What happens when Jupiter retrogrades? Usually, we feel it, as something we saw with hope, optimism, and faith is turned on its head, revealed to conflict with the facts, or withdrawn and offered to someone else! De-flation is the typical reaction to the turnaround point, and even if there’s no specific loss, we are likely to feel a little less buoyant; we may have the sense that something that was a resource no longer is, although we may not be able to put our finger on just what is missing right away.

That’s no fun, right? What we need to remember is that later in Jupiter’s retro cycle we’ll find out why what has disappeared went away, and nine times out of ten, part of our discovery is that we never really had a chance at it in the first place. Jupiter direct had pumped up our expectations, all out of proportion to our actual odds of ‘winning’. Don’t be disgruntled–it’s part of the happy behemoth’s job to endow us with optimism and a willingness to reach out for more; it’s not Jupiter’s fault if we find our return to reality a little rough.

This time the retreat comes as Jupiter is late in Capricorn, post his renowned meeting with Pluto, and so setting up a second pass during the retro period at the planet of change, this one scheduled for late June-early July. What’s withdrawn may have seemed solid, something we could rely on, or something we thought would be ours because we’d worked hard or followed the rules–so doubly depressing, when something that seemed like such a sure thing just isn’t.

Jupiter turns around just before completing a trine to Sedna. That suggests at least some of what we’ll experience during the retro period will involve questioning or not feeling we can rely on our own instincts and the still, small voice within–and also that we come close to seeing what’s in our blind spot, but aren’t quite able to accurately identify it. That comes at another point, so that what comes forward in this portion of the Jupiter cycle likely doesn’t tell us much about what everyone else can see but that we’re missing.

It’s also likely that, with time, we’ll see that what Jupiter has handed us was, certainly, denial of something, and yet, it also brings an opportunity to go in another direction. With hindsight and the passage of time we usually see that life would’ve been quite different if we’d gotten what we were expecting–and yet, we have to see that we wouldn’t have learned what we’ve learned, discovered what we’ve discovered, or gained the faith and confidence that we have if we’d not been turned in a new direction upon the disappointment Jupiter delivered. The benefits are always there–we just need practice seeing them.

The atmosphere overall for today, aside from Jupiter’s shift, involves feeling smart, empowered, and powerful–so may make what Jupiter hands us even harder to take–but denial of what we want has the benefit of helping us avoid some power struggle we almost certainly would’ve lost. So, apply efforts to what’s under our control (and for which we need no assistance or permission), and know that we could’ve wasted our energy in a tussle, if not for awareness of where our attention is best expended today.