Ah, Jupiter in Capricorn—the realist of the zodiac. Jupiter in Capricorn is actually called Jupiter in its depression—now, I’m not talking about the medical term depression. Depression also exists as an astrological term. You might hear of depressed planets called planets in their fall.

I bring up the astrological term depression here because I think it does capture something about Jupiter in Capricorn. Jupiter is the biggest planet. The word depress means, to sink down, to weigh, to make a sizable dent. When Jupiter falls, it makes a sizable dent. Jupiter is big. To depress is to work with concepts that are heavy enough to make a real impact.

I really like Jupiter in Capricorn. I know that not everyone does—in the old books, Jupiter is not seen positively when in Capricorn.

Jupiter is a dreamer but Jupiter in Capricorn is a realist. Jupiter is the planet of faith—do you believe in yourself? In the world around you? Do you believe people when they tell you how great you are? Do you believe your teachers and in history itself?

I think every Jupiter in Capricorn has thought about the above questions at length. I think every Jupiter in Capricorn has thought over these questions without coming to an exact answer.

Jupiter is the planet of faith. Jupiter in Capricorn people are cautious. They don’t like to take huge leaps of faith. They like to take things a little bit at a time. I think this aspect of Jupiter in Capricorn also applies to how people with Jupiter in Capricorn approach people.

Everyone has a different rate of trust. Some of us believe in people and then we get disappointed. We have to rework our relationships so that our expectations are more realistic. Intimacy tends to move fast, halt, and then get slow. I think that Jupiter in Capricorn tends to go the other route. They tend to greet people using their skepticism first, getting to know a person cautiously and with a slow pace.

Last time Jupiter transited Capricorn, a global pandemic started. Everything changed. The time before that? A global recession. Everything changed.

People with Jupiter in Capricorn are good at working with big subjects—heavy subjects. I think that people with Jupiter in Capricorn are really good at knowing how to reorganize solidarities and contexts after something big has shifted. In particular, Jupiter in Capricorn is good at keeping people together after defeat.

Political defeat shifts everything. It shifts our goals. It shifts our friendships. We no longer feel like we are working towards or that we can aim for the same things. People sometimes blame each other when we go through a decline. People sometimes get disaffected and go into isolation. People find new goalposts but they sometimes find that their former allies don’t come along for the ride. 2020 was a year of political defeat. So was 2008.

Jupiter in Capricorn is good at re-organization. When shit hits the fan, we have to make really hard decisions. A lot of us had to make hard decisions in 2008 and, again, in 2020. But Jupiter in Capricorn is willing to make hard decisions.

Jupiter in Capricorn looks around and evaluates what can be saved. Then, it tried to move forward after removing what isn’t necessary. This is Jupiter unburdened of the expansiveness of its own nature and set to work to do Saturn’s, the great eliminator, bidding. Jupiter is the planet of the future. Jupiter in Capricorn, Jupiter in fall, is willing to do what is necessary to get to the future.

Karl Marx had Jupiter in Capricorn. He was a systemic thinker. Many dictators who I won’t mention here also had Jupiter in Capricorn. So did Margaret Thatcher.

Very often, Jupiter in Capricorn is the person who stands steadfast even when others fall down. It is the Jupiter who never backs down. Jupiter in Capricorn isn’t built from lofty hope. It’s built from hope as a discipline. It’s a hard, Saturnian type of Jupiter.

Sometimes, Jupiter in Capricorn can become that person who never backs down even when everyone else has changed with the times. Jupiter in Capricorn is willing to be ideologically lonely. When it’s Jupiter in Capricorn against the world, you would be surprised that the world isn’t guaranteed a 100% victory. Sometimes, Jupiter in Capricorn can get in a mentality of being a lonely fighter working against the whole world.

In many ways, that ideologically loneliness is a virtue. Jupiter in Capricorn doesn’t need cheerleading in order to think its own way. It will just stand for what it stands for without backing down. Social pressure doesn’t work on Jupiter in Capricorn. Why?

Usually, when Jupiter in Capricorn has made up its mind, it doesn’t do so on the basis of other people’s opinions or how things may sway. It does so based on Jupiter in Capricorn’s own assessment of fact and history. Jupiter in Capricorn believes that, as long as its beliefs are formed out of fact, that they will stand the test of time. Other people will eventually come around.

Sometimes, the world seems to work like that. Not all the time.

A lot of the time, history is made and remade as time flows. Historiography is made and remade. What is truth when one reality disappears and becomes another?

To some, Jupiter in Capricorn’s attachment to Truth can feel like intellectual rigidity. To others, it looks like courage. This is someone who does the unpopular thing. They have been the weird kid who no one understands. Jupiter in Capricorn is used to playing that role and they don’t care. They know, in their heads, that they are right even when they alone are right.

But Jupiter in Capricorn also doesn’t share its own thoughts freely. It swallows them down like Saturn swallowing his children. They hold their rightness in the backs of their minds, sometimes not knowing that they believe the way they do. If you share something, that thing becomes subject to interpretation and changeable. Jupiter in Capricorn is trying to hold onto the truth, not exchange it for another story.

These are great thinkers, Jupiter in Capricorn are. They are hard on themselves and hard on their own minds. They don’t always believe in their own dreams because they refuse to believe in a fantasy. They want reality unadulterated. Their attachment to Truth sometimes traps them just like it does to the rest of us. Jupiter in Capricorn excels when it becomes a disciple of the truth and not its prophet.