Today, 20 April 2024, at 9:02-:03 pm EDT, Jupiter and Uranus will conjunct exactly for the first time since 2010, this time in Taurus. Separated by roughly 14-year intervals, the conjunctions of Jupiter and Uranus are similar to Jupiter’s own solo 11-to-12-year cycle immortalized in Jacques’ speech Seven Ages Hath A Man soliloquy in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, where a man’s 12-year life-periods are contrasted with infancy, schoolboy years, time as a lover, enlistment as a soldier, promotion to a judgeship, a retirement era as a “pantaloon”, followed by the second childhood of old age, dotage and death.

Hymn to Uranus and Jupiter

Hail to you, father of thunders streaming, 
And you who bottle lightning like a djinn!
you send grand visions, in broad waves teeming,
but build them from scrap-wood, duct tape and tin —
or sketches on the back of a napkin,
or a speech that loses an election, 
or a peace is agreed to in principle
like dress-makers first drape a mannequin —
or an analyst sees through deception,
and finds this secret code is vincible. 

Time, like a fabric, falls in folds and drapes
from where it's tacked with sharp pins called stories —
by pleats and wrinkles, your slow cycle creeps,
rarely revealing momentous glories 
since all the hard work lies hidden in seams.
The curtain rises in the opera house;
one small box is seized from a submarine;
a magazine prints a kid's crazy dreams; 
a child is born who'll give life to the Mouse;
orbiting astronauts fix a machine.

How many dozens of hours were spent, 
all hidden away, behind these clauses?
How many ways was the future's course bent
by the pins that we placed in the pauses?
Fourteen years can be half a man's career,
four thousand days to make Time's thread hold fast
despite all the gathers, smocking, and pleats.
See us now, as your time to meet draws near!
Give us courage to make life that will last, 
tales worth pinning as History repeats.

---

However, where Jupiter advances one sign roughly each year, and transforms the native’s relationship with self, money, family, household, hobbies, work, relationships, and so on through the houses in turn — Jupiter and Uranus advance their topics by slips and slides in time, and push us into new phases of life. My own first Jupiter-Uranus conjunction occurred when I was 12, in 1983 — in the year I began to discover my own identity. The second, in 1997, changed my relationship with my faith as I began to discover that the religion of my parents was not wide enough to account for my own experiences of spirit moving in my life. You may find that similar shifts have occurred in your own life at these fourteen year intervals.

Uranus, an upstart, inventor, and revolutionary often calls us to recollect and revisit the youthful exuberances of the previous fourteen years—- while Jupiter as the archetype of a kindly Duke and priestly mentor, calls us to take on the new responsibility of the next fourteen. Together, they invite us to update the lessons and experiences of the past into a way to lead us to the future.

Over the last decades, these two planets have met a number of times, all the way back to shortly before Uranus was discovered in 1846. The thing about this combination is that it often represents private decisions that become public later:

• 8-9 February 1844 in Aries – Giuseppe Verdi premiered his third opera, Ermani, on the night of the ninth.
• 23 May 1858 in Taurus – a young gentleman in the United States is granted his upstart political party’s permission to run for the US senate seat in Illinois: Abe Lincoln, for the Republicans. A guy named Lewis Carroll is experimenting with secret code systems; so is Brigham Young of the Mormons.
• 5-6 June 1872 in Cancer — The Republican Party starts moving in the direction of becoming the party of “Big Business” in America, holding their convention under the pairing.
• 18-19 August 1886 in Libra — negotiations began for the end of America’s Indian Wars. Joshua Slocum, the first person known to have sailed solo around the world, was born.
• 21 October 1900 in Sagittarius — Cornelius Alvord, one of the most successful bank embezzlers in US history, finally caught; Winston Churchill won a seat in parliament for the first time; Helen Keller started college.
• 4 March 1914 in Aquarius — Ward Kimball, a Disney animator; and Robert Wilson, American atomic physicist who worked on the first atomic bomb… both born directly under the conjunction.
• 16 July 1927 in Aries – Theodore Geisel, otherwise known as Doctor Seuss, has his first cartoon published in the Saturday Evening Post.
• 9 May 1941 in Taurus — the British captured their first Enigma code machine from a German U-boat; and the Republicans finished losing a majority of the US Black vote, despite being the party that had ended slavery.
• 11 May 1955 in Virgo — the following day, the first Taiwan crisis between mainland China and the government on Taiwan ended.
• 28 July 1969 in Libra — the day before, Apollo 11 safely returned from the Moon.
• 20 February 1983 in Sagittarius — Chuck Hull makes the finishing adjustments to his new machine, the first 3D printer.
• 16 February 1997 in Aquarius — Space shuttle astronauts complete repairs and upgrades to the Hubble Space Telescope.
• 8 June 2010 in Aries — software engineers are completing the last coding hurdles before launching Instagram in early July.

