NOTHING EXCEEDS LIKE EXCESS
It’s not drawing too long a bow to liken Sagittarian Jupiter to a big man riding a giant horse, heading for a gunfight at the nearest OK Corral. Sagittarius is Latin for archer, and the Sagittarii is what the Roman legions termed their horseback bowmen. While the modernist perceives Sagittarius as a futuristic, adventurous sign: the seeker of truth and travel: it also has the potential for political and/or religious extremism and sophisticated weaponry.
The ruling planet of Sagittarius is Jupiter, also known as Jove, the Roman god of justice. The Greek parallel was Zeus, the sky and thunder god who ruled Mt. Olympus, and the Nordic archetype Thor. When Jupiter aligns with Sagittarius, Thor’s thunderbolts come to earth, justice is front-page news, and exaggerated ideologies elevate commoners to kings.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom
William Blake
The missionary zeal of this astro-signature was evident in William of Orange, the real life Thor of the Netherlands. Or Maximilian Robespierre, the quintessential figure of the French Revolution. Or the Ayatollah Khomeini whose return to his homeland heralded a people’s revolution and the creation of the Iranian Islamic Republic.
The romantic visionary William Blake, himself born with a Sun-Jupiter conjunction in Sagittarius, exposed the overkill of the amalgam when he wrote, “Prudence was a rich, ugly, old maid courted by incapacity,” and “you never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”
And true to its judicial archetype, Jupiter in Sag has accompanied many controversial court battles from the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the Azaria Chamberlain baby/dingo mystery, the Nuremburg Nazi doctors revelation, to Stalin’s public purge, and the mock trial that marked the rise of a fledgling Fuehrer.
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking
W.B. Yeats
In 1924, a young political visionary imprisoned in Bavaria was dictating the pains of his patriotic struggle in Mien Kampf, following his arrest for high treason. The sentence appropriately handed down on April Fool’s Day meant Adolf Hitler would be free by Christmas. Meanwhile in Italy, Mussolini’s Fascist party rose to dominance. On the other side of Europe the death of Russian Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin cleared the way toward Josef Stalin’s power surge. And in the USA J. Edgar Hoover was appointed head of the FBI. The events embodied the Yeats line, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it
Abbie Hoffman
When Jupiter next returned to the sign of the archer Adolf Hitler would be leading an emerging Germany, host of the Olympic Games of 1936. In March that year, the Fuehrer’s troops re-occupied the Rhineland, breaking the Treaty of Versailles. Mussolini added his support authorizing the Pact of Steel, a Rome/Berlin Axis. Then on November 25, Hitler signed “an agreement meant to protect European culture and civilisation from the Bolshevik menace” with Japan.
In Communist Russia, Stalin, demonstrating a brutal authority, had sixteen political prisoners executed after a bizarre public trial, effectively routing his homeland opposition. The political polarity of Europe played out in the Spanish Civil War with the Communists and Fascists supplying assistance to the warring parties. In the Middle East the battle between Jewish settlers and nationalists began in earnest with the Arab Revolt. And in the midst of these extremities US activist Abbie Hoffman was born.
Abbie was later to muse, “I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.” But Jupiter in Sagittarius had already drawn the bow.
Those who seek Oneness will eventually find Twoness
Woody Allen
By the time Jupiter returned to home base in October 1947 the effects of the Second World War had spread like a grassfire across the globe. The divisions were now mirrored in Berlin itself. A Russian blockade of surface transport led to Allied food drops, and the dissection of the German capital. The seeds of the Cold War were sown across the playing fields of Europe. In the USA, the House of Un-American Activities began their interrogation of suspected “reds” in Hollywood.
The State of Israel was born with powerful allied support against fierce Arab resistance, and the Palestinian exodus began. On the subcontinent, India’s partition spawned Pakistan, and North Korea’s charismatic leader Kim II Sung proclaimed the republic of North Korea dividing the peninsula.
A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue
Truman Capote
The 1959 sojourn of Jupiter in Sagittarius brought East and West tantalizingly close as the British Prime Minister Harold McMillan visited the soviet snows, and USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev touched down in the USA. But a planned Paris summit between President Eisenhower and Khrushchev was literally shot out of the skies along with a US U2 spy plane over Russian airspace. The Cold War warmed considerably as the US entered Vietnam.
In Transvaal, police opened fire killing 56 protesting natives in what has become known as the “Sharpeville massacre.” It prompted Harold McMillan to say before the South African parliament, “the wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether you like or not the growth of national consciousness is a political fact.” Unamused was the South African PM Henrick Verwoerd, the victim of an
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Tamplin is a consultant, writer and researcher of astrology specializing in mundane. He is a regular lecturer on the Australian circuit and co-hosts an astrology talkback show on Sydney radio 2GB-AM every Saturday night.
With partner and fellow astrologer Sherrynne Dalby he teaches at the Sirius School of Astrology and maintains an active personal practice.
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