Jupiter has been exalted in Cancer since June 9. The womb of Cancer, positioned in the Nadir of the zodiac wheel, the midnight point of the north, is cold and moist, a nocturnal lunar sign of cardinal Water. One that is receptive, fertile, enveloping. Jupiter, being warm and moist, mingles with this element like a gentle flame warming milk without burning it. Moisture is their common ground.
Jupiter is said to be exalted in Cancer precisely because his vital and benevolent heat finds fertile matter there in which to expand. The planet of eudaimonia can find in this sign an oportunity to expand, nurture, protect, and multiply. Jupiter in Cancer is the fertiliser. His warmth animates the lunar breast, bringing potential to life. He is the archetype of the nurturing father and master, the priest who feeds his own people.
However, when Jupiter moves through the lunar womb of Cancer, he also loses part of his Olympian solemnity. After all, he is the benefic of the diurnal sect, whilst the Moon is the luminary of the night. He becomes ruled by the nocturnal tide itself, subjected to the rhythm of the Moon, and governed by the ebb and flow of her phlegmatic waters.
The moisture that nourishes him also renders him mutable, impressionable, maternal. Instead of the crowned king, we find the tender father, the teacher who weeps, the benefactor who dissolves in the feeling of the other. And, indeed, there is something “moody” about this, in the sense that his faith is no longer abstract but biological, uterine. The Moon imprints upon him the oscillation of memory and flesh. Jupiterian warmth and moisture are tempered by the Moon’s cold and moisture; the result is a melancholic kindness. Fertile, indeed, and yet easily moved.
This is only amplified when, like today, Jupiter turns retrograde in Cancer. Jupiter is right now stationed at 25 degrees of the sign, the threshold between his own Egyptian bound and the one of Saturn. He stares at the ice ahead and, instead of advancing, turns his eyes back towards the womb.
This retrogradation within his exaltation is a divine confession. Jupiter realises that an excess of nourishment – too much moisture – risks decaying into inertia, sentimentality, and dilution. Feeling the dry breath of Saturn, he halts, as if remembering that every abundance must know its limit.
The degree 25 of Cancer, the last of Jupiter’s own bound, is an interior frontier. The station is a pause of spiritual digestion. Jupiter asks himself, “How many promises have I fertilised, and how many merely flooded?”. To retrograde here is to gather the spilled milk, to distinguish what has grown from what has rotted. He turns upon his own waters to re-teach faith, with wisdom already tempered by the cold breath of Saturn’s bound. Saturn here is the memento mori of Jupiterian joy; he reminds him that true fecundity is measured abundance, ordered to the Logos.
Queen and ruler of Cancer, the Moon is right now out of her element. After the intense Venusian lunation that began with a peregrine New Moon in Libra and reached its zenith at the Taurean Full Moon of exaltation, the Lady of the Tides is now crossing Leo, the Fixed Fire, where her cold moisture is tested by solar authority.
In this setting, the Moon, peregrine and waning, holds no trine, square, or sextile with Cancer, casting no Pythagorean light upon the house she governs. Her son Jupiter, stationary within the womb, begins his retrogradation without the direct reflection of the Mother. There is a sense of sacred desolation: the tide withdraws, leaving the king of rains before the dry memory of time.
The Jupiterian retrograde is born under a Moon weakened and still initiatory, noentheless: a setting Moon contemplating the end of the cycle, preparing for the last quarter, the symbol of purification, emotional digestion, and the clarification of the moist excesses spilled at the Full Moon.
While the Moon is peregrine in Leo, the Sun in Scorpio maintains the bridge of Water with the sign of Jupiter’s exaltation with a trine by element. There is a hermetic compensation: the masculine and warm luminary sustains the elemental bond that the feminine luminary has lost.
This will be a long and weighty retrogradation, of exactly 120 days, lasting until March 11. It will lead Jupiter back to the fifteenth degree of Cancer, the heart of the sign, within the Mercurial bound. Throughout these ten degrees traced backwards, Jupiter dives once more into his own limits.
It will also profoundly impact the behaviour of the signs he rules: Sagittarius and Pisces. Starting with the former, Sagittarius is currently the house of Mars and a retrograde Mercury. Tomorrow already there will be an impetuous and confused conjunction between these two, where will runs faster than understanding. And soon the Sun and Venus will also enter this mutable fire, illuminating and adorning a temple that nonetheless answers to a ruler turned inward. Sagittarian enthusiasm will be this year an inner liturgy moving within.
Meanwhile, in Pisces, the two titans Saturn and Neptune, both retrograde, are also ruled by this retrograde Jupiter. This echoes through them like a tidal undertow: Jupiter turns to himself and his Piscean lieutenants follow. Three planets moving backwards. When Saturn re-enters Aries on February 14, he will do so like an elder emerging from the sea with newly hewn tablets. The final stretch of his passage through Pisces will unfold under the rule of this Jupiter, meaning that time, dream, and faith are joined in a collective cosmic review.
There is also a turning point in January 2026, which will bring the sharpest friction: an opposition of seasons, a clash between two elemental worlds. Sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars, all aligned in Capricorn, cold and dry, will stand in direct opposition to this moist, retrograde Jupiter in Cancer. Saturn’s Cardinal Earth will confront the Moon’s Cardinal Water, with austerity against nourishment, law against mercy, and form against faith.
And there is a cruel paradox here: Jupiter, the planet that most despises Capricorn, the sign of his zodiacal fall, will be forced to meet him through four planets across the wheel. Jupiter, deprived of direct motion, will find in January’s stellium of Capricorn the ultimate test to his exalted faith in Cancer.
Κύριε ελέησον