This year sees the start of a new cycle between Jupiter and Uranus when they finally meet in Taurus after reaching a wide orb during the summer last year that remained until the end of October. They return to a 10-degree orb in mid-February 2024 and remain close until the middle of June. The conjunction itself happens at 21°49’ Taurus on 21st April 2024 with an 8-degree orb from 2nd March to 5th June.

Jupiter Uranus alignments represent periods of growth and disruption in multiple areas, including breakthroughs and innovation in science and technology, new creative ideas and philosophical awakenings, revolutions in politics, social rebellions and protests with a desire for reform and greater freedom and equality. Since this conjunction happens in Taurus, we may also see new beginnings and rapid change in the areas of finance, agriculture, food production, values and our relationship to nature.

Jupiter represents the principle of expansion and growth and the desire to improve and progress into a more abundant future. It’s associated with the search for meaning and philosophical truth, as well as religious faith, optimism, and hope. But it can also expand too far, leading to excess of all kinds, extravagance, pride and arrogance. For more on the Jupiter archetype read: Jupiter Myths

Uranus represents the principle of change and revolution and the desire for freedom, excitement and the overthrow of old structures. It’s associated with unexpected reversals, reform and innovation, as well as awakenings and radical insights, flashes of genius and originality. But it can also be wilfully rebellious and restless, bringing chaos and disruption and tyranny. For more on the Uranus archetype read: Uranus Myths

When Jupiter and Uranus come together the results can be unpredictable, with each planet egging the other on. Both are masculine planets that rule fire and air signs so their energy is exciting and energising with a need to move and take risks and go on quests and achieve stuff.

Jupiter tends to amplify and expand whatever it touches and usually brings out the best qualities of the other archetype. But it can also encourage things to expand too far and with Uranus this can produce wildly extreme results.

Jupiter boosts Uranus’ visionary ability to see into the future, to innovate and find solutions and new ideas. But can also boost his extremism and revolutionary fervour and the desire for change no matter the cost or consequences. This can lead to change for the sake of change with no direction, creating churn and chaos, as well as change driven by progressive ideologies with no basis in practical reality with the same results.

Meanwhile, Uranus energises Jupiter’s faith and desire for meaning, bringing a positive vision of the future filled with hope and creativity, something to believe in and grow towards. But can also amplify his tendency for dogmatic beliefs, especially if those beliefs align with Uranus’ favourite ideology at the time.

The Jupiter Uranus cycle takes about 14 years to complete with the most obvious events and synchronicities happening at the start with the conjunction, followed by the peak at the opposition, although the squares are powerful too. Interestingly, the conjunctions return to the same sign in a pattern that takes about 84 years, or one cycle of Uranus, as you can see here:

As Uranus travels around the zodiac, Jupiter catches up with him about every two signs forming a sextile to the previous alignment. So this year we have the conjunction in Taurus, while last time it was in Aries/Pisces and before that it was in Aquarius, and before that in Sagittarius, and so on. Over one cycle of Uranus this creates a grand sextile pattern, or two Grand Trines in the shape of a 6-pointed star.

The pattern slowly shifts backwards through the zodiac because when the conjunctions return to the same sign, they happen a few degrees ahead of the last one. You can see this in the image above where the conjunction of 2024 is at 21°49’ Taurus, while the previous conjunction was at 25°38’ Taurus in 1941.

In her book, Jupiter Meets Uranus, Anne Whitaker explores how this pattern has evolved over the centuries. The conjunctions toggle between periods where they’re all in either masculine signs (fire and air) or feminine signs (earth and water), plus periods where they’re a mixture of the two. Since 1500 the Jupiter Uranus conjunctions have been mostly in masculine signs and have only recently begun to shift into feminine signs.

The period of fire and air conjunctions coincided with the scientific and philosophical development of the modern era and the expansion of the European colonialists around the world. These conjunctions fuelled the rise and then dominance of the West and our ‘war against nature’ with all its consequences.

We’re now in a long period characterised by a mixture of conjunctions in masculine and feminine signs which began in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution. You can see this in the image below which shows the Leo conjunctions shifting into Cancer in 1872 and Gemini shifting into Taurus in 1858. The most recent shift happened in 2010 when Aries shifted into Pisces, while the Libra conjunctions will move into Virgo in 2051.

The mixture of masculine and feminine conjunctions continues into the 23rd century as Aquarius doesn’t shift into Capricorn until 2163, and Sagittarius takes until 2231 to shift into Scorpio! But by the middle of this century most of the conjunctions will be in earth and water signs. Maybe this will give us the opportunity to change our relationship to the earth and find a way to work with nature rather than against her.

