Jupiter in Cancer (Part 1)
Looking back at Mars, the Sweet Spot and some Lunar considerations
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As a tutor, my life has been ruled for the last decade or so by annual cycles that start in September and ends in June. Jupiter moving into Cancer on June 9 2025 right around the school year ending brings a beautiful and healing end to a stressful, anxiety-causing year marked by a fallen Mars in Cancer at its inception on September 2024. (Any fellow students, parents or teachers feeling the same?)
In an exalted Jupiter fashion, I decided to offer this longer than usual “cornucopia” with tons of different perspectives to look at Jupiter in Cancer. If this is too big of a bite for you at once, consider saving this one and taking this in in multiple small bits, one section a time.
(Okay, I realized it was really becoming too big… More in Part 2 on a slower start of Jupiter in Cancer, being under the thumbs of Saturn and a warning from a hexagram.)
Mars left, mark left — a reckoning
Some of the things I observed during Mars in Cancer (in my students, friends and family, clients and yours truly here included):
frustration and tension bubbling beneath the surface
deep emotional wounds being stirred that are hard to grasp
challenging situations with people, environments and institutions we believe we should be able to trust and find support
losses, cutting “umbilical chords”, removal of “crutches”
Mars left Cancer mid-April this year, but a mark was left in us.
I don't intend to go too deep into this here. Just to acknowledge that Mars in Cancer was not simply bringing chaos, havoc or destruction to our lives (although sometimes it did feel like that). But in doing so, some of the more challenging dimensions of our emotional world had the chance to become seen.
Slaying the ice-locked surface open, we were able to glimpse the stream of water that runs underneath. We were also encouraged to develop emotional resilience and independence.
Ok, I'll stop here.
From Exiled to Exalted, From Barren to Fertile, Cancer as the Sweet Spot
This ingress demarcates the end of a year-long period between May 2024 and June 2025 of experimentation (Jupiter in Gemini) — essential to fulfill our curiosity, our need for exploration and to widen our perspectives, without necessarily bearing any fruits or holding such expectations — and carries us into one that is much more yielding and productive (Jupiter in Cancer).
One curious note is that Jupiter traditionally rules sperm and, when placed in Cancer (or in any of the fertile signs, i.e. water signs — Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces), the flow of life turns into a rich potential that can impregnate reality. Compare this to Gemini, one of the three barren signs in the zodiac. (I wonder if there is any sort of 12-year or 4-year cycle of fertility in a global sense!)
Cancer is the sign where Jupiter is said to be exalted, which is a significant upgrade from being debilitated in Gemini, its exile. A planet's exaltation sign is a slice of the zodiac where a planet is treated as a VIP guest. There, this planet is put up on a pedestal, lifted to the highest esteem. In some sense, Jupiter reached its peak.
This is where all the hype around Jupiter, the great benefic, entering Cancer this month.
And I say live it to the fullest when life gives you sweet fruits! (Jupiter was said to be “sweet in taste” in Valens. Compare this with Mars which is “acid in taste.” So, imagine, between September last year and April this year, the emotional “lemons” that life had been throwing at us!)
(A warning about this exalted position in Part 2, brought to you by a hexagram.)
When thinking of the Chaldean order of the planets, Jupiter is slammed between Saturn and Mars, the two malefics. Between the excessively hot one and the slow, stagnant, cold and melancholic one. Temperate being another Jupiterian quality hints at an “oasis” where life is abundant and celebrated, in between the tougher aspects of life. Interestingly, Cancer, a zodiac sign on the solar path (in the northern hemisphere) sitting between the end of the still fresh spring and the strong, persistent heat of the summer days, is the “sweet spot” (pun intended).
This is a transit that help us remember that life does not need to be only made of hard-edges in a brutal world (not to trash them either, they do play a relevant role in life), one challenge to climb after another (think of Capricorn on the opposite end of the zodiac).
The most essentials needs that sustain us are far more basic: a heart-warming dish that nourishes the belly and the soul; the sweet voice of someone who was once our “safe haven”; the smell of the dry, warm air of Summer that takes us back to the happy days spent in the beach or at picnics; the gentle light that shines through the leaves, joyful and without scorching our eyes; a warm hug from a friend; a poem celebrating life.
Entering the Lunar Stage
Cancer is the home sign of the Moon. So Jupiter is going to be received by the Moon in its heavenly abode.
We can of course immediately draw in the caring, motherly and providing qualities into the descriptions of the Moon and end it here.
But the Moon carries other deeper archetypes as well: that of roots, family, ancestry and memory. Rebuilding a connection to life means to rekindle, to have the openness to rekindle with past memories, to remember our roots.
Jupiter in Cancer does not mean that these memories will be sprinkled with magic fairy dust. Cohesion of our existence must also come with integration of parts that are harder to look at. The point is not to ignore them, abandone them, or slay them like a savior to ourselves, but to find understanding in how they are linked to us. Embracing them instead of casting them out. (Cancer is where Mars is fallen and Saturn is in exile.)
And this is the beauty of the lunar dimensions of life: they are there, but they are also ever changing like the phases of the Moon, constantly transmuting from one state to another, sometimes visible, sometimes not.
The structural changes in our connections during Jupiter in Cancer can be healing for us and for those around us. Still ever-changing though, as the Moon is the swiftness of the planets.
Like an embryo — the reorganization of the cells and the maturation of their roles being necessary for its viability — we are reshaping our lives to keep it viable.
Full Moon in Sagittarius
Curiously, this ingress is closely accompanied by a Full Moon in Sagittarius on June 11, just two days after Jupiter's ingress into Cancer. I wonder if this brings a culmination of finding clarity, direction and cohesion after the experimentation phase we have been through during Jupiter in Gemini in the past year.
The Moon in Sagittarius and Jupiter in Cancer constitutes mutual reception, a very supportive combination.
Imagine yourself as an adventurer-explorer that has a home to come back to, with a pit-fire where everyone sitting around it listens to the lived experiences you bring back. There is potential for bonding, celebrating, healing, reconnecting and enriching the clan's wisdom.
I noticed that this post is bursting through its seems already! I'll break it here and offer the rest of it in a follow up. To be continued!