Zeus and Thetis, Jean Ingres, 1811. Thetis, a Nereid/sea nymph-goddess, begs Zeus to help her son Achilles. Thetis had rescued Zeus himself when Hera his wife, Poseidon his brother, and Pallas Athene his parthenogenetic daughter had plotted to throw him into chains. In the Iliad I, her son Achilles reminds Thetis of this: "You alone of all the gods saved Zeus the Darkener of the Skies from an inglorious fate, when some of the other Olympians—Hera, Poseidon, and Pallas Athene—had plotted to throw him into chains . . . You, goddess, went and saved him from that indignity. You quickly summoned to high Olympus the monster of the hundred arms whom the gods call Briareus, but mankind Aegaeon, a giant more powerful even than his father [Ouranos]. He squatted by the Son of Cronos [Zeus/Jupiter] with such a show of force that the blessed gods slunk off in terror, leaving Zeus free" (translated by E. V. Rieu). Thetis had also rescued (a typical Pisces) the Argonauts from Scylla and Charybdis, and Hephaestus when his mother, Hera, found him so ugly she threw him from Olympus; in return Hephaestus had fashioned Achilles’ armor. Thetis knew Achilles’ fate: he could return home to his father Peleus and die happily yet forgotten; or he could die at Troy forever remembered as a hero. Above, Zeus appears unmoved.

Jupiter (Zeus, Wotan), king of the gods is the largest planet in the solar system, and its symbolism bears this out. Jupiter is the principle of expansion: expanding the mind to superconscious realms and philosophy, expanding our physical horizons through long journeys, and expanding the physical body through putting on weight (or simply being large). It is also a kind of cosmic Santa Claus: generous, optimistic, or, if afflicted, extravagant, excessive, fond of display, opinionated, fanatical and boastful. Jupiter is the promoter par excellence, the teacher or the con man, the priest or used car salesman, the gambler or the crusader. It represents the higher mind, lifting up our eyes (the arrow of the Sagittarian centaur) with visions of truth, idealism, understanding, wisdom, and aspiration.

Jupiter’s symbol is the crescent of personality raised above (or uplifted by) the cross of matter. It represents man’s (the crescent’s) triumph over earthly experiences (the cross) through his understanding of universal law gained through just those experiences. Saturn is those experiences and the testing through which this wisdom was obtained, and hence their symbols are each other’s turned upside-down. Thus the wisdom and understanding of Jupiter is the way through the tests of Saturn.

In the body, Jupiter rules the thighs, liver, hips, pituitary gland, and assimilation on all levels. Its house position shows what activities shaped your social principles and ethics. Just as the liver produces bile to help you digest food, so too does your ethical, religious and social training produce the principles and values that help you digest life’s experiences.

Jupiter has a lower and a higher manifestation. If well-placed by sign or house or well-aspected it can signify subtle understanding of life’s deeper principles, learning through travel or higher education, general good fortune or luck, and material abundance. If poorly placed or afflicted, it symbolizes indiscriminate sensuality, self-indulgence, wastefulness, greed, avarice, dilettantes, and wanderers. Jupiter rules Sagittarius where it embodies all the planet’s positive aspects, and is exalted in Cancer where it expands the nurturing, mothering principle.