To get a feel for how these conjunctions work, let’s have a look at what happened during the last Jupiter Uranus conjunction in Taurus. The conjunction was on 8th May 1941 with an orb from March to June, and coincided with the Jupiter Saturn conjunction also in Taurus. It was right in the middle of World War Two and Pluto was also conjunct Chiron so things were pretty nasty. Here are some paradigmatic highlights:

• Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law, a massive aid package to help the allies in WW2
• The first Defence Bonds went on sale to help fund the production of military equipment in the US
• Women in the UK and US were called to work in the factories making the equipment and do other jobs normally done by men while the blokes were away at war
• As part of Operation Barbarossa, Germany issued their Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia ordering them to kill anyone who opposed Nazi ideology, explicitly naming Jews as “racial enemies to be eliminated.”
• In Greece, the resistance tore down the Nazi swastika from the Acropolis in Athens and replaced it with the Greek flag
• A German Lorenz cipher sent a message twice that enabled mathematician Bill Tutte to decipher it
• The British Royal Navy captured a German submarine and got their hands on the Enigma machine used to send coded messages and were later able to decode it
• In Germany the Z3, first programmable fully automatic computer, was presented
• In Britain the first British jet aircraft was flown, the Gloster E28/39
• Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage and Her Children was first performed in Germany
• Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane premiered in New York and went on to become one of the most influential films of all time
• Disney animators went on strike to get better pay and privileges from old Walt
• The Viet Minh was formed in Vietnam by the Indochinese Communist Party to achieve independence from French rule, later to become the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War with the US

We can also see how these alignments work by looking at how each cycle unfolds from one conjunction to the next. Each cycle builds on the events of the previous cycles as one innovation leads to another, with ideas cross-fertilising and inspiring each other over time and around the world.

The previous Jupiter Uranus cycle started with the conjunctions in Aries and Pisces in 2010–11 and coincided with the Uranus Pluto square which ran from 2012 to 2015 but was in orb during the Jupiter Uranus conjunction. During this cycle there were so many scientific and technological changes that listing them all is impossible. It’s also hard to know which will be significant in the long run, but here are a few highlights:

Conjunction June 2010 to January 2011:

• Loads of uprisings, including the Arab Spring and protests against austerity in Europe
• Wikileaks released documents about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Chelsea Manning was arrested and jailed for 35 years
• Scientists created the first artificial life form, and the first human embryo was created using the DNA of three people
• Cloned meat was eaten for the first time, and they also built a 3D printer for food (Yum!)
• The Large Hadron Collider at CERN began smashing particles together
• SpaceX launched the first commercially built and operated spacecraft
• Electric cars were made available for the mass market for the first time
• The iPad was released and there was a huge rise in the use of smartphones and social media
• Many breakthroughs in robotics and AI which continued throughout the cycle

Sextile July 2012 to March 2013:

• Edward Snowdon released details of mass surveillance by the NSA and had to flee to Russia
• Scientists created the first cloned human stem cells
• The Higgs Boson was discovered at CERN

Square August 2013 to April 2014:

• The space race went global when India launched its first Mars Orbiter and the Chinese spacecraft, Chang’e3, landed on the Moon
• Rapid growth of industrial robots being used in China
• The Rosetta spacecraft successfully landed on a comet (during the trine later in 2014)

Opposition December 2016 to October 2017:

• Obama reduced Chelsea Manning’s sentence and she was released
• Trump was elected US president
• Tons of scientific breakthroughs, including gene editing and gene therapy, the creation of the first semi-synthetic organism, and a 3D bio-printer for human skin
• Robots started to replace human workers in many places
• Breakthroughs in AI with developments in deep learning and bots playing Go
• Oumuamua interstellar object spotted pootling through the solar system and caused lots of speculation about aliens

Trine December 2019:

• US Space Force established
• Chinese scientist He Jiankui sentenced to prison for allegedly creating the world’s first genetically edited human babies, triggering uproar around the world
• Chinese scientist created pigs with monkey DNA, the first animal hybrid
• Breakthroughs in quantum computing and in creating quantum states in various materials used in electronics

Square January 2021:

• Trump supporters stormed the US Capital and caused a ruckus
• Kamala Harris became the first black female Vice President of the US alongside president Biden
• COVID mRNA vaccines approved in Dec 2020 and the rollout began
• Breakthroughs in genome editing using CRISPR and in quantum communication networks
• First successful flight of LauncherOne, the first air-launched rocket to reach orbit
• The Perseverance rover landed on Mars

Sextile February 2022:

• More breakthroughs in gene therapy
• The first robot performed surgery without human help (although presumably somebody plugged it in and switched it on)
• The biggest breakthrough in fusion energy since 1997 with 59 megajoules produced over 5 whole seconds (!), more than double the previous record

We could include a lot more on these lists and there’s a couple of old posts that go into these periods in more detail. For more on what was happening during the opposition read: Jupiter Uranus Opposition: Political Revolution and a Robot Uprising, or explore the previous two cycles in detail in Jupiter Uranus Cycle: Recent History Syncs.

To explore the history of these cycles as far back as the 18th century read: The Jupiter Uranus Cycle: Archetypes & History. Or listen to this great interview with Anne Whitaker about the more ancient history and what we have coming up.

In the next two posts, we’ll explore the possibilities for the Jupiter Uranus conjunction and how to make the most of it on a personal level…

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