STARFIRE

June 2009

June 2009- Jupiter’s Retrograde (Yawn)
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Jupiter's Retrograde (Yawn)

The good news is that Mercury’s direct. Venus is direct. We can all shop again. The planets are moving around quietly for the next few months. There are the usual new moons and voids of course, the rhythms of normal live, but the summer will be relatively quiet and uneventful.

As soon as I say “quiet”, someone emails me about drama. That’s the bad news. When there are no catastrophic aspects in the transits of the planets, we each have to deal with the trauma from our own birth charts and life lessons. And most of us would rather deal with external trauma than dramatic internal growth and change. Our egos, at least, resist change, and we have to be rather firmly set on spiritual or creative paths to welcome it.

So while Jupiter retrograde would ordinarily be a boring minor shift, it may be important news this summer.

Jupiter retrograde will slow the world’s economic recovery because promotion, advertising, and sales are less effective. We’re all less interested in what’s beckoning us externally than in our internal messages. Jupiter retrograde behaves more like Jupiter in Pisces, artistic and dreamy, than like Jupiter pushing messages in Sagittarius.

Because we are more likely to tune out on external messages and advertising, Jupiter retrograde is a fine time for following our own creative impulses, listening to our own hunches, and letting our personal vision and dreams guide us.

The retrograde period, when it looks as if Jupiter is moving backward in the sky, lasts from June 15th to October 12th. (The good economic news is that Jupiter will be direct again in time for the holiday shopping season.)

It’s a time for inspired action–but not a time for just sitting around hoping inspiration will strike. With Saturn opposing the Moon-Uranus conjunction in the retrograde event chart, it’s a good bet a lot of fine ideas will get shot down by bottom-line thinking this year. So here are a few ways to make sure you personally get the best available from this quiet idea goldmine:

• Keep a dream journal by your bed and another wherever you meditate or take a work break. Jupiter is conjunct Neptune (the other rules of Pisces) and together they emphasize dreaming, meditating, and altered states of consciousness as a source of inspiration.
  
  
• Write a letter to yourself or make a list, detailing everything you want to have happening in your life by October. Read the list at least once a day (three times is even better) or create a vision board with images of the completed goals. Your subconscious mind is going to be even more creative than usual, and you want to be the one who chooses its projects.
  
  
• Keep a gratitude or appreciation journal. Start each morning with a list of five or more people, situations or conditions for which you are grateful. The gratitude list lifts your spirits and makes it easier for your subconscious mind to manifest good choices for you.
  
  
• Clear out the clutter and prepare space for the manifestation. If you want new clothes, get rid of the ones you no longer wear. If you want ideas for a book, set up a folder or workspace. If you plan a new painting, buy paints and prepare the canvas.
  
  
• Pay attention to gentle hints from your subconscious mind about steps you could take in the direction of your goals. It’s easier to hear those messages now, but they are subtle. They may not make sense–but if they’re not harmful, they’re worth exploring.
  
  
• Be prepared for projects to change.
  
  
• Network instead of advertising. Contact former and existing customers and ask for suggestions about improving your product or referrals.
  
  
• Write a newsletter and spend at least four times as much space giving to your customers as you do promoting sales. Newsletters that are heavy on promotion will not be productive this summer and could actually lose you customers.
  
  
• Find ways to connect your daily work to your passion even if the connection seems trivial. Giving an example here is difficult because it’s our passions that set us apart from the crowd. For an artist, it might mean painting a portrait that was commissioned and using that work to further an interest in light or in new ways to apply color. My first article as the Albuquerque Writing Examiner [ http://www.examiner.com/x-7950-Albuquerque-Writing-Examiner] was an interview with a local palmist-author whose work I admire.
  
  
• Keep a daydream notebook. If something excites you, jot it down. The ideas that spark your interest now may develop over the entire next year. Or fall away. Capturing them is the first step.
  
  
• Jupiter retrograde is trining or supporting the Sun. Pay extra attention to those small ideas that lead you in baby steps in the direction of something you believe in or hope for in your life. Even a walk in the neighborhood can inspire new ideas.
  
  
• Ideas move toward you in two vital forms now. Jupiter is conjunct Neptune, which brings quiet understandings. By mutual reception, because Neptune and Uranus are in each other’s rulership signs, you may also get flashes of insight, dramatic ideas, or strokes of pure luck. If lightning strikes, follow the flash.
  
  
• Mercury, the conscious mind, is inconjunct Pluto, the planet of transformation and lasting change. Be willing to set aside old ideas, even ones you’ve researched carefully. Pick your news sources and do some research for new ideas in field that interest you.
  
  
• Take advantage of Jupiter retrograde as a time of reduced external pressure and enjoy the season. Work shorter hours or take a few days off and leave your watch at home. Fishing’s a great Jupiter retrograde vacation, and so is watching stars in the night sky.
  
  
• Take extra power naps, those 20 minute rest-and-renewal periods.
  
  
• Add a second meditation period to your day or add a few minutes to your usual practice.
  
  
• Let classical music take you to new spaces. Or gypsy or flamenco or anything instrumental.
  
  
• Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius makes the local aquarium a hot spot on my calendar. Big (Jupiter) fish (Pisces, co-ruled by Jupiter and especially favored by Jupiter retrograde) and the obvious aquarium for Aquarius.
  
  
• If you don’t have an aquarium, hang out at the local pet shop. Or go watch a river flow. (In Sedona, they talk about rivers as lateral vortexes, a good place to clear your chakras and let things drift away.)

Some people will, of course, sleep through the summer. If that’s your plan, there’s always sleep learning, meditations by MP3, or suggestions and affirmations to lead your mind in the right directions.

Or think of 2009 as the summer of serendipity when fortune favors those who flow with their feelings and uninspired work falls flat on its Saturnian bottom line.

Mary O’Gara, Ph.D.