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Jupiter conjunct Jupiter

the transiting Jupiter's periodic return to conjunct its own natal place, or one person's Jupiter conjunct another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Jupiter conjunct itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit, at the point in Jupiter's own orbit, a little under twelve Earth years around the Sun, where its transiting place returns to conjunct its own natal one. Wikipedia's own account of the astrological transit calls this pass the Jupiter return, naming it one of the two most significant returns tracked in the tradition alongside Saturn's own, and states plainly that it heralds a new phase of growth and development, the completion of one full circuit of the sky read as the start of a new cycle in a person's life. Between two charts, one person's Jupiter conjunct another's places the two bodies at, or close to, the same degree, the closest contact the aspect allows. None of the sources consulted for this entry gives a separate reading for this specific contact in synastry, so none is offered here.

The story

A conjunction sets two bodies at, or close to, the same degree, with no real angular distance between them; Ptolemy's own chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs measures the opposition, trine, square and sextile by the number of degrees separating two positions, leaving the conjunction outside that scheme, yet Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect counts the conjunction as a fifth major aspect regardless, saying conjunctions are the most powerful aspects "because they mutually intensify the effects of the involved planets". Jupiter meeting Jupiter has no myth of doubling to draw on; the tradition instead returns to what the god is in himself. His name derives from a Proto-Italic phrase meaning sky father, and Roman religion held him the god of the sky and thunder and king of the gods, his thunderbolt and his eagle the two emblems most often shown together, the eagle holding the bolt in its claws on Greek and Roman coins alike. When a run of bad weather threatened one early spring, King Numa Pompilius is said to have summoned Jupiter down to the Aventine itself, winning from him instruction on how lightning bolts are averted and, the following dawn, a shield fallen from the sky as a pledge of Rome's own power. Set against itself with no distance at all, the sky father meets only his own single office, the same king of the gods encountered exactly as he already is, with nothing beside him left to answer to.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Jupiter:Jupiter:conjunction.