2020’s Jupiter/Saturn conjunction: 5 Takeaways

 

Among astrologers 2020 will be known as the year of 3 world-changing conjunctions—Saturn/Pluto, Jupiter/Pluto, and the last, occurring on December 21, 2020, the conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn at zero Aquarius.  Here are 5 things to know about this wonderful celestial event:

1.  Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions are sociopolitical game changers.

For thousands of years, astrologers have held Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions in high regard. They were known as the Great Conjunctions.  This bright pair are the two largest, most distant, and slowest moving of the visible planets in our solar system, making their conjunctions the rarest, occurring once every 20 years.  Theirs was the longest planetary cycle observed before telescopes were invented.  Even today, many define a generation as being 20 years long.  Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions have also been called the Great Chronicators, the Markers of Time.

Sky lords Jupiter and Saturn are what we call “social planets.”  Their influence is broad, describing the ebbs and flows of social power around the world, affecting governments and their leaders, as well as the shifting mood of the collective.   “Conjunctions” mean that two or more planets appear in the same sky space.  Their meeting indicates a beginning—the dawn of a new day.  With Jupiter and Saturn, this suggests a turn in political fortunes, perhaps the birth of a new king.  In some way, the pendulum swings.  An old world is dying.  A new spirit enters the realm.

You can see this pattern in US presidential politics over the past 60 years.  Presidents elected within orb of a Great Conjunction turned the political tides.  Their victories brought key power swings in our 2-party system.

Year	The Victor	The Vanquished
1960/61	Kennedy	A Democrat ends 8 years of Republican rule under Eisenhower
1980/81	Reagan	A Republican makes Democrat Jimmy Carter a one-term president
2000	Bush	A Republican ends 8 years of Democratic rule under Clinton
2020	Biden	A Democrat makes Republican Donald Trump a one-term president.

When two years are given in the table above, the first is the election year, the second is the year the J/S conjunction was exact.

2. This year’s Jupiter-Saturn conjunction is a Great Mutation.

In another of those elegant patterns of the cosmos, Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions tend to cluster in the elements (earth, air, fire, or water), traveling through the same element for about 200 years.  This beautiful sequence was first observed by astrologers in the Islamic Golden Age, about a thousand years ago.

We’re now on the verge of another 200-year elemental shift.  Since 1802, all Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions have occurred in earth–except for the one in 1981, which being in Libra, previewed the next elemental reign, air, before going back to an earth sign again in 2000.  Jupiter & Saturn now meet in Aquarius and we officially enter the long sequence of air conjunctions, which is why the 2020 J/S conjunction is called a Great Mutation.

Earth signs are strong, practical, efficient, and enduring. Their focus on logic–what works–helped to drive humanity forward through both the Industrial Revolution and the scientific triumphs built on the Age of Reason.  The past 200 years have seen the rise of manufacturing and the widespread exploitation of natural resources.  Earth signs are the most materialistic of all the elements.  During their reign, money has increasingly become the highest measure of success.

Air signs take us behind the veil of the physical world, into the more intellectual, theoretical, and creative realm of ideas.  Air signs are the most social of all the elements.  They’re curious, idealistic, and collaborative, more focused on the greatest number, what will benefit humanity as a whole. If earth signs are the materialists, air signs are the socialists.

Air rules communication too.   Indeed, during the air sign preview after the 1981 conjunction, there was an explosion in new forms of communication.  In those 20 years, all the new technologies that drive our world today were introduced–computers, cell phones, the information superhighway.

In the new air age, it’s less about “making” and “doing” and more about “thinking” and “manipulating.”  It’s about mind over matter.  It’s like the magic we can conjure with a sea of algorithms.  What new intelligence will emerge?  Perhaps we can even reverse climate change.  Aquarius is a progressive, ingenious, egalitarian and futuristic vibration.  Imagine where it can take us in the next 20 years!

3. A Great Mutation like this one–in air–hasn’t occurred for 800 years.

It’s been 800 years since the Great Chronocators met in an air sign–back in March of 1226.  Like the 2020 conjunction, that one occurred in Aquarius, and was also previewed by a J/S cycle in Libra.   In England then, in the years between the Libra and Aquarius conjunctions, much like today, the distribution of wealth was out of balance.  King John’s oppressive taxes placed such a heavy burden of debt on his people, the urge for social justice and greater freedom began to arise.  This was the impetus behind the Magna Carta, which for the first time placed a King under the rule of law. That was the document our Founding Fathers looked to when creating the Constitution.