The next couple of conjunctions will occur on these dates:

• 29-30 March 2038 in Cancer
• 9-10 November 2051 in Virgo

It’s a complicated list, but there are between seven and eight repetitions per century — which is roughly how many it takes for the pair to return to the same sign. The conjunction often has implications for visual media, particularly when it’s occurred in Aries: first opera, then cartooning, then Instagram. Conjunctions in Aquarius have also included visionary genius— in animation and visualization. Sagittarius is less easy to pick out, but seems to involve crazy learning and voyages of discovery.

And conjunctions in Taurus, like this one? They’ve been associated with breakthroughs in cryptography, with a captured Enigma machine happening directly under one such conjunction. But they’re also peculiarly connected with the history of the Republican Party in the USA, both its peaks and less fortunate moments. We may never know for sure — the long cycle of the conjunction means that the events of earlier cycles are, if not “lost to history” then at least more deeply embedded in the historical record, defying easy analysis. As humans, we’re not always good at detecting the 30-year themes of Saturn’s returns in our personal lives — what chance do we have at decoding the 98-ish-year return of these two planets to the same sign?

Ultimately, we have to guess. For those of us on America’s east coast, the conjunction takes place on our western horizon in the seventh house — the place of our “most significant others”, like lovers and spouses, business partners, and open foes. The story of the next fourteen years begins with the experiences of these, our most important people. But it won’t end with them, because the nature of this conjunction is to tell a fourteen-year story, one that begins with “so this thing happened, which seemed very small at the time….”

Advice by Rising Sign

Aries: the last conjunction took place in your first house; while this one takes place in your second, turning your attention over the next fourteen years from your self, to your wealth and possessions.

Taurus: The last conjunction took place in your twelfth house, while this one takes place in your first house. You have largely been in service mode helping others over the last fourteen years; the next fourteen may be more about returning to yourself and your needs.

Gemini: The last conjunction took place in your eleventh house of friends and allies, while this one occurs in your twelfth house of solitude and higher vision. You may find yourself wanting to draw back from your friends and spend more time in spiritual retreat.

Cancer: The last conjunction took place in your tenth house of career, while this one takes place in your eleventh house of friends and allies. Building your network and growing your range of allies and partners is a key story of the next fourteen years.

Leo: The last conjunction was in your ninth house of learning and writing and travel, while this one takes place in your tenth house of career and reputation — there’s a need to decide you’re ready, and step into your capacities as a teacher and leader over the next fourteen years.

Virgo: The last conjunction was in your eighth house of odium and responsibility, while this one takes place in your ninth house of learning and travel. What have you learned from the difficulties of the past fourteen years? How will you turn them into stories and adventures over the next fourteen?

Libra: The last conjunction took place in your seventh house of partnership, while this one occurs in your eighth house of burdens. What you have done out of service to romance and partnership, may now feel like an unwanted obligation. Will you take the lead in this, or try to run away?

Scorpio: The last conjunction took place in your sixth house of daily life, while this one takes place in your seventh house of relationship and partnership. Your vision of future life requires a partner of some kind: a spouse, a business ally, a lover, an enemy. What will you choose?

Sagittarius: The last conjunction took place in your fifth house of pleasure, giving you fourteen years of focus on your hobbies or your kids. Now it’s in the sixth house of routines: how are you going to turn these interests into serious daily effort?

Capricorn: The last conjunction took place in your fourth house of family and household. You’ve been leading your housemates by the hand (or the nose ring) for some time. Today’s conjunction takes place in the fifth house of your hobbies — where have you been playing, and is it time to seek a more impactful, leading role in those amusements?

Aquarius: The last conjunction took place in your third house of neighborhood and siblings. You’ve been living for the needs of your neighbors or your extended family… but it’s time to focus on what happens under one roof, as today’s conjunction occurs in your fourth house of household.

Pisces: The last conjunction occurred in your second house of wealth and possessions, and like a “material girl” you probably accumulated a lot of stuff. Today’s conjunction occurs in your third house of extended family and neighbors — it might be time to start using those accumulated resources on behalf of the people closest to you.