Planetary Magic Practices: Jupiter

Cards featured from the Delta Enduring Tarot by Egan (left), the Smith-Rider-Waite deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith (second from left), Dust II Onyx Tarot by Courtney Alexander (second from right), and the Next World Tarot by Cristy C. Road (right)

​Today our journey through the days of planetary magic brings us to Thursday, the day of Jupiter.
 
Jupiter is the great benefic of the diurnal sect. Jupiter stabilizes and affirms. It is a planet associated with abundance, expansion, and growth, as well as faith, belief, wisdom, good fortune, and justice. It is a profoundly optimistic and supportive planet. Jupiter rules the signs of Sagittarius and Pisces, and is exalted in the sign of Cancer.
 
For today—or any Thursday—you might make a small—or maybe large—altar for Jupiter with the things you have available. You can look to the list of correspondences below for the kinds of colors, stones, numbers, and tarot cards you might incorporate. Add things that you associate with Jupiter—maybe objects you associate with your teachers and sources of wisdom, plants that grow, or objects of spiritual and religious significance. Once you build your altar, take some time to be with it as an aesthetic experience. Notice how being with this altar makes you feel. Drop your attention down into your body and observe what sensations arise as you spend time with the objects you’ve gathered for Jupiter.
 
Jupiter is currently visible each night, a bright diamond in the dark of the night sky. You may consider going for a walk just after sunset to catch a glimpse of the great benefic.

Whether you’re working with or without an altar, whether you go outside to see Jupiter in the sky, I invite you to take some time to meditate with Jupiter. It could be five minutes, ten minutes, or longer. Visualize Jupiter in your mind’s eye (you can look up pictures of the planet if you don’t know what it looks like), or visualize the glyph for Jupiter. Notice what your body feels like as you imagine Jupiter. Remember or call up experiences in which you felt abundance and more-than-enough. You may feel into experiences when you felt a wide open expanse of possibilities or when you felt connected to a reliable source of wisdom or enlightenment. Notice what these memories feel like in your body, not just as thoughts in your mind.

In meditations like this, I also work with mantras coming from the yoga tradition. For working with Jupiter, I use the mantra: “Om Sri Gurave Namaha.” I use a mala and repeat the mantra 108 times. I also sometimes use mudra, described below.
 
However you spend your time meditating with Jupiter—repeating a mantra, visualizing the planet or glyph, recalling experiences that you associate with Jupiter’s significations—tune in to the sensations that begin to accumulate. These could be physical or they could be more subtle energetic shifts in your awareness. The practice here is for Jupiter to become more than just an abstract symbol or something that you think of as “out there” in space. As you begin to notice what Jupiter feels like within your body, this becomes a state that you can return to and work with in your magic, and how you understand Jupiter astrologically—in your birth chart or in its transits—will begin to take on more embodied significance as well.
 
Jupiter
Day: Thursday
Number: 4
Colors: Yellow, indigo, purple, and white
Metals: Lead (Picatrix)
Stones: “precious stones that are white and golden and part of carnelian and emerald and quarts and crystal and all stones that are white and clear and shining, and also gold” (Picatrix)
Chakra: Swadisthana, the Sacral Chakra
Mantra: Om Sri Gurave Namaha
Mudra: The index finger is associated with Jupiter, so I work with Jnana Mudra (Seal of Wisdom) or Chin Mudra (Gesture of Consciousness)—bringing the tip of the thumb and index finger together, with other fingers extended. There is also Guru Mudra, which is used to signify Jupiter in Indian dance traditions (pictured below).
Tarot: Because of Jupiter’s many significations—abundance, expansion, growth, faith, wisdom, justice, good fortune, fertility, etc.—I find that depending on the deck I’m working with, different cards feelmore like Jupiter. So, for example, when working with some decks, the High Priestess card resonates with Jupiter’s significations of faith and wisdom. In other decks, the Teacher feels more like Jupiter’s wisdom and growth. In other decks, Justice stands out more for me. (In the Golden Dawn tradition, Jupiter was associated with the Wheel of Fortune card.)

Kaitlin Coppock of Sphere + Sundry also has a beautiful series of Jupiter's Bounty talismanic offerings that provide "a classically uplifting, benefic and juicy Jupiterian charge, ideal for prosperity magic, luck increase, Jupiter remediation, and the promotion and preservation of All Good Things": https://sphereandsundry.com/product-category/series/jupiters-bounty/​
I love Kaitlin's work, which has been a huge support to me as I have developed my own astrological magic practices. I work with Kaitlin's Water of Jupiter's Bounty each week.

Glyph of Jupiter

From Mudras of India by Cain Carroll and Revital Carroll

From Mudras: Yoga in your Hands by Gertrud Hirschi

From Mudras of India by Cain Carroll and Revital Carroll

From Mudras of India by Cain Carroll and Revital Carroll

Sources:
 
Kaitlin Coppock, “Planetary Magic: A Beginner’s Guide,” WellBeing Astrology 2020, editor Kelly Surtees, Universal Media Co, 2019: 92-95.
 
Austin Coppock, “Intro to Planetary Magic,” https://austincoppock.com/shop/intro-to-planetary-magic-course/[online course].
 
Richard Fish and Ryan Kurczak, The Art and Science of Vedic Astrology: The Foundation Course (Asheville Vedic Astrology, 2012).
 
Cain Carroll and Revital Carroll, Mudras of India (London: Singing Dragon, 2013).
 
Gertrud Hirschi, Mudras: Yoga in your Hands (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, Inc, 2000).
 
Thomas Ashley-Farrand, Healing Mantras: Using Sound Affirmations for Personal Power, Creativity, and Healing (New York: Ballantine Books, 1999).
 
Richard Palmer, “Delving Into Tarot and Astrology in the Golden Dawn Tradition,” Biddy Tarot, https://www.biddytarot.com/tarot-astrology-golden-dawn/.
 
Joe Rao, “When, Where and How to See the Planets in the 2019 Night Sky,” December 27, 2018, https://www.space.com/39240-when-to-see-planets-in-the-sky.html.

If you missed the previous posts in this series, you can find them here:
The Sun
The Moon
​Mars
Mercury