Jupiter in Cancer
“Hope is a discipline.” — Mariame Kaba
How can we fortify a discipline of hope? What is hope and what can it look like to have hope in times of collapse? What are ways to anchor in moments of sweetness and connection when we are fortunate enough to experience them? How do we hold the dissonance of experiencing joy in times of such immense suffering? I don’t have answers to these questions but am sitting with them and holding conversations with beloveds as we do our best to meet this moment.
Since Jupiter entered Cancer I’ve noticed a gentle revival of my faith, in spite of its square by sign to Saturn (conjunct Neptune) in Aries and the ongoing horrors. Liberatory social justice and spiritual leaders throughout history supported the buoying of movements with the medicine of song, ancestral healing practices, and nourishing relational care. This movement medicine reminds us that to work for both relative and ultimate liberation with an open heart — being in the world but not of the world — means allowing our heart to be broken while holding lightly to the phenomenal world as an emanation of the empty fullness from which all experience arises, consciousness experiencing itself in physical form, ever rising up and falling away.
Jupiter in the sign of its exaltation provides rain to water seeds that have been planted in fertile soil, where conditions will be met to grow new life. The life-giving force of nature persists, despite its eternal dance with the entropic forces of destruction, currently manifest with astounding brutality and seeming impenetrability. Yet on this beautiful, generous and abundant planet, life persists. The lunar quality of Cancer is cool and wet, nourishing and watering the seeds of life. The quality of the soil has everything to do with whether what has been planted will flourish. Despite soil erosion and demineralization there remains terrain fed with the rich compost of decay required to beget new life. In these times we bear witness to the turning of what is rotten and decaying at the foundation of empire, composting kyriarchy everywhere as we brace for collapse.
The soil of our souls may have become a bit parched by the arid winds of air signs in the past month, with the Sun and Mercury transiting Gemini alongside Jupiter in a sign-based trine to Pluto in Aquarius. As the Sun transits the third decan of Gemini (corresponding to the Ten of Swords in tarot) and Cancer season begins at the Summer Solstice on June 20, the Gemini sector of the zodiac gets a short respite until Uranus moves there on July 7. Cancer season and Jupiter’s placement here brings some softening and hydration, a salve to soothe the scorch of Mars’ lengthy retrograde through Cancer-Leo, which finally concludes on June 17 as it completes its square to Uranus in Taurus and enters Virgo. Jupiter in Cancer also provides an oasis to help ease the weariness of generation-defining joining of Saturn and Neptune, reminding us to soak in the moments of sweetness and connection where we find them. We’ll need the fortification and resiliency for what lies ahead.
Jupiter in Cancer reminds us that all we have, all we have ever had, is each other. The determination to hold fast to one another in the midst of genocide, in the face of gestapo-style kidnappings and disappearances, in the rise of fascist authoritarianism. The call to action to come together with true love and care. In a recent meditation practice, Lama Rod Owens shared the transmission that these times call for true love, not performative love, which we’re discovering is what some have been serving and calling love. This makes sense, given that the trauma and suffering of existing in the world today is so great that it takes tremendous courage to open one’s heart. Like the Cancerian crab, tender beneath its tough exterior, opening our hearts exposes us to feeling the suffering of the collective, including the horrific backlog of unmetabolized grief and historical trauma. And yet a protective enclosure blocks us from fully experiencing the joy and love essential for practicing a discipline of hope. Jupiter in Cancer offers a balm and an invitation to soften, to feel, to grieve, and to allow space for buoyancy and ease when it is available. The Jupiter in Cancer discipline of hope is living a devotional prayer to the sacredness of life generations in the future, the better future we fight for that we will not live to see, as a dedication of true love.
Gratitude and h/t to Tema Okun for sharing this poem with me