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Jupiter opposite Jupiter

the transiting Jupiter's periodic pass opposite its own natal place, or one person's Jupiter opposite another's in synastry

What the tradition reads

A natal chart cannot show Jupiter opposite itself, since no body can stand at an angle from its own degree; the tradition reads this key through transit, at the point roughly six years into Jupiter's twelve-year cycle where its transiting place stands opposite its own natal one. Sources describe this pass as a moderately challenging tug of war between expansion and restraint, several things in life reaching a climax at once and confidence and optimism running high enough to threaten overcommitment, a diplomatic touch named as essential wherever professional ambition is involved; taken well, the same stretch is read as an excellent time to broaden one's horizons. Between two charts, one person's Jupiter opposite another's sets the two bodies at the furthest possible remove, a hundred and eighty degrees apart. 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

An opposition is a hundred and eighty degrees, half the circle, the two bodies facing each other directly across it; Ptolemy's chapter on the mutual configuration of the signs groups it with the square as discordant, and Wikipedia's own summary of the aspect adds that oppositions run to exaggeration, their dichotomous quality keeping whatever they touch in a real and often tense relation rather than letting it settle. 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. Facing his own former place directly, Jupiter meets a version of himself standing at the furthest possible remove, the same king of the gods pulling against his own earlier ambitions rather than simply repeating them.

Written from

Corpus key aspect:Jupiter:Jupiter:opposition.