphosis. Though Jupiter does encourage abundant increase in wealth and social influence, in Scorpio you will learn that growth without wisdom can be just as bad as restriction.
When wisdom is lacking, the dark side of Jupiterian energy emerges. The god’s heart of darkness can be known through decadence, greed, and over-inflation. So during Jupiter’s time in Scorpio, you may be blessed with growth and expansion, but this transit will test your wisdom by tempting you into a dangerous dance with decadence.
If you are interested in getting a free personalized horoscope for Jupiter in Scorpio, click here!
Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll
The season of Jupiter in Scorpio will be driven by primal desires. For those still drunk on Libra’s Venusian bubbles, be forewarned that Scorpionic pleasures come armed to the teeth. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll are all double-edged swords and they have a way of cutting you when you’re not paying attention.
Keep the images of swords alive for the coming year because Scorpio is a sign ruled by Mars, where power is an instinctual craving. Libra’s beauty and social refinement will be subsumed by Jupiter in Scorpio’s ferocious hunger to gain influence, advantage, and victory.
This is the end, beautiful friend
Mars’ attitude is simple: the more power you have, the better. Therefore, when philosophical Jupiter is in Scorpio, wisdom will be gained through a careful examination of your hungers and desires for power.
When Jupiter is in Scorpio, your most repressed or subconscious sense of disempowerment will likely rise to the surface, asking to be acknowledged and addressed. With Scorpio’s probing intensity, you will be taken into the darkest places in your heart to encounter the seething core of the fear, obsession, poverty, or addiction that plagues you. For those already seeking catharsis and revelation, there will be some very welcome breakthroughs. For those who do not see this coming, a dark night of the soul is imminent.
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No matter what form of disempowerment you have been living with, this Jupiter transit will bring opportunities to rise above impositions, pushing you beyond the limitations of the past. If you have the willpower, you can let weakness die, turning wasted energies into strength. You can become self-possessed once again, sexually potent and creatively inspired.
But in order to accomplish this metamorphosis, you must be willing to initiate a journey towards death, fearlessly entering into the heart of darkness within.
Heart of Darkness
When you are in need of deep psychological transformation, it is always advisable to use art and/or ritual as the mythic framework to aid you in the process. Thus, to initiate the metamorphic journey of Jupiter in Scorpio, I recommend viewing Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.
Apocalypse Now is a cinematic interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s novella, Heart of Darkness. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the film immortalizes Conrad’s mythic journey into the darkness of the human soul. The film may depict many horrors, but great art offers communion and catharsis to those in need.
In one interview, Coppola described his film as
“an experience that would give its audience a sense of the horror, the madness, the sensuousness and the moral dilemma of the Vietnam war”.
Apocalypse Now is an artistic encapsulation of the lessons that Jupiter’s transit through Scorpio will summon. The film’s imagery and narrative offer much to consider, but the making of the film contains some of the biggest lessons of all. Apocalypse Now was an invocation of the dark side of Jupiter. As Coppola described,
“We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane“
The opening camera shot is of a jungle, lush and verdant in the sunshine. The agitating echo of helicopters roars into earshot and the trees explode into flames. In an instant, the viewer is hypnotized out of the emotional shock and pain by the lulling voice of Jim Morrison singing, The End.
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
What Conrad attained with metaphors, Coppola achieved through spectacle. The horror of the opening scene makes it clear that you, the viewer, are not separate and apart from the evil that led to this war. You have been numbed by the psychic violence of media to perceive the most atrocious things as being entertainment.
In fact, to the average American film viewer, a torched jungle scene soundtracked by Jim Morrison seems pretty sexy. Your pleasure erupts in the exclamation, “I’ll buy what you’re selling!”
This is how the opening of Apocalypse Now contains the whole message of the film. In a few moments, it reveals how the darkness within the human heart is so easily seduced into finding pleasure in other people’s pain.
If you are overwhelmed by art’s power to demonstrate the evil lurking within, know that Joseph Conrad and Francis Ford Coppola did so with the hopes of inspiring growth.
The torched jungle scene is revealed to be the inner vision (dream or memory) of the film’s protagonist, an ambivalent soldier named Willard. In beginning of the film, he is taken into a meeting by his superior officers to be debriefed about a man named Colonel Kurtz. The story is that Kurtz has become a vigilante, setting himself up as a demi-god while controlling his own private militia. Willard’s orders are to “terminate with extreme prejudice”.