“We the people” and “Power to the people” are wonderful slogans for air sign years.  However, as with all things in astrology, there is always shadow and light.  Ideas can become a kind of tyranny too, as when, also in the previous air cycle, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition to punish whatever the Catholic Church decided was heresy, allowing the persecution and torture of Jews, witches, and Muslims for hundreds of years.

We can already see our own air problems in the making.  Cries of “fake news” and the “war against truth” indicate the dark side of air–it can go anywhere.  Who knows what to believe.  Then there are the algorithms of social media. These serve to isolate each of us into self-affirming bubbles, so that everyone is living in very different worlds.   How do we unite such a splintered collective?  On the way to air’s ingenious breakthroughs–we must also solve this great perception divide.

4.  This is the closest Jupiter/Saturn conjunction since 1623–the closest visible conjunction since 1226.

Either way–it’s been a long time!

The conjunctions of these two planets offer a magnificent sky show–yet they’re not always visible. That was the case in 1623–when Jupiter and Saturn were too close to the Sun.  It was the same situation more recently; they were conjunct in Taurus in May 2000, when the Sun was also there.  We need to go back 800 years for the closest visible conjunction.  But this year they’re visible nightly until the end of 2020.  You can start watching them now, as they draw steadily closer.

Jupiter is the brighter one; Saturn is smaller and has a slightly goldish tint.  Look south.  For the next couple weeks, they’ll be overhead in the late evening.  At their conjunction on solstice, they’ll be visible in the west just after sunset.  That’s when they’ll come within 0.1 degrees of each other–about a fifth of the size of your extended thumb.

Slow-moving Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions, when visible, can be seen for months at a time.  Johannes Kepler was the first to propose that the famous Star of Bethlehem was actually a Jupiter/Saturn conjunction in the spiritual sign of Pisces, in March of 7 BC.   Before Jesus’ birth it’s said that three magi had been following this star for months because it portended the birth of a new king.  Of course magi were traveling astrologers–they would have known that new kings can arrive with Jupiter/Saturn conjunctions.

5.   Have we broken free of Tecumseh’s presidential curse?

This definitely sounds like an earth sign curse.  As the story goes, Tecumseh, a Shawnee Chief, was so angered by the dishonest land dealings of the soon-to-be President William Henry Harrison, that he cursed the president’s life.  Since then an odd pattern has emerged.  Since Harrison’s death, every 20 years we seem to see another presidential death-in office, almost like clockwork.  All were elected within orb of a game-changing Jupiter/Saturn conjunction, portending the birth and death of kings.

President Harrison was dead within a month of his inauguration from complications due to pneumonia, which he might have gotten after standing in the bitter cold during his swearing in.   Six of the following presidents elected in “00” years also died in office–until the pattern began to shift with President Reagan, who was shot, but not fatally so.  He came to office during the air sign preview at the end of the long earth cycle.  George Bush, elected in 2000, was fine.  The next 4 years should let us know if the curse is truly broken!

Year	President	Cause of death
1840	William Henry Harrison	pneumonia
1860/61	Abraham Lincoln	shot
1880/81	James A. Garfield	shot
1900/01	William McKinley	shot
1920/21	Warren G. Harding	natural causes
1940/41	Franklin Delano Roosevelt	would die later of natural causes in his 4th term
1960/61	John F. Kennedy	shot
1980/81	Ronald Reagan	survived an attempted assassination by shooting
2000	George W. Bush Jr.	lived throughout his term

When two years are given in the table above, the first is the election year, the second is the year the J/S conjunction was exact.

 

More on this conjunction here:

The Great Mutation and Start of  New Era: Jupiter & Saturn by Raymond Merriman

Generational Shifts and the Jupiter-Saturn Mutation by J. Lee Lehman

Before 2020 ends, a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn (EarthSky)

The Star of Bethlehem: notes from Chris Brennan’s Astrology Podcast

US Presidents–Tecumseh’s Curse–Jupiter Saturn by Marjorie Orr