Have you paid attention to Jupiter lately? Jupiter, my friends, is our Greek God Zeus renamed for Roman palates and he demands attention. For the last year he has been raining and mud sliding his dramatic tears onto the planet while transiting Cancer. For those who have ignored the mold in the basement, the leak in the roof and the muffled sobs of the person lying next to you, he will speak more loudly this July.

[Image from Wikipedia]

This July Zeus will have a megaphone, a spotlight and maybe even a TV show. It will be like giving an arsonist a match, like providing a self-absorbed 19-year old affluent a six-figure book contract to write his/her memoirs, like giving executive power to a cop.

American Idol aired its first episode on June 11, 2002 as Jupiter was in the final degrees of Cancer. Jupiter moved into Leo two months later. Jupiter has a 12-year cycle and has returned to bring us to the next expansion cycle of the idol.

Jupiter will bring its expansiveness to the fixed fire Leo in your chart. While expansion can provide extra spotlight for the expressive Leo, the spotlight can also bring into view, for the first time, self-expression that you’d prefer remain private. It’s nice to see your art on the wall, hear your voice on the recording and see your image on screen – if that’s where you wanted it.

Fire

Jupiter is going to expand the fixed fire energy. Fire is heat and flame and expect both to grow larger. While I expect the weather to become warmer and drier in July, any flames you do create you might want to take extra caution to contain.

Fixed fire is permanent fire like the J. F. Kennedy eternal flame, like the pilot light on your furnace or stove, like the molten lava beneath a volcano, like the heat from hot springs, like burning sand on a sunny beach.

Fire inspires and survives by the ideas that air creates. Water smothers fire by drowning inspiration in a pool of reactions. Earth can contain fire and make it useful, bring its inspiration into physical form – as long as fire doesn’t burn down the container that holds it.

Fun

Jupiter in Leo is joyful and celebratory. Leo also rules romance and children so we might find that childbirths increase during and after (timing, of course) this transit. Since Jupiter’s transit of Leo crosses two calendar years, I’d expect 2015 to show the increased birth rate.

Leave your calendar open as you might be invited to a few more parties, including children’s birthday parties. You won’t want to plan a Saturday night of cleaning the closet and getting those coupons in order. That can wait until Jupiter moves into Virgo.

Expression

Graffiti and bumper stickers kind of do the same thing – they provide your opinion where others can’t avoid it. I think of graffiti and bumper stickers as more Gemini – Sagittarius as these two mutable communicative signs are ones to not just fight the fight, but to make you aware that there is a fight.

Leo might bring more graffiti which Saturn in Sagittarius will try to remove in 2015. Leo expression is a bit grander than graffiti – it’s like Christo wrapping an island, it’s like putting a message on a blimp, it’s like the Wicked Witch of the West writing “Surrender Dorothy” in black smoke across the sky (with a touch of Pluto).

Leo graffiti will be bolder, louder, and more colorful and will have a touch of humor, or a deep-felt sentiment or recognition of a special person.

Challenger

Jupiter in Leo’s greatest challenger will be Saturn finishing its transit of Scorpio, the fixed water sign. Fixed fire meeting fixed water is like trying to melt a large block of ice with a flame. It’s not the best way to get water – it’s slow and unproductive.

While flames never get tired, they do get bored and dealing with a block of ice will send it to the guest bedroom. When Saturn is in Scorpio, Leo expression may be more hidden or reserved. When Saturn moves into Sagittarius, it will be more open but with some new boundaries.

Fire doesn’t like boundaries but definitely needs them. Saturn in Sagittarius might be the best thing to happen to Jupiter in Leo because while everyone likes a camp fire, no one wants the camp on fire. This is the good part of Saturn – containment.

Enabler

If Saturn in Scorpio is the challenger, Uranus in Aries is the enabler. Uranus has been passing through fire-sign Aries the fighter since mid 2011. Uranus will travel through Aries through 2018.

Aries is the first sign of the zodiac, cardinal and fire which starts most sentences with “I” but can be interested in everyone else’s “I” as well as its own. The person who asks the first question, the person who challenges your notions, the worker who says “that’s not right” when everyone else agrees in fear of losing his job – that’s Aries.

Aries supports Leo and in Uranus adds sudden inspiration, sudden enlightenment and sudden uprising.

Sudden. Now. Me. That’s the energy here.

A Leo President

The US president, Barack Obama, will be feeling all the Jupiter transit having three planets in Leo – Mercury at two degrees, sun at 12 and Uranus at 25. Right after Obama’s Uranus is Pluto in Virgo which Jupiter will visit after his time in Leo.

Obama’s chart has a lot of energy in the houses of health and work (6th) and others (7th). Saturn and Jupiter in the 12th oppose the 6th house energy. Jupiter opposes Mercury and the Jupiter in Leo transit will oppose that natal Jupiter.

Obama is going to be feeling some Jupiter for sure. What does the expansive Jupiter bring to Obama’s chart?

It’s difficult for me not to think, again, there is a health issue undisclosed. Leo rules the heart and Jupiter “expands what it finds” so we may have issues with an enlarged heart and circulatory issues. Natal Jupiter in Aquarius across the chart in the 12th (and Saturn in Capricorn) suggests something hidden or from the distant past.

The Astrologers Handbook says that Jupiter in Aquarius, Obama’s natal placement, “indicates people who know no class, racial or religious distinctions.” Jupiter opposing in Leo may be a drive to express personally which will be in contrast to this lack of distinction.

Right now Jupiter is in the last degrees of Cancer opposing Obama’s natal Saturn in Capricorn. The 12th house Saturn indicates loss of a father and Jupiter opposite suggests depression regarding it.

The triggering of Obama’s natal 12th house Jupiter and Saturn is very intense. The 12th house is the hidden and subconscious, and relates to psychologies and mythologies we’ve acquired from our lineage that we may not be aware of. We don’t normally let others know when we are having 12th house experiences but when in the public eye, these things sometimes get out.

I’ve always called the White House “an aging machine” as the men who enter it come out four or eight years later looking 20 years older. Seeing Obama in a press conference last week, the White House aging effect appears to be taking hold. Jupiter in the house of health and work mean that one is working too much. As president, I think you’ve probably agreed to work overtime every day of your life for eight years.

Idols

Jupiter in Leo will bring idols. Courage will be honored and recognized – children of courage, especially so. While Jupiter in Leo brings fire, it also brings out the rescue energy of those that know fire.

If we still had posters, I’d say there will be a new face on your bedroom wall soon.

Lions

Leo’s ruler is the lion so you must, of course, be on the lookout for lions in your backyard. Some may get loose from zoos and prowl around the neighborhood.