The narrative is told through the most Scorpionic imagery, centering its gaze upon a riverboat ride through the jungle. The story slides into dark waters, shadows, and brutality. In Willard’s search for the infamous Colonel Kurtz, he begins to breakdown.
His dreams are of destruction, his waking life lost in alcohol. Succumbing to obsession, Willard becomes submerged in his increasingly intimate understanding of Kurtz’s mind, which he loathes and admires.
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake, he’s old, and his skin is cold
The film offers the same poetic images as the novel: the deeper into the heart of darkness, the more mysterious, opaque and murky things become. The dark heart of Jupiter is revealed in the atmosphere of delirium and excesses, where everything remains in shadows, especially Colonel Kurtz.
The west is the best,
the west is the best
Get here, and we’ll do the rest
Kurtz’s power lies in his ability to illuminate the contradictions in his society, incarnating as the embodiment of all its sins without shame. For the role of Kurtz, Coppola innately understood that he was evoking the dark side of Jupiter, casting the aging Hollywood icon Marlon Brando, whose once hypnotic beauty had been obscured by the bloat of extreme alcoholism.
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
Coppola conflates the demi-god status of Colonel Kurtz with the power of celebrity and the myriad of spiritual gurus that descended on America in the 1960’s. In Apocalypse Now, the catatonic worship of another man’s hubris is held up to an unmerciful light, reflecting a hideous gaze back upon the audience.
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
This is the end, beautiful friend
This odyssey through Vietnam, seen through Willard’s eyes, reveals the excesses of American culture and its collective demoralization. The hero’s descent occurs as America’s most naive Jupiterian dreams are revealed as festering nightmares.
During this season of Jupiter in Scorpio, while engaged in many decadent pleasures, you too may bear witness to scenes of apocalypse.
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
Apocalypse in the modern sense of the word sings “this is the end!” over the sounds of bullets and bombs….hunted by shadows, the smell of napalm in the morning…the horror!
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
This is the end
But, the real meaning of the word apocalypse describes the essence of Jupiter in Scorpio: the illumination within the darkness. From the Greek apokalyptein, apocalypse actually means to “uncover, disclose, reveal”.
“He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision, – he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath –“The horror! The horror!”
There has never been a more poetic use for Scorpio’s penetrating gaze than to look upon the end of the world in search of revelation. An apocalypse is the darkness before the dawn of the eternal return. Apocalypse is not the end, but the blood, sweat and tears of a rebirth.
Apocalypse Now thus acts like a guided meditation for this transit of Jupiter in Scorpio, acting as the ferryman that carries you across the river Styx.
Apocalypse
Any serious viewing of Apocalypse Now will teach you everything you need to know for this Jupiter season. Firstly, whatever horror you see in your society is a horror that somehow finds its reflection in you. And second, disempowerment results from denying the existence of the horror within your heart. The more you deny the darkness within, the less power you have. This is the first and last lesson.
So, on the quest for a fresh wellspring of prosperity, creativity, and spiritual fulfillment, the only courageous thing to do is to journey into the heart of darkness. In these shadows, many gruesome reflections of yourself will appear in the meltdown and destruction of the past. Acknowledge the churning emotions of pity, rage and lust that arise. But do not despair.
By the end of this Jupiter transit, you will have gone straight through the heart of darkness and come out the other side. The gift of apocalypse is to be able to remember the past without being strangled by it.
In summation, this thirteen month season of Jupiter in Scorpio will be like a jungle, lush, warm and dangerous. You may easily flourish in these environs of heat and moisture. But every succulent flower is fed by the rivers that lead back into the heart of darkness. The journey is inevitable for anyone who indulges in the abundant pleasures.
Now that you know the story, you must choose your role. You might play the part of the imperial warlord or the dissenting civilian. But for those who know they have choice in the matter, it would be wise to play the part of the navigator who is just passing through. Choose optimism and prepare for any adventure.
Want to know more about how this Jupiter in Scorpio season will affect you personally? Lucky for you, I have created a free guide for all signs! Enjoy!!
Much Love,
Aeolian Heart
Merken