JUPITER in AQUARIUS: a love letter to faith, to us. 12.13.2021

i wrote this back in july when i most needed it.

it was a love letter to myself- to the deepest parts of me that were hurting & healing. to the parts that still are. i had no idea how much i would need these words again, now half a year later. maybe you do, too. [[dedicated to jupiter's transit through aquarius & to all those with this placement]]

an ode to faith. an ode to intuition.

an ode to the connectedness

of grief and love.

@alicesparklykat wrote about jupiter returns recently, saying that "jupiter is about belief. it can be about imagination and wonder but it can also be about institutions and power. jupiter returns leave you lost because getting lost is also the surest way to produce wonder."

i've been sitting with this deeply. western understandings of astrology often simplify jupiter returns to moments of expansion, luck, opportunity. mine began last december with the great conjunction... but the lessons of this year have all had to do with challenges to my expansion, challenges to my opportunities, to my beliefs.

i have felt so lost and alone, visited by the ever-present memories of past abandonment and pain. hurt revisiting me like old friends that i need to sit with and listen to. chiron retrograde shining a light on all of the inner child wounds, traumas, & shadows in my heart that need my healing, patience, compassion, my love.

now nearly finished with our jupiter return in aquarius, i'm realizing that these challenges are forcing me to change my relationship to faith. to root and ground myself more deeply in faith not in spite of being lost... but exactly because i am lost.

i have spent the year wandering. weeping. wondering. praying.

but i'm learning that the search for faith is just as holy as our finding it.

that locating our faith when we are most lost is just as holy as the faith that remains in us, unwavering.

after chanukah, i'm thinking of faith as i was before.

the courage it takes to trust what is out of reach; just beyond visibility. just beyond the light of the candles.

like the love of ancestors. what we can only feel.

the miracles of our hope. the wonders of love.

the bravery in continuing to be open, loving, vulnerable in this world. to know that we can rekindle the flames of faith inside of us when all feels dark. the power we have to reach & grow in our connections... and that it is our most powerful & gentle gift as humans to see the light in others. for our flames to dance together in this lifetime.

"walking, i am listening to a deeper way. suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. be still, they say. watch and listen. you are the result of the love of thousands."

linda hogan; dwellings. introduced to me from living jewishly

today i pulled the knight of wands and cried deeply. @jessicadore writes about the knights in tarot as having to do with adolescence & faith. a knight, in her view, "is a romantic; someone who carries the twin forces of personal power and belief in the world's malleability. someone not only in touch with the energy of 'vital promise,' but ready to go to war for the world, to take steel or javelin to any threat to its beauty. the knight is nothing if not faithful to the potential that life has, to be gorgeous. but something is required for such a faith to develop, for one to stay loyal to a vague promise of beauty. faith needs a home of some kind. a place to arrive and be welcomed." and so i commit to this faith, to protecting these parts of me. i would go to war to protect my faith in the world. to trust others. to protect my love. i would take steel and javelin to anything threatening the beauty of vulnerability. i make home for it. i continuously arrive home. nobody else has to understand it. that's why its home is inside of me.

@sacredblooming spoke months ago about the energy of the fool; that the fool finds faith even in the darkest and most uncertain moments. the fool steps off the cliff knowing that spirit, ancestors, divinity, will provide... even when fearful, even when filled with doubts. july's full moon in aquarius as an aquarius sun, jupiter, & uranus reminded me of my faith; the need to trust and surrender to the divine. the holiness of nurturing and cultivating my faith, trust in myself, intuition, heart. this sagittarius season i return to faith in the time ruled by jupiter. i return to a trust that i wax and wane with purpose, and that my trust endlessly grows and deepens, in turn. a coming home to myself. to ourselves. aquarius is the sign of the star. and sometimes we all need to remember who we are.