Astrology is the measurement of time against the movement of the planets. While the birth chart remains a static point of reference, the slower moving outer planets — Jupiter and beyond — act as chapter markers in an unfolding journey. One has to only look at important conjunctions, squares, and oppositions to see the cosmos as the narrator of personal evolution.
As I write this, Jupiter in late Gemini has glided over my natal Moon like a ship returning to port after a long circuitous route only to cast off in the direction of distant lands. The conjunction speaks of both the ending of a cycle that started 12 years previous in the summer of 2001, and the beginning of a new one. Now I am in St. Lucia, only 14 degrees north of the equator, the pre-solstice Sun peeking around the edge of my umbrella. I am quite far from 40 degrees 37 minutes north, 73 degrees 57 minutes west, aka New York City.
A conjunction of Jupiter to the natal Moon seems like something to celebrate. The keywords that come to mind is emotional expansion, a joyous expression of heart energy, or the next quest in the search for emotional fulfillment. The sign of Gemini brings a language to this process, full of youthful curiosity.
The important thing to consider about the Moon is that it needs to be fed. The Moon, remember, is our wants, needs, and desires. A Moon that is undernourished will pull at the psyche with longing and something akin to emotional hunger pains. But a transit of Jupiter to the Moon is a veritable feast and, curiously, just as Jupiter made its first and only pass to my Moon in 12 years, I boarded a plane at Kennedy Airport for a destination 2,000 miles away. How very Jupiter of me. (Also, in a stroke of synchronicity, I am reading Elissa Altman’s Poor Man’s Feast, which is highly recommended.)
And here I am on vacation, typing away poolside, laptop perched on bare legs like a fool. The computer, so often a mechanism of my enslavement, is instead a faithful recorder of my thoughts as they pour out of me — Gemini style. Or rather the urge to express myself through my Gemini Moon seems almost uncontrollable with such a generous heap of Jupiter flowing through its waters.
I have ice tea, I have access to water. I have language. I have exotic, tropical locales. I am content.
It is a feast for my natal Moon.